because you can't have too much entertainment... December 2001

Product Vs. Art
Harry Potter and the Sorcerors Stone Dir. Chris Columbus
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane & Alan Rickman
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Dir. Peter Jackson
Starring: Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett & Viggo Mortenson

Harry Potter & the Sorceror's Stone
You may have heard of this tiny little arthouse film called Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone. It's based on an obscure book of the same name. Maybe you're one of the few who has seen it? What? Twice! You mean, you actually liked it? Well, um, good for you. I guess. I didn't feel the same. But let me back up a bit. Like a good portion of the adult world (including, apparently, critics) I am a fan of the Harry Potter books. I enjoy their eccentricities, the fun array of character types, the gentle humor, and their playful take on the standard hero myth. But I am startled that anyone is loving the movie. I'll give you that it's a serviceable rendition of a fun book...but beyond that it simply has no power of its own. The amount of superlatives hurled at Harry: The Movie is yet another reminder that we live in a corporate controlled world. Critics, you know, work for the corporations that own the movie studios that own the billion dollar franchises like this one. It's not the wisest career move to take aim at the hand that feeds you.

Chris Columbus, a journeyman director if ever there was one, was given the task of bringing this book to the screen. He did the job. But it doesn't feel like he brought anything in particular to the table. Perhaps J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros didn't want him to. There is in this mundane film a rigid adherence to text that's normally only found in religious cults. There is such a thing as being too faithful to a novel. Books and movies are two separate products and require two different approaches. Many things that were amusing on the page are laborious and redundant in the film... but they're there anyway. There are a wealth of examples to choose from but let's just choose one from the very beginning: Did we really need such a long and episodic buildup for Harry to get the envelope/letter telling him to come to Hogwarts? How did the film's storyline profit from the drawn out repetitive structure of those first scenes? The problems start early on and continue throughout the film. Where the books are swift on their feet, the movie is slow and plodding. The Potter novels have cleverly delineated personalities and characters, the movies have blank visages that resemble but do not embody the joyous literary creatures they represent.

Surprisingly, great care was apparently taken by the studio and Ms. Rowling to assemble a team for the translation of the book to film (it is at heart a translation rather than adaptation). Despite their collective artistic merits, the chosen team here seems handicapped by the sure thing status of the project itself. Why invent when your job is to copy? Why seek inspiration when the outcome will be the same without it? It starts with the screenplay. Steve Kloves, a fine screenwriter, proved memorably last year with Wonder Boys that he can adapt and alchemize a complex literary narrative into a fine movie story. And he had previously proved his worth as the writer/director of the swoony and sad Fabulous Baker Boys and the starkly amoral Flesh and Bone. Looking back at his career, Kloves is especially adept at handling significantly adult material. Perhaps the cut and paste job on the children's novel Harry Potter was both below and beyond his grasp. Director of photography John Seale also comes to the production with a stellar reputation. He is the man responsible for the awesomely gorgeous English Patient but his cinematography here feels phoned in. The film looks flat where it should be rich. Composer John Williams also fails to muster up anything new. Though Williams rarely reinvents the wheel with this compositions, he turns out below par work here giving in to his worst bombastic instincts. Among the production team, the casting director, art department, and costumers clearly worked the hardest. Unfortunately, once the actors are outfitted as their characters and placed within the magical sets there's little for them to actually do. The film is filled to bursting with terrific English actors like Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and Richard Harris but the most any of them get is a few scattered lines and several chances to compliment the young Potter. Because of the general blandness of the film, an unfair burden is placed on Daniel Radcliffe who plays the wizard. He does a reasonably good job of conveying Harry's relief and wonderment at his new lot in life but beyond that he conjures up no emotional inner life for the young wizard. The director, carefully cutting and pasting scenes from page to screen with his expensive pedigreed team, doesn't seem interested in helping him.

So, in the end Harry Potter, the film, is a pale translation of an excessively enjoyable novel. No one involved in this particular film is elevating their material, or working with enough inspiration to create any "magic" onscreen. I continue to be stunned that mass audiences and critics alike find this version of Harry Potter to be "good enough." As for this viewer, a film about a young wizard that lacks any magic is a complete waste of time. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone is as bland as movies get. But saddest of all, it's a spectacular waste of a golden opportunity.

The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring
In stark contrast to Harry Potter, the year's other fantasy book to screen adaptation, The Lord of the Rings, is anything but a cut and paste job. One need only look at the name Peter Jackson to understand the immediate difference in the films. I must admit that I went into the theater with enormous good will. Peter Jackson made what I believe to be the best film of 1994, the tonally complex and masterfully emotive Heavenly Creatures...and I was at a loss to imagine how he could ever top it. He had struggled before with his follow up The Frighteners. That film was problematic but it was still emblematic of a singular aesthetic. Finally Jackson has made good on the promise he showed with Heavenly Creatures. Whether or not he surpasses that film is a matter of personal taste but at the very least he again proves that he is a master stylist and capable of generating operatic intensity in his films.

