Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
And I bet a hell of a lot of you have now, too, based on those box-office numbers. I would have loved to have seen a press screening of it, but evidently Warner Bros. is all twisted and pissy right now because this SUPERMAN story turned out to be completely accurate, and they not only refuse to allow me into any early screenings at this point, but they went all goofy and started randomly accusing people of leaking information to me, as well as accusing me of more than my normal level of shenanigans.
*sigh*
Besides, if I’d gone to an early screening, I might not have decided to put together a really fun evening out with my friends. See, I’m one of those freaks who believes that where and how you see a movie is just as important as what you see. The experience can really affect your overall reaction to a film, and I’ve had some really great films ruined for me on first viewing because of terrible theaters or rude moviegoers or projection issues. I’ve been looking forward to seeing what Alfonso Cuaron would do with this series since I’m a big fan of the work he did on A LITTLE PRINCESS, so I called my buddy Jack to see if the movie was going to be opening on a particular screen. He took me to this theater out past Pasadena last year to see THE BLAIR WITCH TEXAS CHAINSAW REMAKE MASSACRE PROJECT 2003, and as soon as I saw the place, I knew why he liked it. The Pacific Hastings 8 is this cinderblock anonymous stripmall building from the outside, but it’s got a secret. It’s a time machine. You step through the front doors, and suddenly it’s 1983 all over again. It looks like absolutely nothing has been touched since then. It smells like absolutely nothing has been touched since then. It’s in no way one of these anonymous modern stadium-seating clones that have been barfed up all over the country in the last decade.
This place has got character. It’s also got one of the biggest screens I’ve seen in the LA area that isn’t officially an IMAX screen. It’s a behemoth. Ginormous. The auditorium where AZKABAN is playing features these huuuuuuuge long rows of seats with no middle aisle, so if you’re in the middle, you’re in the middle for the whole film. This place can’t be called retro, because I don’t think anyone ever set out to design a theater that would so persuasively take you back 20 years that it still has a CENTIPEDE machine in the lobby, and that’s what makes it all so appealing. If you can read the description and honestly not think, “Yeah, that sounds like fun,” then go... enjoy the Arclight or the Grove... which are both very nice new modern theaters. But I get tired of wrestling with LA audiences for seats at the showcase venues, and there is something so enchanting about being able to see a movie in a theater that feels directly connected to the way I watched movies growing up. Like I said... Jack’s a big venue geek, the same way I am, and by the time he got done inviting friends and I got done inviting friends, we ended up with a list of 40 people that were going. Jack drove out, picked up 40 tickets, and then went next door to Robin’s Wood Fire BBQ And Grill, the sort of place where I merrily threw aside my diet for one evening. Jack set it up so that when everyone arrived at around 8:00, we took over an entire patio. Great food, lots of beer, and even a little karaoke from the bravest and drunkest among us (damn, that Dr. Skinner’s got pipes) kept us busy until just before 10:00, when we made our way over to the theater and headed inside.
I say all of this to preface just how great a mood I was in when HARRY POTTER began. It was one of those great nights out with friends where you’re already more than willing to meet a film halfway, and based on all the good buzz I’d been hearing about the film, I was confident that the mood would continue.
So why is my reaction so wildly split about PRISONER OF AZKABAN? Why don’t I love it with the same abandon that I hear from so many other people? I have my theories, and since the film’s already in theaters and playing, and since many of you have seen it now, I’m going to feel free to discuss spoilers in my efforts to explain.
From the film’s opening frames, it’s obvious that Alfonso Cuaron has brought another level of craftsmanship to these films. The way he plays with the WB shield as it gets closer and closer, light flickering through it from behind, is immediately arresting, and when we do move in on the now-familiar Dursley house, adults will laugh at the nerve of the subtle joke Cuaron is making, almost deliberately prodding all those who thought he would sex up the POTTER series due to his work on Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN. The wicked notion of starting the film with Harry playing with his wand under the covers after everyone else has gone to sleep got a hearty laugh from our audience, and Harry’s wry smile as the main title comes up is the perfect punctuation mark to the moment.
The scenes that take place in the Dursley house when the loathsome Aunt Marge (Pam Ferris) comes to visit are shot hand-held, close, almost claustrophobic. The house has never felt smaller or more confining, and I like the way the Dursleys seem to have made peace with the fact that they live with this powerful and frightening figure, and as long as they can survive the three months he’s home, they’ll be okay. It’s like Harry’s become invisible. Aunt Marge doesn’t know enough to be afraid of him, though, and she unwisely provokes him into a display of magic that is both malicious and ugly. It’s played for laughs, but there’s no disputing the idea that pissing Harry off can be a dangerous proposition. When he leaves the house, refusing to be bullied by his Uncle Vernon (the ever-expanding Richard Griffiths), he’s not sure exactly where he’s going or how he’ll get there. Sitting by an empty playground, an ominous wind begins to glow, and a dark, disturbing dog slips out of the bushes across the street, snarling at Harry. Just before things get out of hand, the gigantic multi-decker Knight Bus shows up to give Harry “emergency transport” wherever he wants to go. There’s a matter of fact quality to all of this that really grounds the film in our world for the first time. Chris Columbus had the hardest job in the world for the first two films, giving life to something that had already been envisioned by millions of fans around the world, trying to be respectful but also having to invent all the details that fill out a visual universe. His films were beautifully designed, but they never felt “real.” There was no question that we were watching something created on soundstages at great expense and with great effort.
