willbradbury's Full Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
In "Lord of the Rings," Frodo Baggins has to come of age in a real hurry. It's like that old adage: childhood is over the instant you know you're being stalked by a horde of Grim Reaper wraiths. Harry Potter, on the other hand, has the luxury of easing more leisurely into the role of hero. His first-year challenges were pretty much push-overs, compared with perils to come. And while going from a raspily-talking demon head to a monster serpent is a considerable nemesis up-grade, at least Potter can enjoy long homework sessions and games of Exploding Snap in-between.
"Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" is a husky, hurtling adventure story. We drop right out of the clouds immediately, right into the thick of things. And as director Chrisopher Columbus emphasizes the draddiness of Muggle living by panning over rows of cookie-cutter suburban houses, to where our Mister Potter is wistfully flipping through an album of animated snapshots, you know you're in deft, sure hands. Columbus takes a giddy pleasure in plunging the camera into scenes, often with the aid of CGI. It's the same Peter Jackson technique used in "Lord of the Rings," where it wasn't enough for audiences to goggle at action sequences, but the camera, too, had to be kinetic. Columbus seems to realize that when you read a book, you draw someone else's creation up into your brain, so a movie-maker has to draw his audience right up there on the screen. As I watched the movie, I was often reminded of the scene in "Alice in Wonderland," where Alice is plummeting down the rabbit hole, and has time to consider the various gewgaws embroidering the sides of the hole.
It isn't long before Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), imprisoned by his Uncle Dursley after a portentous House-Elf named Dobby spoils an important get-together, is whisked away by his best friend, Ronald Weasley (Rupert Grint), in a flying Ford Anglia, to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to unite with his other best friend, Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), and discover a lethal force has been unleashed to prowl the school corridors. I shouldn't have to give you much than that. The movie is, for the most part, expositionless, counting on viewers to be acquainted with not only the first flick, but the books as well. It would take pages to unravel the Byzantine plot, so you would be well-advised to brush up on your Potter mythology before you buy your tickets.
Among the fresh additions to the cast are the ineffectual, peacockish Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh), the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, and Lucius Malfoy, father to Draco (Tom Felton). And if you don't bristle at the mention of that name, you're hopelessly in over your head already. Professor Sprout makes a brevitous appearance, and Mrs. Weasley gets more screen time, and scream time. The strident, histrionic Moaning Myrtle haunts one of the stalls of what has to be one of the best art-directed lavatories I have ever seen. The big-timers pretty much garnish the background this time around, our trio Ron, Harry and Hermione thrust to the forefront. Considering that even the paintings chime in with their two cents from time to time, the background still has plenty of say and sway.
Numerous critics have remarked rather harshly on the syruppy John Williams score. I rather like it. His music seems to hearken back to a time when the philharmonic was an integral part of story-telling, punctuating words, brightlining emotions. And it's good to see, while Columbus still obstinately adheres to his policy of narrative fidelity, that he now feels confident enough to alter some of the visual and verbal particulars, straying away from the security of the sure-to-please text. For instance, Aunt Petunia's precious pudding is now a rosetted, tiered cake, which is far more photogenic, especially if the Potter pudding was blood.
Ebert said, in his review of Sorcerer's Stone, that he felt it was only proper that the FX should look a little bit like they taken from a book. Unfortunately, they also gave the impression that nothing was of any real danger to our hero. The backgrounds in that movie seem positively Spartan when contrasted to the hectic ones of Chamber of Secrets. Watching Harry down parlous Knockturn Alley, mobbed by slouching, sallow dark wizards, like George Romero zombies, the sense of jeopardy is palpable. There's also no more urgent bolting around for Potter and company, as though Columbus had passed out pep pills between takes. There's a conspicuous absence of alarms in "Chamber of Secrets." Matched against a basilisk that makes the snake in "Anaconda" look about as threatening as a nightcrawler, Potter exhibits about as much trepidation as if it were an animatronic in the Disney World haunted mansion.
