It was Richard Harris who played Dumbledore, and he rocked. Just the right mix of wisdom and whimsy, albeit a bit subdued. Not a big fan of Gambon’s uninspired execution myself. He acts as if he just doesn’t care…
Woops, I’m embarassed, of course it is Richard Harris. But I think you people who liked his performance as a largely somnambulist doofus who could not deliver a sentence in less than half an hour are crazy. He just came across as a doddering old fool; I actually cringed in the scenes he was in. A great thespian interpretation of a sopping paper bag filled with dopamine but not much of one as an actual human being.
Although I have read the books, the movie explained this part well enough for me. You see Snape prowling the halls earlier in the movie, so it’s not surprising that he’s prowling about later on. You know that Lupin gets the map that reveals Pettigrew’s position, so that explains why he shows up. You also get a confrontation between Snape and Lupin prior to all of them showing up at the shack, so I think Snape following him isn’t totally out of bounds.
You actually do see Snape following Lupin, but only in the time travel reveal. Another thing you only see in the time travel reveal is Lupin putting the spell on the Willow. When Hermione and Ron first come out of the tunnel and are not attacked, I thought I had spotted a plot hole, too. Mabye if I hadn’t read the books some of this might be a little complicated, but I am willing to forgive it all because of the following scenes where these issues (and others) are dealt with. You may have found it jarring, but you can hardly call it a plot hole.
Granted, his performance seemed to lack a certain vitality that Dumbledore’s character has, but despite that, Harris played Dumbledore grandly as an old sage who exudes compassion behind wisdom. I think the slowness of his delivery sorta bolstered that, but I can see where that could annoy people. His eyes also spoke volumes. There was always a sort of twinkle in them, and the feeling that you could trust him. I guess, what I’m trying to say is that Harris played a more human Dumbledore.
Gambon on the other hand, gave me the distinct impression that he was playing Dumbledore as just another common person. Most of the dialogue was delivered in a pretty standard/boring manner (the candle lighting scene, for example) - straight to the point, sans feeling. The only hint of uniqueness he brought to the character was when he responds to Harry and Hermione telling him they “did it” in a slightly mischievous way. And that was but a hint.
Maybe with a second viewing or more screen time for Gambon, I can better get a feel for what he was trying to do with Dumbledore. But for now, it seems like he wasn’t trying to do much.
It was so Hermione could take twice the number of classes… the idea is that she’s sitting in two different classes at the same time by using it. It is actually explained in the film by about half a sentence.[/quote]
No, I get that, but the question is “If you had a time-travel device, which is supposed to be essentially illegal, would you really entrust it to some 14-year-old so that she could take extra classes?” As in, you’re telling me it wouldn’t be better to give, say, Dumbeldore twice the amount of time?
not if you want him to stick around for very long. he’s old. living an extra 50% hours per day is just going to make him die quicker.
anyway… ya, it is probably a bit silly. but she is a prodigy and they are trying to encourage her. maybe they realize that harry is going to need someone that can learn more than one spell per year to help him fight voldemort. and it was a critical plot device.
You forget that the people in charge of the school routinely went out of their way to help the kids do things blatantly illegal. They bailed Harry out of two seperate situations in which he should have had his wand snapped in half and forbidden to ever use magic again for doing so during his summer months, they stepped in and got Hagrid a job despite the Ministry of Magic wanting to send him straight to Azkaban for a number of crimes, even hid the fact that he was half-giant. They often had magical creatures that were strictly illegal and routinely exposed the children to them as well as taught them forbidden magic towards the later books in order to defend against the dark arts. Don’t forget the fact that the school is run using slave labor as well.
Basically, the time twister was only one of many ways they went out of their way to put the kids in danger. MY GOD WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!
Good point. If I remember the book, Hermionie was worn thin using the device so much.
I have to agree with FlamingSheep. I LOVED Harris, he played it as I had envisioned it in my mind.
Dumbledore KNOWS he may be the single greatest wizard on the planet. He has the combined wisdom and assistance of every Headmaster Hogwart’s has ever seen. He knows everything that goes on in the castle, and most stuff going on outside. Even cases in which he looks like he’s been outfoxed he doesn’t get ruffled. He knows the prophecy (revealed in Book 5).
I always read him as never being in a hurry to get anywhere, and Harris nailed that. I can see how one would see it as sonambulent, I just don’t see it that way.
In fact, the only time I liked Gambon was when he “slowed down” at the end, especially when Harry and Hermione return again and he’s going downstairs.
The rest of it was too stiffly energetic for me.
Gambon’s appearance as Dumbledore… his first scene… totally jarring. It didn’t sit right with me until the movie was nearly over.
–Dave
On the plus side, that kind of performance will be perfect for the tired Dumbledore that develops towards the fifth book.
I still think the first HP movie is the best. This one has some very nice moments and touches, but the end gets quite confusing too quickly and loses my focus.
(Haven’t read any of the books btw)
But this is the probelm with any time travel movie. Most do much worse and end up with glaring plot holes, but I though this was one of the few that actually worked well.
Yeah, the movie is pretty damn great. Definitely the best of the three IMO. My review’s at GamerDad if anyone’s interested. You gotta scroll down a bit for the one I wrote. There’s a second opinion today…might help someone decide if they should take their kids too.