Cuaron, by comparison, has been able to step into that world, which by now feels familiar to viewers, and by simply tweaking things or by adding particular flourishes, he’s suddenly lifted the entire affair off of soundstages, making it feel real. By the time Harry joins his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) on the train to Hogwart’s, we’ve got a sense of how these kids fit into the larger world, and also a real sense of how they’ve aged and how their lives continue outside the events of the films. I also think it’s impressive the way Cuaron and screenwriter Steve Kloves introduce Sirius Black into the film without actually introducing him. The wanted poster that we’ve seen as the cornerstone of the ad campaign for months now is quite creepy, the way it’s layered into things, Gary Oldman’s silent scream appearing at the corner of frames or in the background of so many of these early moments. Everyone speaks of Sirius in the same hushed tones they reserve for discussion of you-know-who, which gives Black a real presence in the film even before he actually arrives.
But if you want to know the moment where Cuaron really takes this series and puts his indelible stamp on it, look no further than the first arrival of the Dementors, as wonderful a moment of dread and creeping horror as I’ve seen in a kid’s film. His version of these terrifying guards of Azkaban Prison skews closer to the Soul Collector from Peter Jackson’s THE FRIGHTENERS than it does to the Ringwraiths, but the way he’s used underwater puppeteering to create their otherworldly motions makes me think of the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and the Wrath of God. It’s great stuff. The scene also introduces Professor Lupin, played with enormous sympathy by David Thewlis, and does a good job of immediately making him into one of the most likeable adult characters in the entire series. His repeated urging for Harry to eat some chocolate, his patience during the classroom scenes, the selfless way he stands up to the Dementor that threatens Harry on the train... he finally seems to be the mentor these kids have been looking for, the direct antithesis to Alan Rickman’s still-sinister Professor Snape.
Unfortunately, it’s also here that I started to notice some of the narrative devices that ultimately wore on me by the end of the film. Y’see, Harry faints.
Harry faints a lot, actually. Anytime they’ve reached the end of a threatening scene and they need to end it without actually having an real resolution, Harry faints. It feels like there are five or six scenes at least that use him passing out as a transition to a scene that always begins with, “What happened?” “Well, Harry, someone else had to do something that took place off-camera in order to move the story along.” It’s an annoying, passive dramatic device that scuttles some of the best moments in the movie.
For example, the Quidditch match. Great stuff. It’s got a pulse and a palpable sense of danger that Quidditch has never had before, and I love the way Cuaron just drops us right into the middle of a game. The way the Golden Snitch keeps luring Harry higher, higher, until he’s so far above the stadium that it’s impossible to see. And that’s when the Dementors come out in force. It’s a wildly effective moment, and it’s just a shame that Harry is once again left to just passively faint his way into the next scene in the film, saved from his fall only by Dumbledore (the absolutely wondrous Michael Gambon). Yes, it leads into Professor Lupin teaching Harry ways that he might battle the Dementors should the moment ever arise again, but Harry spends so much time simply reacting that I found myself impatient with him.
At 141 minutes, this is the shortest of the POTTER films to date, but if anything, seeing how well-made this film is has finally brought me to the conclusion that Rowlings is just not a particularly good plotter. Her stories are overstuffed with incident, but very little of it really matters. That’s what I mean when I say that I’m having a very divided reaction to this movie. I love the texture of the world this time out. I loved looking at pretty much every frame of the film. The use of the Whomping Willow to mark the passage of seasons was a particularly clever touch, and I admire the artistry of the film. But considering how this is considered the book where things “really start heating up,” there’s very little story of consequence here. The first hour is basically just introducing ideas or characters, some of which pay off in this film, but many of which do not. Of course, after the film, I heard from an enraged POTTER fan about how too much got cut and how he would have sat through another two hours of movie.
Which, personally, I can’t imagine. And maybe what it boils down to here is that the shape of these movies is becoming too familiar now. Framing everything within the context of successive school years seems fairly ingenious at first, but it’s already begun to wear on me. A mystery will be set up and solved in exactly the amount of time it takes to complete classes for the year, robbing each of the individual stories of any real suspense. What you’re left with as a viewer is moment-to-moment distractions, things to occupy you as you wait for the story mechanics to play out.