When a rogue bludger zeroes in on Harry during a Quidditch match, it proceeds to decimate the playing field in its mad pursuit of Potter. Since the Quidditch field seems like one of the few left-overs from the first movie, it seems as though Columbus is demonstrating his contempt for his early visual prosaicness. It's good to see Columbus is also introducing a hint of self-satire into his works. Neville Longbottom, having been hung by his collar on a chandelier in Defense Against the Dark Arts class by a pair of mischievous Cornish pixies, declares, with a rare glimmer of winking self-awareness, "Why is it always me?" Asking this straight into the camera, Neville seems to be directing this question at Columbus himself. Since about a dozen other people take a couple of comic spills apiece throughout the film, the director seems to be saying, "Pal, you're not alone."
And I also feel that Richard Roeper's declaration that "Harry Potter is the 'Wizard of Oz' of our time" is a little off-the-mark. A couple of years ago I had the misfortune of seeing "Wizard of Oz" on the big screen, in all its techni-color glory. I was horrified. The Munchkin sets looked plastic, scenes of the Wicked Witch of the West on her broom looked as cheesy as the production values on an Ed Wood cheapie. The reason why the language and music is so indellible in that movie is that they had to compensate for the abominable visuals. Chamber of Secrets can spread itself out, assured that everything, visuals, dialogue, score, are the pink of perfection.
One of the problems I have with Chamber of Secrets is that Radcliffe isn't given enough alone time. Wherever he goes he's escorted by his friends, by Dumbledore, by other professors. And if he's by himself, Radcliffe is either running from some hideous, scaly thing or doing battle with some hideous, scaly thing. There is no time, like with Uma Thurman after the dance contest in "Pulp Fiction," to just appreciate the star for themselves. Readers wait for a long time to see Potter come to the screen. They attempt to visualize what he'll look like, but he's always bundling off somewhere. There's no time to appreciate him as a genuine, cinematic creation. We got a taste in the first installment when, his first night at Hogwarts, Harry stares out a window from his dorm room, curled up with his owl, stroking her feathers. It's the melancholy-tinged John Williams score that steals that scene, though. We also must consider the simple fact that Radcliffe simply does not have the star charisma to make him watchable during a quiet scene.
Hagrid seems diminished in spirits from the last go around. In Sorcerer's Stone, Hagrid was imposing, especially when defending the honor of his hero-worshipped Dumbledore, and rough-and-tumble earthy in turns. He was like the whole of Herman Melville's Nantucket distilled to a single person, his shaggy rumbling reminescent of a Moby Dick swabbie. In Chamber of Secrets, he seems almost grandfatherly and gentle, two very un-Hagrid-like characteristics. This is a fellow who, after all, dotingly chucks Norwegian ridgeback dragons beneath the chin, like some ancient dowager with her toy poodle. And later on in the books, given a teaching position, brings fire-spewing, giant scorpions as class exercises. Hagrid isn't a bumbler, just a bit scatter-brained at times. He's endearing the way Martin Crane on "Frasier" is endearing, as the down-to-earth, gravelly voice of reason. While none of the Hogwarts professors are nose-in-the-air popinjays, sometimes their baroque statements and gesture wear a bit thin, and it's off to Hagrid's hut, for a dose of world-wise advice, treacle fudge which is more jaw-glueing than extra-thick peanut butter, and a couple of low-brow chuckles.
Draco Malfoy's clean-cut malice reminded me very much of Heydon Christian's "Attack of the Clones" incarnation of Darth Vader, only with a slight yellow streak. Draco seems to have lost a bit of initiative. A lot of his confrontations with Potter end with him merely smirking derisively, as though stuck for a needling come-back. At one point, Malfoy and his two hench-twits, Crabbe and Goyle, go bowling by Potter and his crew without so much as a side glance. In the books, Draco would never have passed up such an opportunity. A bit of his trademark drawl is gone as well. In the first installment, Draco sounded as though he were doing a dead-on impression of his hero and mentor, Severus Snape (Alan Rickman). Now he just just sounds like a petulant daddy's boy. Which is appropriate, as Daddy War(lock)bucks makes a series of sinister cameos this time round.
