Movie 5 footage
| A friend just sent me this link to a you-tube on ain't it cool of 6 minutes that's been airing on the ABC or some such channel, behind the scenese stuff. It's interesting, but I have been thinking about this one ... why I know ahead of time that I will like this movie least of all the ones out so far, but that that fact will not bug me that much. A lot of it is just the medium, but included in that is some of the culture. The disparity between this film and the book, from what I can tell from this clip, is greater in this film than ever before. I would say that that is especially the case in what I would call the "muting" of the dark characters ... but I don't know if it would be entirely possible to carry across Rowling's dark characters in any present genre of film, and thus in a film that the modern audience would connect to. For some reason you can do it in a film like PotC where the setting in removed from contemporary "civilization" ("it" meaning dark characters that have exagerated qualities but still have humor and other things involved outside of a strict "horror" genre). But when you're dealing with 20th/21st century civilized setting like London, it seems like for a wider audience to connect you go with either strict horror genre, if you want to catch the larger than life qualities, or you mute the characters into more likable human form. It is different in the book somehow, somehow the framing is different or something. You can get psychological-realist characters like Harry and Sirius alongside more ghoulish characters like Bella without getting disjointed. Rowling seems to be able to keep both the real pathos characters and the Kafka-esque characters in balance in the books in a way that just seems a lot harder in a film at present. Here are the examples. Delores Umbridge ... entirely not unsettling enough in appearance. In the book you know - this woman is definitely a toad. And then there is the Bella character. I mean, I like Hellena Bonham Carter as an actress, and I can understand why, in the current hollywood film world, they chose her ... But Bella's appearance in the books is a lot more like a Kafka character - HBC is just too human (well, and for one, she's too pretty). Bella in the book is small but powerful, and to say that she is a charicture is not to say that Rowling failed in drawing her with more depth, it is to say that the charicture quality is part of the character of evil in the books ... the fact that the character is 2-dimensionally ghoulish at points reveals that that is what evil does, turns you into a 2-dimensional person. Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth, but ... and here is the big one that just came to my mind. They have interview stuff with HBC as Bella, and the girl who plays Luna, and the woman who plays Umbridge ... all new characters to this book and film ... BUT, nothing on Tonks! I really hope that was just a pacing thing for the broadcast of this promo "making of" thing ... I really hope the character was not cut from the film - I love the Tonks character. I suppose arguments could be made that even though there is a lot going on with her character that could really be worked well but it would be just too distracting in a film being made from a book that is already larger in scope than probably 2 feature length films. ... but I would really miss Tonks (actually I think Helena Bonham Carter would make a great Tonks). But, in the end, that is all a part, I guess, of what I am saying about the films. The medium just isn't there right now to do the books real justice. I'll definitely go to see the film but I highly doubt that I'll be "excited" one way or the other. I probably will think it is interesting for a viewing or two, but not really for much more, and probably won't love or hate it, but probably won't be able to connect with it too closely because the book is always there in my head (with the Tolkien films it was different for me for some reason). |
Comments on "Movie 5 footage"
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Pauli said ... (December 04, 2006 2:59 PM)
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Nancy C. Brown said ... (December 04, 2006 11:02 PM)
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Merlin said ... (December 06, 2006 11:40 AM)
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Nancy C. Brown said ... (December 06, 2006 7:04 PM)
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Merlin said ... (December 06, 2006 9:16 PM)
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jkr2 said ... (December 16, 2006 5:56 PM)
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post a commentI stick to my mantra that the absence of a rush to production of the LotR films, or put differently, decades inbetween the penning of the last book and the pre-production of the first movie, is what allowed the Peter Jackson films a chance to be a mature rendering of the story. So maybe someday, when we're old geezers, a talented young director will "do the thing right" and give us a well-crafted 20-part BBC mini-series. Or something....
Interesting -- they originally cast Helen McCrory as Bellatrix. Closer in my opinion. I think Angelica Huston would be my first choice for Bellatrix. Remember her Morticia Addams?
Merlin,
I agree. I really am looking forward with dread to the OotP film release, because probably, like the others, no matter how well it is done, it won't be much like the book. I've just re-read the book. The fact that HBC says she wanted to look sexy is a huge problem for me. Why? Ratings? She's EVIL. She looks like she's dressed like a hooker, that's not right-she's supposed to be a witch. Rowling goes out of her way to make sure the evil characters are ugly, that's part of what I like about her books.
And the thing that really bugs me is that some people haven't read the books, and the movies stick in their minds, and they think THAT is the story, and it really isn't, they're almost two different things.
I am always interested, though, in how someone tries to make visual what I've seen in the books. It is an interesting process.