–Dave
Wow. I saw the movie, (this is not a Koontzian review) and I thought it was great! Holy moly… it had magic! Excitement! Complex characters! A well done hippogriff! I have read the books, so I had no problem following all the plot lines.
My girlfriend, on the other hand, has not read the books. She still thought it was a great movie, and she could follow the main plot line, but there were a lot of details she had questions about. Still, a very enjoyable experience for all.
That’s exactly how it should be. The movies should stand on their own, but give you a gentle push toward the books for more. I’m glad to hear your girlfriend could follow it, having not first read the books.
Cuaron explained the reasoning behind this in an interview I read, and it made a lot of sense to me. Basically, he said that he thought that the first two films (well, he didn’t criticize them openly, in so many words, but he implied this) diminished the impact of the magical scenes by trying to cram in too many of them. Cuaron felt that the magic would seem that much more… well, magical… if the film wasn’t throwing them at you faster than you could take them in. After seeing HPatPOA, I’d have to agree with him.
It’s sort of like the Mummy Returns Effect, which is my personal term for the movies that you get when the director thinks that since action scenes are fun, then a movie that is ALL ACTION SCENES ALL THE TIME WITH NO BREAK AND NO BREATHING ROOM AND GOD FUCKING HELP YOU IF YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM is even better! Which is completely untrue, as anyone that has seen the Mummy Returns can tell you.
In going through the Harry Potter series of movies, I watched this again for the first time since I saw it in the theater on opening weekend.
A couple of observations:
- The pacing is fantastic. Unlike the first two movies, this isn’t just a series of scenes from the book, but a story that propels itself from scene to scene. It’s been so long since I read the books, but I do remember that the movie omitted a lot from the books.
- The dementors are done so well. They were so otherwordly and hard to picture in the books, and yet so scary at the same time. And somehow the movie actually managed to capture that.
- Holy shit the Werewolf is done so poorly in this movie. I don’t remember being bothered by this at all when I originally saw the movie. This has got to be one of the worst CG characters I’ve ever seen on film. Right? Or am I forgetting something worse? Just so jarring.
- The bus scene at the start of the movie is so fantastic. I love the idea that there’s a triple decker bus, and they waste so much of the space in the bus in order to have a giant chandelier. As always with these movies, the props department and production and costume and makeup departments all do such an amazing job.
On that note, let me digress a little and go back to the first movie. This was the movie that introduced me to the series, as I hadn’t read any of the books yet. And you know, watching that movie again, the thing I was most impressed by is just how fucking good the details are. The way they did the set for the bank. All the details of the carvings on doors, and handles, and statues. All the details when Harry walks into the Wand store to buy his first Wand. The whole store is filled from floor to ceiling with boxes and boxes of wands. And this is not a CG set. These are physical boxes someone built to create this set, and you can see all these different boxes, and it just feels so real, so lived in, so dusty and creaky and it just feels right. It feels like a store where wands have been accumulating for decades.
And it’s one thing for the books to say that Hogwarts staircases move around and the paintings have people that move around, but in all the movies, this is handled so well. Even now, so many years later, I can feel that sense of awe at seeing that main stairwell at Hogwarts with the moving staircases. In the Prisoner of Azkaban, they do this fantastic scene where the fat lady that guards the entrance to Griffindor has been attacked, which sets off a panic in all the nearby paintings in the hall, and it’s such a fantastic scene with characters running from painting to painting, changing formats and style as they go through different types of paintings. There’s so much detail. I love it.
Ok, back to Prisoner of Azkaban. Alfonso Cuaron really puts a mark on this film by capturing the spirit of the books. There is only one bright sunny day in the movie, and it’s the day they introduce Buckbeak. Every other scene is dark and overcast, or dark and stormy, or just the dark of night. What really impressed me both times is how he completely changes the set from the first two movies. Suddenly it isn’t a gentle meadow leading from the gates of Hogwarts to Hagrid’s little hut. Instead, it’s this rocky, craigy, steep hill that looks dangerous every time the actors traverse it. The visits to the nearby town are also infused with a kind of nervous energy, as the movie skips most of the “delightful” parts of those visits and just goes straight to the more manic scenes where Harry uses the invisibility cloak to do some spying.
It’s such a great example of a director doing the first two movies and almost trying to transcribe the books, and a director here taking charge and making artistic decisions that more accurate capture the feel of the book better by not necessarily following all the details to the letter.
I think this was a coming of age moment for the series. The kids are only supposed to be a year older than the previous movie but they play it much older, and things do go much darker and more serious.
Not that I had any major problems with the direction in the ensuing movies but it would have been interesting to see this directors take on the rest of the series.
This is something I love in films that take the time to do it right. So many modern epic films just substitute CGI for set building, and there’s something to be said for “living” in a set by building it out. Sure, physical can look cheap, but when a production really takes their time … you can tell. For example, the difference between the LotR film sets and the Hobbit film sets - so stark. One looks like a world, the other looks like … a film set. Or look at the attention to detail Del Toro puts into his films (Christ, the world building in PacRim, for example).