georginasand | IF Seeing is Believing (Reply)

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" ~Dumbledore Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

This was meant to be posted ages ago, but wasn't. Such is the life of a summer camp counselor.

I will willingly admit to seeing the 6th Harry Potter Movie twice in twenty-four hours and it was the best movie I ever hated.

It would be both untrue and unnecessarily harsh to say that the movie wasn't good. Or even that it was bad. It was bad, but it was also really good. Confused? Awesome, me too!

The acting was, if not good, earnest. And although this is were my criticism starts, all responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of David Yates. Alan Rickman, Dame Maggie Smith and the other ten British actors who are in everything were wonderful and always are. They could do a dramatic reading of the UK phone book and I would laugh, cry and listen. And the kids get better every movie; they might even be turning into legitimate actors. They are becoming more real and more sincere, for example Hermione's laugh in the scene in Ron's bedroom after Harry arrives at the Weasley's looked like it could have been shot during an out-take, she looked both happy and amused. And finally I am thankful that, if nothing else, we are done with the long pans of Daniel Radcliffe twitching in his sleep.

Everything that I hated is the fault of David Yates. He strangled a good story and good actors and I may never forgive him. Although many things are the responsibility of many people in a movie production, there is a "the buck stops here" aspect to directing.

But my main complaint is that he had the reins pulled in too far on his actors. So far in fact that they clearly weren't acting. Rather they were people standing in often-silly costumes saying their lines. I know those actors can act, and you can see the times in which Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith's collective billion years of acting experience shut out David Yates and did their own thing. But the kids had a lot harder time shaking him and sometimes I wanted to grab him by the shoulders, shake him until his nose bled and scream, "Please, for the love of Pete, let Ginny Weasley move her arms!" In USA today, there was a quote from Daniel Radcliffe along the lines that David Yates told them to think emotions rather than doing anything, in hopes of being subtle. He was so subtle in fact that every awkward scene between two teenagers in love was totally and entirely devoid of life. (Also devoid of reality, who ties the shoes of the people they have crushes on?) And in the void of life, David Yates lost every wonderful characterization moment this story has to offer. It is an action story, but it is also, and perhaps more so, a character story. The children are becoming teenagers and adults in an incredibly complicated world, and there were huge opportunities for Snape and Malfoy to be more than "just evil."

Furthermore, the movie felt rushed. Admittedly cutting that book down to a movie, is a challenge, and already it was more than two and a half hours. But clearly they were cutting for action rather than character. It's a decision they had to make, and could probably justify until kingdom come, but I disagree with it.

For some reason I am still glad the movie was made. I wish that we could do what was done with the Chronicles of Narnia, namely, wait until the books were in print for a half-century or so, and let the kids who grew up reading them made the films. I have little doubt that the books will be able to stand the test of time (to the extent of Lord of the Rings or Narnia, who knows?) but fifty years in print (even twenty) will let them come in to their own as print and give us the chance to discover what is most important about them (action? character? morals?) and emphasize that in our films. But at the bottom of it, The Half-Blood Prince is a good story, and a good story that needs to be told, even by a crazy director. (Okay, okay, so there is the very legitimate argument that the books to a fine enough job of telling the story, this is a very legitimate argument that I whole-heartedly subscribe to. But it the movies had to be made, I am glad they were.) And if seeing is believing, I guess Dumbledore is now really dead