Another disclosure: I am not a fan of the books. I did read the trilogy when I was young but remembered being bored by it. I attempted it again in preparation for the Christmas release of the film and found myself slowly slogging through it. But even in the midst of ennui and endless flipping of pages it seemed evident that the book was enormously screenworthy. So much of what bogs the books down - endless descriptions of characters and places - can quickly and confidently be tossed out onscreen. A confident hand can cut directly to the thrillingly heroic tale that's buried under Tolkien's careful prose. The film needed only a strong production team and a brave auteur at the reigns to make the film sing and soar on its own.

Thanks must go to New Line for entrusting this massive undertaking to a director with a cult oeuvre rather than a Hollywood journeyman. A bigger, more established studio would never have been able to gamble so smartly with a possible tentpole. But the New Line executives were artistically savvy. For nowhere is it more obvious that risks and aesthetics are required to shift films into the realm of art than in genre films. Fantasy and sci-fi alike have oft suffered critical derision because without a strongly inspired aesthetic they appear inconsequential or silly at best and amusingly bad at worst. All the great genre films have had A list auteurs behind them. Alien had Ridley Scott, E.T. had Steven Spielberg, and so on. Artists alone can make films magical, and fantasy and science fiction immediately sink without magic. Jackson was undeniably the right choice for the material. He exceeds beyond all reasonable expectations in crossing the book over. One can forget while watching that it's based on a book -a mark of any great adaptation. The epic literary journey becomes a cinematic event. It's Tolkien's story but Jackson, being a visually minded director, casts the spell that's required for the screen. The only section of the film that feels remotely bookish is the prologue and that's a Jackson invention. But that moment is a necessary one and an inspired move. Without it the film would be continuously bogged down for expositional passages. As it stands now, it's a thrilling prelude condensing the trilogy's immense backstory into an easily followed historical document of Middle Earth. In Galadriel's (Cate Blanchett) majestic voice alone the mythic serious tone is immediately established for the film.

Ah, but I sink into fanboy speak with my admiration of Jackson and the film. He did not, it must be pointed out, make the film alone. The mark of a great auteur in this critic's mind is the strength of the team that he assembles. The production design on this film is inspired. The Shire, the tower of Saruman and Rivendell all come to life. It all feels of a piece and of one earth. The costume designs similarly bear the mark of true artistry with their obsessive details and lived-in feel. The actors too all shine in difficult roles. How hard would it be to spout heavy archaic dialogue with pointy ears and invented languages without making a fool of yourself? The entire cast is strong, but in the two most prominent roles wonders are at work. Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins (your surrogate onscreen) expertly conveys through his massive blue eyes all the wonder and terror he feels on every step of the journey. Sir Ian McKellen is witty and majestic as Gandalf. The sense of humor he imbues in the wizard is perhaps the film's biggest performance surprise and adds wonderful emotional balance to the solemn sense of responsibility which he instills in the Fellowship of the Ring.

The film clocks in at three hours, but despite its repetitive nature (Tolkien's story is after all something of a road trip wherein all the characters go from frying pan to fire to frying pan again for three whole books) it rarely drags and never comes crashing down. The high point of the film for me is about halfway through when the elf Arwen, Liv Tyler in an all too brief appearance (and career best performance), rescues the wounded Hobbit from the Ring Wraiths chasing her on horseback. The film achieves a kind of alchemy in this scene (and elsewhere depending on what personally grabs you). For adults, well, we know how films are made: You know it's just actors on horseback, expert editing work, a pretty actress, a dialect coach, and visual effects supervision but you're so entirely transported by it that all knowledge that you're watching a film evaporates. You feel your breath quickening. Your hand grips your seat. And to top that the film manages to continue building momentum until the remarkable final battle sequence where Jackson, Viggo Mortenson as Aragorn, the cinematographer Andrew Lesnie, and editor //???? show the rest of Hollywood how heroics are conveyed on film. No empty posturing or explosions or shallow ****. It's the grit and blood of true battle and desperate heroism and the honor of those who have devoted themselves unflinchingly to what's good and honorable. It's the English language equivalent of last year's phenomenal Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The Lord of the Rings is as exciting as movies get. It's a condemnation of every blockbuster Hollywood has attempted to make in the past few years. It bears the mark of true inspiration. It matters not a whit what it cost or how much money it makes. It's pure transporting magic. And that, Harry Potter, is how it's done.

product (prod'-ukt) 1. A thing produced by labor or effort. 2. a person or thing considered as reflecting enviornmental influences: a product of one's time. 3. Math. the result obtained by multiplying two or more quantities together, etc: Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone.

art (ärt),n. 1. the quality, production, or expression, or realm of what is beautiful, or or more than ordinary significance. 2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works or objects belonging to this realm, as paintings, drawings, films, etc: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

-Nathaniel

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