I asked my children, who are young enough to think an on screen kiss with Cho and Harry is "icky", what they expect of the kiss. "Too long and too mushy" is their prediction. How I wish they were wrong. The kiss isn't even in our view in the book, by the next scene, it's already happened. We could easily have had the movie without that. *sigh*
Like, you, I will see it. And then I'll probably tear it apart bit by bit as to how it isn't like the book. And then I'll get over it.
I agree on the rushing things into production but I still think there is something else that doesn't connect at this point. I would use one concrete example ... the weird sisters. If you want to know what the weird sisters sound like, listen to songs like "Hang On St Christopher" and "Temptation" from Tom Waits' "Franks Wild Years" album ... something like that is the musical feel of how she describes things - Their instruments consist of a set of drums, several guitars, a lute, a cello, and some bagpipes. They were "all extremely hairy and dressed in black robes that had been artfully ripped and torn" when Harry saw them at at the Yule Ball (Dumbledore had booked them to play) (GF23) (From the HP Lexicon). - but you will never get a major movie like this in the modern setting even trying to carry that across - compare the music you would think of from the instruments listed above against the Green Day meets Nirvana meets Iggy Pop band in the 4th movie. They just can't capture the texture and make it sell. I think part of the beauty of the written medium is the freedom she has to keep her real flavor, "for those who have ears to hear" and not lose audience. I'm sure there is a very large percentage out there for whom it does not register that the movie band is about as much like the book band as it is like ABBA, but that doesn't stop the books from working for both those who get that and those who don't, whereas it is different with the films(although I'm a very huge fan of certain films)
And that is where it carries over to the realm of things like Helena Bonham Carter aka Elvira. Goth characters like Bella and Snape and some of the Death Eaters have a quality in some ways like the gatekeeper in Kafka's "Before the Law" piece ... very different from HBC ... just across the board. and that is mainly what I mean ... the way movies are right now, and the "target audience" or whatever for this one, it's almost like the marketing machine won't let you get the crossover in the movie that Rowling manages to get in the book ... I just don't even know if they could find a director out there who would really get the exact vision, let alone convince a studio that it would sell onscreen.
Actually, for me it is a bit the same as the kiss thing ... I would also disagree with putting the kiss onscreen. But I would have to state my reason as ... it's just not violent enough (or rather that a romantic scene mutes the violence, which is one of the reasons I think it was offscreen in the book ... nobody shoot me for those comments yet). In the book it's not about the standard romantic scene, you do get that kind of thing in HBP when Harry and Ginny Kiss (although even that is probably not as drawn out as they will make the book 5 kiss with Cho) but in book 5 it is not about the kiss itself, it's about Harry's reaction and thinking about it afterwards - book 5 is all about a lot of violent slamming and banging around in Harry's head (including some eventual forced entry into it by Voldy). It's the long dark night of the soul book, the book of being violently angry at Dumbledore, the book of Harry understanding Sirius' anger and frustration at being imprisoned in #12 Grimmauld Place, a book of seeing thestrals etc
Oh yeah ... they also totally shredded Dumbledore ... Michael Gamblin (sp?) as the "Law and Order courtroom" DD simply ... it's just simply ... it's like warm beer after you have had the real refreshment of how great Dumbledore was at Harry's trial in the book: the sheer brilliant style of conjuring himself a comfortable armchair to relax in while he defends Harry, the ease with which he outwits Fudge at every step but offers him every chance to save face in doing so ... all gone.
Merlin: I agree with your perceptions, and think they are spot on.
And I won't shoot you for saying the kiss should be violent...it wasn't a romantic kiss, it was confusing, Cho was crying and has these mixed up feelings about Cedric, etc. It wasn't like two people waiting and then finally mutually kissing...
well, I also agree with you about Dumbledore.
And this is why, when people think they are familiar with HP, I ask if they've read the books or seen the movies. An unfortunate amount of people say "seen the movies" and think they "know the books" from that. Sad. Makes me wish JKR had never authorized the movies. She wouldn't have needed to.
