First impressions of PoA
Jun. 1st, 2004 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
louiseluxThere are lots and lots of spoilers in this -
The film is visually very stylish, with exciting, inventive use of the landscape and the seasons. There were some lovely touches, which did a good job of expanding Rowling's world, like the night bus squashing itself between two ordinary ones, stopping for the granny on her zimmer frame, and the shrunken heads.
I adored the way that people's Lumos spells pulsed gently. The toy train running round in the orrery in the Patronus lesson was hilarious. I think the whole cinema laughed at that. (There wasn't a child in the place). The Boggart lesson, with Lupin's swing music in the background, was charming. In fact, Lupin's entire '40's get up was - he wears hairy suits and really good ties! He's strangely stuck in the past, fashion-wise.
I wonder if Wizarding fashion is different? Do you pick an era and stick with it? I think Cuaron played with this really well. Molly Weasley is definitely wild about mid 70's Kaffe Fasset knits. Dumbledore dresses like a Victorian eccentric. Sirius looked like he might have been on a 1920's chain gang. I wonder what style he picks when he can get to choose? '50's greaser, probably, considering the bike.
I thought Buckbeak was marvellous - he had just the right sort of temperament, slightly grumpy and very keen on dead ferrets. I wondered if Harry's first flight on Buckbeak across the loch, where he spreads his arms out, was a Titanic joke - it made me laugh anyway, and I loved how Buckbeak dipped one toe in the water and left a wake stretching behind him. Brilliant animation of his wings, too.
I also wondered if the lovely little scene of the Whomping Willow dropping all its leaves in one go was a reference to a Terry Gilliam cartoon that I seem to remember being in The Meaning of Life, where a leaf commits suicide and all the others follow as one. It made me, and everyone else, laugh out loud.
The plotting was choppy. If I hadn't read the book I would have had a hard time knowing exactly what was going on. There should have been another 5 or 10 minutes of plot, and I wish that the Wolfsbane had been mentioned in more detail, along with the significance of who the mapmakers really were. There was no real dramatic climax, and I think this was because there was just too much for Cuaron to fit in. He concentrated on little, visual details, which in itself made the film feel so magical, but at the expense of coherence.
Having the MWPP background in there would have given another layer to Lupin's scene where he tells Harry off for using the Marauders Map. Thewlis played him wonderfully well and his scenes with Harry were excellent. Lupin is caring and competent and really a rather dynamic character.
On HPAD, Lexin mentioned that the children behaved like children, and that in the first two films, the children never seemed quite childish enough. There's a beautiful dormitory scene where Harry and his friends are messing about. The children came across as real kids. I really got a sense of how much fun Hogwarts was for Harry from it.
Snape striding through the classroom slamming the shutters was very, um, inspiring! I really enjoyed Lupin's attitude to Snape, which to me seemed half deferential and half slyly mocking, just as in the book. I thought Snape came across as rather caring and concerned, overall, rather than unpleasant or hateful. You get the impression that his dislike of Lupin comes from his desire to protect the children, although Sirius's attitude to him in the Shrieking Shack does suggest that there's more between them than that. I suppose that was Cuaron's nod to the MWPP background, but if you hadn't read the book, you wouldn't have a clue where the animosity came from. Oldman was great as Sirius - you knew that he really was a man at the end of his tether, sort of hysterical but in a controlled way. His words to Lupin as he holds him during the transformation are another nod to their past - they'd plainly dones all this before.
Dumbledore had his beard tied together with little bells, and Michael Gambon's accent went for a little stroll across the regions. Gambon played him as more than a little dotty, which I liked.
Lupin's scene at the end with Harry struck me as having quite an obvious gay subtext. I'm thinking particularly of the lines where Lupin says that people think that people like him aren't fit to teach children, and that he's used to this attitude.
The younger actors seem a bit better. In the last two films I thought that the quality of their acting was adequate but not good. Some people have complained about Ron being reduced to comic relief, but I liked it. I thought Rupert Grint was quite good at being funny.
Julie Christie had a very brief appearance. She was in Hogsmeade, being Madame Rosmerta for about 30 seconds!
Fred and George looked about 24, but I suppose it's to be expected. Draco's bad haircut was funny, and I didn't really notice too much that they were all wearing mufti, rather than robes most of the time.
The film is visually very stylish, with exciting, inventive use of the landscape and the seasons. There were some lovely touches, which did a good job of expanding Rowling's world, like the night bus squashing itself between two ordinary ones, stopping for the granny on her zimmer frame, and the shrunken heads.
