Wisely perceiving
(and abhorring) a vacuum between Halloween and Thanksgiving, the producers of Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets apparently decided to anticipate the
holidays and kick off the season a trifle early. Since their movie will
assuredly harvest many millions of dollars and will probably still be playing
somewhere at Easter, the maneuver hardly involved even a hint of risk. After
the immense success of J.K. Rowling’s novels and the box office smash of the
first film, anything from the Pottery represents an absolutely sure thing, like
betting on the sunrise. Since the filmmakers continue the mixture as before and
presumably follow the inspiration of the original novel, the latest movie (and
many more will surely follow) provides presumably all those things a large and
eager audience desires.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Mingling the familiar juvenile self
pity and antagonism to the adult world with the ancient formula of the
Cinderella tales, the movie follows almost exactly the same pattern as its
predecessor. With the assistance of his friend Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and a
magical flying car, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) once again manages to
escape the Dickensian oppression of his horrible aunt and uncle and flee to the
great castle of Hogwarts Academy. Once there he resumes his instruction in
spells, chants, and wizardry, and suffers again the inexplicable hostility of a
couple of faculty members and the schemes of his schoolmate, Draco Malfoy (Tim
Felton).
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Aside from various supernatural
interruptions and lesser adventures, the central plot involves Harry’s attempts
to solve another mystery, the puzzling and terrible paralysis of several
students. He and his sidekicks Ron and Hermione (Emma Watson) eventually
discover that deep beneath the castle, within the chamber of the title, lurks a
basilisk — here interpreted as an enormous serpent — whose transfixing
gaze, like Medusa’s, freezes its victims into statues. After many
confrontations and battles with magical beasts, ghosts, and other assorted
horrors, Harry of course triumphs over the forces of evil and earns the regard
of his friends and the faculty of dear old Hogwarts.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Aside from the pleasure of
witnessing another fantastic adventure of the boy hero, the millions of fans of
the books and the previous film will no doubt enjoy the return of a number of
old friends in Chamber of Secrets.
The gentle giant Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) shows up again, along with
various faculty members, including Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) and in
his last performance, Richard Harris playing Professor Dumbledore in a rare bit
of underacting. Other holdovers include the snobbish, sneering aristocrat Draco
Malfoy, the boy you love to hate, and the enigmatic Professor Snape, played by
Alan Rickman, looking ominously like Oscar Wilde (those British public schools
bear a most ambiguous reputation).
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Some newcomers serve to add some
freshness to the essentially formulaic story. In a cruel bit of typecasting,
Kenneth Branagh plays a vain, egocentric caricature of himself, a boastful
wizard named Gilderoy Lockhart. Perhaps the most troubling addition, an
animated creature named Dobby, a house elf, enters the story at some odd
points. A mixture of the sly and the servile, Dobby looks rather like an
attenuated Yoda, speaks of himself in the third person, and practices some
cruelly distressing masochism, abusing himself verbally, striking himself, banging
his head repeatedly against walls; he’s much more horrible than the monster
lurking in the depths of Hogwarts.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย This version of the Potter
adventures is darker, more violent, and decidedly more bizarre than its
predecessor. Various spells propel characters through the air, blood flows
freely through several scenes, a wonderful phoenix pecks out the eyes of the
basilisk, a character explodes, and that obnoxious little Dobby continues to
beat the hell out of himself. The title itself suggests a pun on chamberpot,
which the film’s action and images bear out: Much of the story takes place in
the cavernous, haunted girls’ bathroom of Hogwarts Academy, water flows all
over the place, and the castle’s convoluted tunnels, through which Harry runs
and the chthonic monster slithers, look most intestinal.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Not surprisingly, the Potter works
appear to depend on a clever combination of several literary and cultural
traditions. The gothic castle, some of the wizards’ attire, the language and
paraphernalia of sorcery recall the medieval fantasy of one great age of
adventure, while the Victorian trappings of the domestic scenes, and the
clothing of Professors Snapes and Lockhart underline another age, of coziness
and quaintness; the work layers the traditional British schoolboy fiction of
the 19th and 20th centuries over all that antiquarianism. Finally, the use of
creatures from ancient myth, like the phoenix and the basilisk, and the
repetition of archetypal patterns create a powerful sense of the universal in
the books and films, awakening responses much older and deeper than the usual
reaction to juvenile entertainment.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Perhaps in part because of its more
powerfully mythic sensibility and its consequently more disturbing darkness, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets attains
a higher level of quality in style and content than its surprisingly
unimaginative predecessor. The special effects, however, remain dazzling, the
sets look terrific, John Williams’s score sounds reassuringly like all his
others, the child actors, as well as most of the distinguished adult
contingent, all mug outrageously, and the movie runs almost three hours, which
should presumably please all the Potterites and their parents.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets, starring Daniel
Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Kenneth Branagh, John Cleese, Robbie
Coltrane, Warwick Davis, Richard Griffiths, Richard Harris, Jason Isaacs, Alan
Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Christian Coulson, David Bradley, Bonnie
Wright, Tom Felton, Julie Walters; based on the novel by J.K. Rowling;
screenplay by Steve Kloves; directed by Chris Columbus. Cinemark Tinseltown;
Hoyts Greece Ridge; Loews Webster; Pittsford Plaza Cinema; Regal Culver Ridge;
Regal Eastview; Regal Henrietta.
You can hear George
and his movie reviews on 91.5 WXXI FM on Fridays at 7:15 a.m., rerun on
Saturdays at 11:15 a.m.
This article appears in Nov 20-26, 2002.