That’s where Cuaron more than earns his way onto the A-list. I hope he’s met with a snowdrift of screenplays on Monday morning, offers to direct everything in town, because he certainly deserves it. He made some very canny choices, and chief among them was his use of Michael Seresin as cinematographer. There’s a wonderful quality to the image in this film, a combination of obvious digital grading in post and stylistic onset choices that Cuaron and Seresin had to make. Seresin’s been Alan Parker’s primary D.P. for most of his career, and his work on films like FAME, BIRDY, ANGEL HEART and (especially) SHOOT THE MOON has always been striking and emotional. He gives Cuaron a rich palette to play with here, and the choice to burnish the edges of the frame, like we’re watching a silent movie from the ‘20s, is both eccentric and somehow dead-on. It’s not a standard-issue summer movie as a result. There are numerous small choices that almost crept up on me as a viewer, like the way Hagrid (the always-reliable Robbie Coltrane) is finally portrayed as a giant instead of just a guy in a large padded costume. It’s subtle, but Hagrid looms over the scenes he’s in, enhanced in a way that never once looks like a special effect, thanks to Cinesite’s work. They also created the Marauder’s Map, which I thought was gorgeous. And speaking of effects, there are a ton in this movie, and various companies contributed certain specific things to the movie, making it hard to know who exactly to praise for what. I do know that Framestore CFC in London deserves to be singled out for their work in bringing Buckbeak the Hippogriff to life. Somewhere, Ray Harryhausen is no doubt sitting in a theater, jaw on the floor, amazed to see such a beautifully-realized magical animal, an obvious tribute to much of his work, and as wonderful a creation as anything from WETA’s bag of tricks during the LORD OF THE RINGS series.
The only stretch of the movie that I unreservedly enjoyed for both its narrative strength and the visual power is the final 45 minutes or so, the BACK TO THE FUTURE II segment of the film. From the moment Harry, Hermione, and Ron creep out to see Buckbeak before he’s executed to the end of the film, I think it’s pretty much flawless and exciting and effortless. The scene in the Shrieking Shack is one of the best acted moments in the entire series so far, thanks to the combined starpower of Timothy Spall, Oldman, Thewlis, Rickman, and the kids. Even more powerful is the moment where Thewlis gets caught in the moonlight and ends up transforming into that remarkable Wayne Barlowe-designed werewolf. I’ve heard Barlowe is returning for GOBLET OF FIRE, and I can’t wait to see what he’s got in store, because there’s an elegance to this work that will hopefully continue in the series as Mike Newell takes over. And I thought there was genuine power to the notion that Harry sees himself across the frozen lake during the final Dementor attack, only to mistake what he sees at first as a glimpse of his father. There’s something really potent in there about how we become our parents as we get older, and how much Harry has grown from the unsure boy we met in the first film.
As far as performances in the film go, I’d say Emma Watson is the best of the young performers. She and Tom Felton as the sneering Draco Malfoy are both becoming fairly accomplished, considering what they are actually given to do in the films. I’m not sold on Rupert Grint yet. He’s very broad in this film, and he seems to have a fairly limited bag of tricks to draw upon. Daniel Radcliffe still has the hardest role in any of the movies, being called upon to carry every scene in the movie as Harry, and he’s getting better as he goes. The wonderful moment in the film where he first rides Buckbeak could be a cheesefest if we didn’t believe his exhilaration, but the combination of the wonderful work on the creature and the way Radcliffe sells the idea combines to create one of he most affecting moments of onscreen flight for me since the heyday of Miyazaki, whose influence can definitely be felt in a number of scenes. I’m also quite taken with the work that Michael Gambon does here, stepping into the role of Dumbledore and somehow honoring the memory of Richard Harris while also turning it into something new and unique. All of the teachers this time feel more like people, like they have actual lives away from the school.
Overall, I’m starting to realize that I’m never going to be particularly blown away by the story of a HARRY POTTER film, but as long as future directors bring the same level of play to the series, I think the template has been struck here that will allow the next four films to all offer up diversions worth enjoying, particularly on the bigscreen. This is the first of the POTTER films that I actively look forward to seeing again, if only to study the way Cuaron packs his frame with information, and so that I can enjoy one of the liveliest John Williams scores in quite a while. These may seem like minor accomplishments, but considering the crushing weight of expectation placed on the POTTER series by its fans, they end up feeling like real magic.
And if you’re a theater geek in the LA area, let me encourage you again to pick a weekend and make the 45-minute trek out to the Pacific Hastings. It’s nostalgia incarnate, and after the film the other night, everyone who went was definitely glad that they’d had the expeience, no matter what they thought of the film. A great night, no doubt about it.
I’ll be back before the sun is up with my review of the biggest film this month, the biggest sequel of the summer, and one of the best films so far this year. Yeah... that’s right... get ready, web-heads. I’m working up a truly embarrassing rave, and I can’t wait to tell you why...
"Moriarty" out.