But whatever happened to the Draco Malfoy who hissed every word as though it were an epithet?
Rex Reed actually said something I agree with, can you believe it? Admittedly, most of my knowledge of Rex Reed comes from indirect jibes off of "The Simpsons," as well as half of a preface out of some book he wrote in the eighties. But that preface was so beastly, printed on cheap mill paper and a really horrible computer font, it confirmed the lampoons of the Simpsons scribes. Still, Reed and I do see eye to eye on one matter: audiences.
While watching the opening of Albert Brooks' "Defending Your Life," the radio is on and we overhear a scrap of a call-in show, where Reed informs Bea Margaret from Denver (who simply adores Reed's "dry wit"), that, even when it comes to comedies, (where mass cacchination can almost be a spiritual experience, like a giddy filling of the Holy Ghost), Reed would prefer to see a movie all by his lonesome, even if it's just a screening for critics. Especially if it's only a critics screening.
I wholeheartedly concur. After months of anticipation of a rapturous, transcendant (I swore I'd never use that word in a review, another side-effect of deep Simpsons conditioning) cinema experience, it was almost ruined by wall-to-wall, squabbly crumb-crushers. I went to the theatre to have a communing experience, but how can you have a communing experience with a mob of rugrats screeching with laughter, like the weasels in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" with every pratfall? And why did Columbus feel the need to put in pratfalls at all? There are precious few, if any, verbal or physical, in Rowling's books. Unless you count Neville Longbottom.Who, until Goblet of Fire, has been one gigantic pratfall. Also, why do parents feel the need to instill their cublings with all manner of social etiquette, but totally neglect movie etiquette? You can't turn in a five year-old at a movie, alas. You can picture some burly, bouncer-like usher tapping the shoulder of some pig-tailed, little girl with her front teeth missing, in bib overalls and saying, "I'm sorry, Miss. You'll have to come with me now." Back to the topic, if it wasn't for the fact that the cast used subtle, easy-on-the-ear British accents (as opposed to those heavy Cockney accents, like in "Mean Machine," or in the Semoan pub sequence with Vas Blackwood in "Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels"), the night would have been a complete wash.
I would actually have paid for the twenty heads in the crabbed cineplex room to have it all to myself. Before you balk at that figure (just under one hundred Simoleons), let me tell you I was only able to hear one-twentieth of what was said. Most likely, I could return nineteen more times before I got the whole story. Also, I'm not following my penny-grubbing parents' advice and waiting for a decontaminated version to come out on the boob-tube three years later, with all of the witchcraft references or minor epithets blacked out. That's why Lord Jehovah gave us boot-leggers.
I suppose one of the reasons why I enjoy the Harry Potter series so much is that I have some things in common with the title character. Do you remember Aunt Petunia's (Fiona Shaw) venomous look and livid tone, in the first cinematic installment, as she remarked on what it was like growing up with a sister who was, quite literally, a witch? "I was the only one to see her for what she really was: a freak!" That's pretty much how my own fanatically-fundamental, medieval-minded progenitors reacted when I confessed to being a Potterite. "We have a witch-lover in the family!" Mind you, they didn't go so far as to lock me in a room with bars on the window, feeding me cold soup through a cat flap twice a day, like the Dursleys make poor Harry in the sequel, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," but they were as shocked as if Jerry Falwell had stopped by for Sunday brunch, and I'd done my imitation of Quentin Tarantino's "Like a Virgin" interpretation from "Reservoir Dogs," and things were, needless to say, a bit turbulent about the homestead for a week or two following my confession.
