Still Waiting for my Owl

[lawnrrd]

Yesterday was a very yucky Sunday, and we went to see the new installment of Harry Potter and the Lucrative Franchise. All things considered, I think the movie rates a "perfectly adequate," but I'm averaging things.

First, some of the good parts: the acting was good, frequently great. Alan Rickman was criminally underused, but I suppose there was no other way to cut this installment. Lucius Malfoy could very easily have been a sneering cardboard cutout, but Jason Isaacs was better than that. And the visual effects were stunning--it would have been far too easy to go over the top, for the filmmakers to decide to show us first and foremost what they could do, but instead they tried to show us a wondrous and different world, and they succeeded admirably.

Which brings me to my chief complaint: that the story was not well told. A mystery story in such a world, portrayed by such talents, should not leave me feeling so flat at the end. It's as though they spent all their resources on hiring Alan Rickman and generating Dobby, and didn't have any energy left over to think of things like rhythm and pacing.

I almost could picture Chris Columbus sitting there with a checklist. "All right," he thinks to himself, "we had to cut out a lot for this film, but we're going to get this stuff in there: Tom Riddle . . . Check! Moaning Myrtle . . . Check! The diary . . . Check! Ginny Weasley . . . Check!"

Still, it was my only involvement with the world of Harry Potter since I saw the last movie a year ago, and it was an occasion to think about what the stories mean to me. A recurring theme in the series is finding one's place. Rowling is not subtle about this: The Dursleys are quite clear that Harry doesn't belong with them or to them, and Harry's life only really begins when he first goes to Hogwarts to find his kind.

But there are other levels. Harry never knew his parents or other family, and we see how he longs to root himself in this way as well. He also struggles with doubt over whether he really belongs in Gryffindor. One of the reassuring things about the stories is that we know he has found his place and we can be sure that eventually Harry will know that, too.

It resonates with me, though, because I haven't found mine. For emotional self-protection, I separated myself from my parents when I was very small. Unfortunately, those same defenses tend to keep me distant from everyone else, too, whether I want them to or not.

And it's always been hard to tell whether I want them to or not. I've begun to doubt that I could recognize my place even if I found it. Professionally, I know the qualities I expect from my career, although I'm still searching for the path to reach them.

Personally, though, I don't even know what my peer group looks like any more. At one point, I thought I belonged with the computer nerds, but I've spent so much time with the normals that even I am turned off by the stereotype. But I look at the normals, and their existences just seem like living death to me. I love my wife, but her world is just the same thing I've tried to wall myself off from, maybe not for any good reason, but the wall is there all the same.

I just want to be who I am, like what I like, do what I do, and have some people around who don't think it's necessarily bad that it's weird.

Not that any of you have ever felt this way, either, of course.


Postscript:

What's Draco Malfoy for?

I mean, it just occurred to me that Rowling wrote him as a cardboard cutout, solely to be Harry's foil. Others have remarked that the latest movie fleshes him out, gives us a glimpse into his relationship with his father, and maybe illuminates how he got that way. That's all true. But I don't see any of that in the book.

It's a waste, because Rowling could show us a supremely talented, ambitious, amoral Draco, filled with a haughty disdain for lesser beings. He'd be a much more interesting foil for Harry, and a much more interesting and complex character as he grows into a version of his father. Instead, all we have is a boor, a braggart, and a bully.

The movie really illustrated this for me during the dueling scene. Lockhart puts Harry on the platform, Snape selects Draco, and I just asked myself, is this the best that the Slytherin second-year class has to offer?

Comments

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

I agree with you a LOT on Harry Potter. A couple of the scenes I was just shaking my head wondering if a director was present in the room during filming.

[lawnrrd]

Well, it clearly could have been much worse.

And if anyone wants to get me tickets to a midnight show of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers as a birthday present, feel free.

[artemitis.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with ya, brother.

[lawnrrd]

I often think of the line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"I need a strong drink and a peer group."

