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strange_complexI watched this last night because I had been at work all day doing horrid marking, and felt I deserved a treat. And for obvious reasons, I'm feeling fairly Potterish at the moment. No, wait, who'm I kidding? Fairly Snapeish.
I'll need to re-watch Order of the Phoenix when it comes out on DVD to be sure, but I'd be surprised if I change my mind - and certainly right now, I remain convinced that this is the best Potter film to date. It helps that it includes the best of many great Snapey moments filmed so far - the scene with Sirius and Lupin in the Shrieking Shack (closely followed, actually, by the 'Potter has porn!' / L'Oreal scene1 in the dark corridor). But it isn't just his moments. The sheer quantities of rich detail packed into every scene are exactly the sort of thing I love in any film. Like Percy pouring himself cups of tea from a floating two-spouted teapot in the background while Arthur Weasley warns Harry about Sirius in the Leaky Cauldron. Or the mystical writing carved into the walls of the Divination classroom - which you never get to read properly, but adds so much to the feeling that it is a real classroom that has been used for centuries. Or the dozens of carefully-worked-out moving portraits plastering the castle walls. I really ought to pause some of those scenes and scour them in fine detail some time - and the same goes for all that lovely Latinate writing around the edges of the Marauders' map!
Azkaban is easily a finer film (and book) than the previous two, because it's here that the plot moves beyond introductions and orientation and into a darker, more epic register. But it also has a natural advantage over the fourth and fifth films in that it's based on a shorter book. Between that and the tiny details which allow the director to convey so much with every shot, it does a great job of conveying the full extent of the material in the book without feeling rushed or missing out sub-plots - and this despite being the shortest film to date (I know, because I wanted an early night, so more or less chose this one on that basis). The only thing which felt slightly rushed in Azkaban was the sub-plot with Buckbeak, which seemed to go from Draco having his arm broken and muttering things about how his father would be furious, straight to Hagrid bursting into tears because Buckbeak had been sentenced to death. But that was pretty minor, really. By comparison, films 4 and 5 feel actively rushed throughout, and I don't see how the sixth or seventh can avoid the same problem (although there is a lot of room for hacking out tent-sulkery in seven).
That's not to say I won't be rushing out to buy film 5 on DVD the second it is released, of course! But Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban retains a degree of stylishness and panache that I just don't expect to see outdone by these films again.
1. For non-Potterites who are puzzled, this is what fandom has made of the scene where Snape discovers Harry wandering around the castle with the Marauders' map in the middle of the night.
I'll need to re-watch Order of the Phoenix when it comes out on DVD to be sure, but I'd be surprised if I change my mind - and certainly right now, I remain convinced that this is the best Potter film to date. It helps that it includes the best of many great Snapey moments filmed so far - the scene with Sirius and Lupin in the Shrieking Shack (closely followed, actually, by the 'Potter has porn!' / L'Oreal scene1 in the dark corridor). But it isn't just his moments. The sheer quantities of rich detail packed into every scene are exactly the sort of thing I love in any film. Like Percy pouring himself cups of tea from a floating two-spouted teapot in the background while Arthur Weasley warns Harry about Sirius in the Leaky Cauldron. Or the mystical writing carved into the walls of the Divination classroom - which you never get to read properly, but adds so much to the feeling that it is a real classroom that has been used for centuries. Or the dozens of carefully-worked-out moving portraits plastering the castle walls. I really ought to pause some of those scenes and scour them in fine detail some time - and the same goes for all that lovely Latinate writing around the edges of the Marauders' map!
Azkaban is easily a finer film (and book) than the previous two, because it's here that the plot moves beyond introductions and orientation and into a darker, more epic register. But it also has a natural advantage over the fourth and fifth films in that it's based on a shorter book. Between that and the tiny details which allow the director to convey so much with every shot, it does a great job of conveying the full extent of the material in the book without feeling rushed or missing out sub-plots - and this despite being the shortest film to date (I know, because I wanted an early night, so more or less chose this one on that basis). The only thing which felt slightly rushed in Azkaban was the sub-plot with Buckbeak, which seemed to go from Draco having his arm broken and muttering things about how his father would be furious, straight to Hagrid bursting into tears because Buckbeak had been sentenced to death. But that was pretty minor, really. By comparison, films 4 and 5 feel actively rushed throughout, and I don't see how the sixth or seventh can avoid the same problem (although there is a lot of room for hacking out tent-sulkery in seven).
That's not to say I won't be rushing out to buy film 5 on DVD the second it is released, of course! But Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban retains a degree of stylishness and panache that I just don't expect to see outdone by these films again.
1. For non-Potterites who are puzzled, this is what fandom has made of the scene where Snape discovers Harry wandering around the castle with the Marauders' map in the middle of the night.
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Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 09:57 (UTC)The only thing I think was screwed up plotwise was the thing with the broomstick - in the book, of course, it was given to Harry anonymously fairly early on, and was a key part of the plot, but in the film it was added to the end as an afterthought, which I didn't think worked very well.
I thought the fourth film was good too, but the fifth is probably my favourite to date - mainly because it's been made into a great film from a plodding, lumbering and often tedious book that's far too long.
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Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 10:46 (UTC)I'm still keeping an open mind about five, because it was certainly good and I've only seen it the once (whereas I've probably watched Azkaban about four or five times by now). But then again, I really like book five - much more than book four, for instance. So the fifth film in a way has a harder job with me.
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Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 10:52 (UTC)That's one of the clever things about the Potter franchise, both on paper and screen - the books grow up with the characters. I'm currently reading book one to my children at bedtime, and it really strikes me as a children's book, with many of the typical styles used in children's books. But book seven is a young adult's book, reflecting Harry's age. The third book is certainly where things began to "grow up" a little. Also, it's the first film where a few liberties were taken with the adaptation. The first two followed the books pretty religiously.
The third film was also lit completely differently - the first two have scenes in blazing sunshine. The third one didn't, mainly because there was very little sun while they filmed it! But somehow that works well as the plots get deeper and darker, and things have developed very well to the point we're at now.
I actually have a soft spot for "Chamber of Secrets" - the scenes with Tom Riddle in them were very good, I think, in both book and film. Personally, I thought the fifth book was the weakest of the series, because it was so long, and in most places quite uneventful.
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Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 12:47 (UTC)Yes, indeed - I remember that being really striking when I first saw it in the cinema, and all the more so because films 4 and 5, which are much the same, did not exist then.
Of course, the fact that it had a new director with a different vision explains a lot of the disparity between the first two films and the third one - as indeed between that and the latest two. I don't really know Alfonso Cuarón's work apart from The Prisoner of Azkaban, but on the basis of comparing that with the other Potter films, I am assuming that he is just more to my taste as a director than either Chris Columbus or David Yates.
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Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 19:50 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 20:03 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 20 August 2007 20:32 (UTC)