Of course, being a Potterite requires being an apologist not only to petty-minded fundies and elitist literati, but also sniffy film critics as well. Elvis Mitchell of "The New York Times," whom I quoted in my review of the first movie, pondered whether the world was ready for the movie version of books-on-tape. Actually, I think that remark, quite the opposite of its inflammatory intentions, neatly summarizes the purpose of the Chris Columbus entries in the film series. One of the reasons many non-illiterate or non-laconic listeners to books-on-tape do so, is because of the delight of hearing a silver-tongued, celebrity reader recite a popular or classic book with dash and sinew. Hearing a book-on-tape, I'm often reminded of celebrity walkers. I read in a book a while ago about famous people out on constitutions, and the peculiarities of their strides, their manners of looking about, where they walked. Everybody knows how to walk, but it takes that exceedingly idiosyncratic, high-hat gait to make it interesting. I'm reminded, in particular, of Timothy "Speed" Levitch, from "The Cruise." A man whose every aspect of life is so up in the air and vulnerable to change, that he taps the pavement with his toe at every step, as if to ensure that this foundation, at least, is sound. Anyway, that's what the film versions of the Harry Potter seem to me: books with a dollop of visual splash.
Another complaint of the big-time culture-vultures concerning the adaptations of J. K. Rowling's series: they spend far too much time playing it safe. I really don't see how that's possible, when the material itself couldn't be more controversial if a dung-smeared Madonna adorned the jacket and Old Scratch himself wrote the preface. Although every sensible reader understands that the witchcraft and wizardry of Rowling's world is, as with C. S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia," divorced of their satanic connotations, the Potter books still have the Catholic church dusting off the guillotines for another round of bloody inquisition. Doubtless, a significant portion of Columbus' audience for his past films (recall "Mrs. Doubtfire") have been of the Pope Posse, lured by the sanitized content and absence of anything remotely thought-provoking. So by taking on such a project as this, Columbus is risking spooking his core audience. Considering that dollar signs are unquestionably the driving force behind most main-stream projects, that makes Columbus look, at least in my book, pretty plucky indeed.
One of the best signs that Columbus was in tune with what his audience wanted and needed in the first film is that, through much of it, the young stars were looking up, at Hagrid, the bewitched ceiling of the Great Hall, Fluffy, seemingly endless levels of shifting stairs. That's the sign of any great fantastic story; the level gaze is for Stephen Crane realism. One of the admonishments of the Professor at the beginning of "The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles" is that too many people spend too much time studying their shoes.
And if "Star Wars," with all of its sanitized battle sequences, nets a PG rating, how come "Chamber of Secrets," with a plethora of jump scenes and quite a few plasma plashes, also falls into the no-adult-company-required rating range? "The Others" was rated PG-13 purely because of the atmosphere. Lucius Malfoy may have the wizard council in his pocket, but it's also clear that Columbus has the MPAA in his.
Wonder of wonders! Columbus has learned turns. For his first time out helming the Potter franchise, he'd basically point the camera at an actor and push in or withdraw. Now he whirls like a David Fincherian dervish. Columbus is quite quickly becoming the virtuoso of the long, slow zoom-in. Imagine twenty or thirty retarded versions of the initial plunge in "Run Lola, Run," and you'll see what I mean.
Also, where the bloody devil did they find the spondoolicks to finance this pic? The first Potter movie cost some $120 million smackeroos. This movie, every room and corridor is so glutted with wizarding parephernelia, and busy, little, throw-away CGI, that even the clutter looks more cluttery. Every room looks like an antique shop. Imagine the director of "Brazil" and "Twelve Monkeys," a self-described clutter connoisseur, who, during the shooting of one of his films, kept getting upset and shooting and re-shooting because a hamster in the background wasn't running in its wheel. Imagine him stuck in a time warp and able to work out every little, anal retentive detail, that's how much of a hyper-hodgepodge Chamber of Secrets is.
The Americanization of the Potter Books has been a source of chagrin for me for some time now. I've gone ravening through every local book shoppe in search of a copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," where all of the John Bullisms have been left intact and an extra chapter is included. When Grint, pondering the girth of the basilisk declares, in a film devoid of a single buffoonish, Yankee accent, where the flying Ford Anglia has a grill conspicuously bare of longhorn horns, and, Coke bottles (that's an in-joke for those acquainted with a certain petition that has been circling), "That thing must be sixty feet long!" it was all I could to keep from biting my tongue in two.