[tacologic.livejournal.com]

I wrote a thing in a Harry Potter community about some things I was thinking about after I saw the movie. http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=hogwarts&itemid=458018

What you said about the story I somewhat agree with. But the last one was a little bit disjointed too. I think that's kind of what happens when you have a book with so much content that people will literally be sitting and making a mental checklist about. A lot of what they did was good though I think. I appreciate what they did for the story. In my opinion, the second and third books were kind of written similarly. Harry feels out of place (like you mentioned), Ron and Hermione don't like each other, but some stuff happens and Gryffindor wins the house cup at the end.

I also think it's okay that the movie showed the characters in a different way than they did in the book. The more I analyze it the more I think that Rowling isn't the greatest writer. The story she created and got going is great, but her skills as a novelist is a little lacking. It's okay though. I liked Draco in the movie, and I thought that Lucius was really well done. I think I'm repeating half the stuff I said in the other post, so I'll shut up and get lunch.

[lawnrrd]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think it's great that the movie brought something to the characters that the books didn't. I do think they're constrained by the books, though, as you can't transform any of the characters in the movies without introducing incompatibilities with the movies based on the later books. I just think it's a shame that Draco Malfoy is going to be the same person at the end of the next movie that he was at the beginning of the first one, when the actors gave us a glimpse that something else had been possible.

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

What was with that weird Ron-Hermonie handshake at the end? It smelled more like pre-pubescent "we're friends but you have cooties but you're strangely cute" kind of thing than the relationship they had in the book.

[tacologic.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I don't know if they were trying to hint at the fact that they liked each other or that they weren't on good terms. I remember them not being on good terms in the book, but it wasn't really touched on in the movie.

[terrilyn.livejournal.com]

EEEP!

I started reading it!

Shoulda done LJ-Cut... some of us haven't seen the movie yet.

Thankfully I stopped reading in time to be able to jump to putting in this comment.

Yes, I know... I've read the book, yadda yadda... but there are details in the movie that I want to be surprises!

[lawnrrd]

I'm pretty sure it's spoiler-free. I don't reveal any plot points, nor the particulars of any of the events I discuss.

Still, I suppose I can lj-cut for those of you who are particularly sensitive to such things.

Re:

[terrilyn.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

FWIW: Going to go see it tomorrow!

Whee!

[wishiwas.livejournal.com]

I've basicaly given up on having an adult peer group. I could have been part of the computer peer group growing up, but, something just struck me as 'off' about them back then; it turns out, they really weren't very interesting or deep or have any of the 'character' we're told the adversity of being part of a sub-culture develpps in people. I mean, I know the group I want to be a part of, just, you can't 'work' to be part of a group. It's weird. You can work at your career, and improve it my throwing time and effort at it. You can even 'work' at the most intimate and contingent of things, finding love, through going out on dates, meeting people, that sort of thing. But it seems it's impossible to 'work' at having a peer group. It just sort of happens, which is the frustrating part. You can 'play' at being in a relationship with a total stranger you find attractive by asking them out on a 'date'. It's strange that there is no way to 'try out' a new friendship the way one can try out a relationship, when the one is so much more intimate than the other.

You're right, though, the 'normals' are the living dead. My mantra is the anti-Trainspotting--'chose corner bars and eight-ounce beer glasses. Choose the plasma centre as a career. Choose shows and clubs, a single pair of trainers because you don't have anywhere to keep spare shoes anyway. Choose living' or something. In a way, most people (myself to an extent I'm usually uncomfortable admitting) are addicted to security the way Renton and his mates were addicted to smack. It's just an opposite chain of events. While the lifestyle comes with the pursuit of the drug in the latter, in the case of the former, the addiction comes packaged like spyware with the lifestyle that looks so attractive.

I think it's our culture. It's just not constructed so that white-collar workers can have a peer group, unless that peer group is somehow connected to work. Maybe it's just me, that most of my interests are things like drinking and shows and watching sports, but yeah, finding a peer group in adulthood that means anything, that means what a peer group should, I think is a very, very hard thing. I've actually kinda given up on finding one (along with a lot of other things, at least in this life), to an extent, so really, I don't have any answers, just obeservations.