I adored the way that people's Lumos spells pulsed gently. The toy train running round in the orrery in the Patronus lesson was hilarious. I think the whole cinema laughed at that. (There wasn't a child in the place). The Boggart lesson, with Lupin's swing music in the background, was charming. In fact, Lupin's entire '40's get up was - he wears hairy suits and really good ties! He's strangely stuck in the past, fashion-wise.
I wonder if Wizarding fashion is different? Do you pick an era and stick with it? I think Cuaron played with this really well. Molly Weasley is definitely wild about mid 70's Kaffe Fasset knits. Dumbledore dresses like a Victorian eccentric. Sirius looked like he might have been on a 1920's chain gang. I wonder what style he picks when he can get to choose? '50's greaser, probably, considering the bike.
I thought Buckbeak was marvellous - he had just the right sort of temperament, slightly grumpy and very keen on dead ferrets. I wondered if Harry's first flight on Buckbeak across the loch, where he spreads his arms out, was a Titanic joke - it made me laugh anyway, and I loved how Buckbeak dipped one toe in the water and left a wake stretching behind him. Brilliant animation of his wings, too.
I also wondered if the lovely little scene of the Whomping Willow dropping all its leaves in one go was a reference to a Terry Gilliam cartoon that I seem to remember being in The Meaning of Life, where a leaf commits suicide and all the others follow as one. It made me, and everyone else, laugh out loud.
The plotting was choppy. If I hadn't read the book I would have had a hard time knowing exactly what was going on. There should have been another 5 or 10 minutes of plot, and I wish that the Wolfsbane had been mentioned in more detail, along with the significance of who the mapmakers really were. There was no real dramatic climax, and I think this was because there was just too much for Cuaron to fit in. He concentrated on little, visual details, which in itself made the film feel so magical, but at the expense of coherence.
Having the MWPP background in there would have given another layer to Lupin's scene where he tells Harry off for using the Marauders Map. Thewlis played him wonderfully well and his scenes with Harry were excellent. Lupin is caring and competent and really a rather dynamic character.
On HPAD, Lexin mentioned that the children behaved like children, and that in the first two films, the children never seemed quite childish enough. There's a beautiful dormitory scene where Harry and his friends are messing about. The children came across as real kids. I really got a sense of how much fun Hogwarts was for Harry from it.
Snape striding through the classroom slamming the shutters was very, um, inspiring! I really enjoyed Lupin's attitude to Snape, which to me seemed half deferential and half slyly mocking, just as in the book. I thought Snape came across as rather caring and concerned, overall, rather than unpleasant or hateful. You get the impression that his dislike of Lupin comes from his desire to protect the children, although Sirius's attitude to him in the Shrieking Shack does suggest that there's more between them than that. I suppose that was Cuaron's nod to the MWPP background, but if you hadn't read the book, you wouldn't have a clue where the animosity came from. Oldman was great as Sirius - you knew that he really was a man at the end of his tether, sort of hysterical but in a controlled way. His words to Lupin as he holds him during the transformation are another nod to their past - they'd plainly dones all this before.
Dumbledore had his beard tied together with little bells, and Michael Gambon's accent went for a little stroll across the regions. Gambon played him as more than a little dotty, which I liked.
Lupin's scene at the end with Harry struck me as having quite an obvious gay subtext. I'm thinking particularly of the lines where Lupin says that people think that people like him aren't fit to teach children, and that he's used to this attitude.
The younger actors seem a bit better. In the last two films I thought that the quality of their acting was adequate but not good. Some people have complained about Ron being reduced to comic relief, but I liked it. I thought Rupert Grint was quite good at being funny.
Julie Christie had a very brief appearance. She was in Hogsmeade, being Madame Rosmerta for about 30 seconds!
Fred and George looked about 24, but I suppose it's to be expected. Draco's bad haircut was funny, and I didn't really notice too much that they were all wearing mufti, rather than robes most of the time.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-01 09:35 am (UTC)I noticed that, too, but I rather thought it added to the impression of dottiness.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-01 04:01 pm (UTC)I noticed that, too, but I rather thought it added to the impression of dottiness.
D'you (both) mean it was sounding a little Irish at times? Because that's what Gambon said in an interview - he wanted to make Dumbledore sound Irish because Richard Harris was Irish..
-> http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=3&id=613682004 (http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=3&id=613682004)
(Sorry, I can't tell most English accents apart, so I wouldn't know; besides, I only got to see the film in its dubbed version so far - grrr. Am going to go re-watch it on Thursday though, and this time it'll be the English OV - yay! :))
no subject
Date: 2004-06-01 10:29 pm (UTC)