Nancy,
Yes, the thing of the kiss is that there is a positive reason to have it off-screen in the book, not just a negative one. The narrator is, as John Granger talks about alot, "limited omniscient 3rd person" in that we are always usually only getting Harry's take on it even though the "3rd person omniscient" appearance makes us think we're getting complete ominscience rather than limited by Harry's perspective. When it comes to the kiss though, she kind of throws it into special relief how confusing all of these turbulent events and things are for Harry's pesrpective by not even giving us the "narrator's take" - we're thrown even harder into how hard it is for Harry to make out what is going on, especially with something as siginifcant as that at that age (assuming first kiss with a girl at all, since we seem to have a pretty good window into all of the things that impact Harry and we have not seen it before, and with a girl who he has had a thing for for a while etc) ... all we get is his scattered and jumbled recollection talking to Ron - which is part of the artistry of how she gets her meaning across by the varying perspectives from which she tells the different elements of the story. I think the thing of kissing Cho is a pretty violent one for Harry, not in the conetmporary "angry" connotation of violence necessarily (although, like I said, we do get that in his flare-ups when DD finally touches him on the arm before port-keying them away and in the scene where he trashes DD's office in the end, and the comments, in DD's "forth-telling" comments about feeling like he's bleeding to death), but maybe in the older meaning of extreme turbulence. In that sense the kiss itself is a violent thing for both of them and there is also a certain technique of respectfully veiling it by having it related only through him re-telling to Ron - and that very veiling, because it is a noticable narratorial veiling device, also conveys some of the meaning to the reader of (just in the fact that it is veiled in the first place)
That's one of the things I think connects with what you are saying about people thinking they know the Story Rowling has written just from seeing the movies. I have not heard it specifically myself but I can well imagine it being said that Rowling mutes things in the book because she has a young audience and she might be being a bit old-fashioned in what she thinks they can handle (although I would say she debunked that in HBP, but in a place where that class of things made more sense, and still maintained a certain level of respect etc) and that the movie-makers are more in touch with "what that aged audience can really handle and what is realistic" etc ... and a lot of people who are of that mind seem to focus on that and miss a whole lot of interesting stuff in how Rowling builds her story and the literary devices she uses (to whom, a lot of times, I would like to reply "I would agree that some of the Victorian or Puritan etc isn't healthy, but what do you mean you won't let yourself be dominated by it? Look at what lengths you go out of your way to and the energy you expend in proving that you're not being dominated by it ... you're precisely being dominated by it and by your own phobia of it.")
(I mean, let's face it ... Rowling has some pretty intricate characterization in the works ... Ginny is very right in HBP about Ron, but, for a guy his age in his position, she is also pretty brutal ... she's a good woman who will have to be that tough in the coming battle, but it is a decently intricate portrayal of how gritty goodness can be at times in such a world)
On Gambon, I guess I can't complain too much on him as an actor ... but the way DD is being handeled is just way off.
Harris had something, something of that real twinkle in the eye of DD, Gambon's twinkle just seems sarcastic or curmudgeonily dry-witted in a negative way or something ... and it just seems like a really hard reading of the character from which to play out some of the really neat talents DD has where he has this way of being almost playful, but not menacing or sarcastic or crotchety or any of those things, where the dialogue in Harry's trial is just dripping with tension from every word ... it's this great chess game of words for DD, he has that twinkle because he is setting traps with the greatest of skill, traps Fudge can't outwit ... can't outwit, but he CAN escape unharmed ... IF he wants to (meaning all it will cost him is a little bit of sting in his pride, but nothing really threatening ... that and letting go of the wrong-headed hunt on Harry), but DD can smile so benignly and genuinely in doing so because the "hiddenness" of the traps is really only to Fudge's benefit, DD is totally laying bare the traps for Fudge to see, and see that the only way out is doing the right thing and acquiting Harry, but Fudge can also see that DD has used some veils but the veils really only protect Fudge from taking a fall on the deal ... the veils are for the others - to help Fudge save face in doing the right thing.
hey merlin.
long time no see/talk/write or something.
you are so right with the thoughts about the court room.
i look at somethings in the trailer and find myself getting all excited, and then others and just go 'oh no!'.
i'm really trying not to look forward to it too much.
i do disagree slightly about bellatrix. i think that hbc is actually on to something. i see bellatrix as someone who used to be beautiful. her and narcissa were quite the lovelies i thought. but she has let it fade and become something dark and twisted and manic.
but i love the point about the 2 dimensional thing - that this is the actual danger with the darkness. it makes you lose that human dimension. that is a great thought.
gambon - well... geez... i just don't even know what to say anymore. i think he's a superb actor, so it baffles me how totally and utterly wrong he is in this part. and everything you said about the court room is spot on. the chess game with their words. seeing fudge talk himself into checkmate. the calm relaxed dumbledore in a squashy armchair!!!!. how could you lose something like that? it's such a great visual! just MEANT to be in a movie.
don't get me started on the kiss. (what happened to 'ummm.... wet'. sigh.)
but i think luna looks just FANTASTIC. even the fact that she's irish and not from ottery st catchpool i could forgive. the actor obviously cares about the character which i love.
umbridge is all wrong. i'm sure that imelda stanton (another fabulous actor) will do a chilling character, but where is the toady simpery thing? hello?
and the LINES ON HIS HAND! so they've made the focus that she wants control, rather than she's trying to muzzle harry telling the truth. the whole book is about truth and lies and deception and they take that out! oh man.
however, i still find myself looking forward to the jolly thing.
hope to catch up with you more, merlin.
cheers,
jo