I can't help but notice, also, that some of our returning, juvanescent cast members have lanked up a bit. While Grint sounds, through the whole flick, as though he has a head cold, Watson and Radcliffe (why is it, whenever I hear that name, I have a secret suspicion the kid's using the millions he's raked in to buy an island to hunt people who wash ashore?) now have an angularity of chin that makes them both look a lot like the Potter on the British book covers. Grint's Ron should be pulled over for going 60 mph (mugs-per-hour) in a 40 mph zone. Of the three primary child actors, each having accumulated some inches in the year between films, Grint has fared the worse. His once scampish grins now look awkward. Of course, the literary Ron is an all-elbows beanpole, but Grint seems incapable of making his adolescent clunkiness part of his performance.
For a man proud to be a denizen of a self-enforced ordinary world, Uncle Dursley seems to squint an awful lot, as though he simply cannot believe his eyes. "Amazing! the wallpaper in the kitchen is exactly the same in the family room!" He looks like a myopic bull walrus. Alan Rickman's Snape has never seemed as foul to me as in the books. Of course, it hurts his performance that the words "He snarled maliciously!" aren't written on the air after every delivery. Professor Sprout reminds me of a plumper version of the dance instructor from "Billy Elliott," nonchalant, knowing, acerbic, with a tough outer shell. She seems the more-than-capable replacement for Sorcerer's Stone's Madam Hooch.
A qualm I have with the Potter movies: the lack of awe at performing magic for the first time. When Potter makes the glass vanish at the zoo in Sorcerer's Stone, liberating a boa constrictor, he gapes, then grins at discovering his cousin Dudley trapped behind the glass. In "X-Men," when Anna Paquin's Rogue first discovers her powers, leeching the life force out of her beau with their first smooch, there is a profound emotional response: shock, terror. "Dont touch me!" The closest Sorcerer's Stone ever got was when Harry first dons his father's invisibility cloak, squealing, "My body's gone!" in that British accent that makes a child's shrill shouts of surprise all the keener.
One of the great things about this new addition is that magic isn't something that we take for granted takes place in the wizard world. In the first movie, there are so many sparks, smoke poofs and pyrotechnics from wands and incantations, you'd think it was the Fourth of July. Right from the beginning we had magic, but it was kind of glossed over. There was a kind of blase about it, even though we hadn't had time to grow calloused toward it. When Harry, banished to his room while the Dursleys entertain, happens upon Dobby the House-Elf, instead of registering any palpable shock, he tries to shoo him away as though he were some nosy, unwanted caller.
My fears, thankfully, were ungrounded. When Harry is whisked away in the Ford Anglia to the Weasley residence (which looks very much like the old-lady-who-lived-in-the-shoe's abode, and is just as bustling), we enter in to discover dishes magically being scrubbed, darning magically being done. And we don't merely regard these things peripherally, but give each their due.
I remember reading Ebert's review of "Metropolis." How, considering the movie is animated, and each few seconds take many hours and many dollars, the Japanese obsessive attention to detail is fantastically illustrated by a character who, deep in study, when a page in a book he is considering flips back by itself, he turns it back over. The same care for detail is demonstrated here as well. Japanese anime is noted for its lush backgrounds, American animation tends to focus on character detail. Chamber of Secrets unites both obsessions for a lavish, sensuous real and CGI macrocosm.
When Harry happens upon the Riddle diary and is transported into a memory of its owner more than fifty years ago, when he returns, he doesn't fade in, like they used to do back in the fifties and sixties, with the cheapie, TV space operas, but is hurled, violently, out of the pages. Many Potter fans feel the same way when they take their attention away from their beloved books, after being deeply immersed for hours. We don't get this sort of violent wrenching in Columbus' adaptation. Rather, the last shot is lingering pull out from the Great Hall, over and away from the twisted, pastel turrets of Hogwarts. You feel that Columbus himself is finding it difficult to tear away from his creation, like when you're reading a book and are on the last page, and take each line a minute at a time. It should be noted that the castle is shown in sloe silhouette, a portent of things to come. Though everything in the Great Hall is all gilded cheer, terrible things are brewing.
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