Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
aka
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
(2001)
(SPOILERS) If you want a functional, serviceable,
unremarkable version of Harry Potter,
look no further than Chris Columbus’ chocolate-box, Hollywood-anglophile vision.
It’s studiously inoffensive and almost entirely lifeless. I should emphasise at
the outset that I’m not a Harry Potter
fan; I don’t have anything particularly against the series, but by and large it
failed to captivate me on screen, so I’ve had little impetus to reach out for the
novels. However, I was curious to revisit each film successively, having seen them
exactly once. Columbus’ offerings are much as I remembered, striking dutiful,
overly diligent notes in faithfulness to the author – and fans – but missing
out on being anything much more than that, and it’s easy to see, on this
evidence, why JK Rowling’s first choice, Terry Gilliam, demurred at the
prospect of being tied to someone else’s rule book.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t in-between ground
to be eked out; it’s surely no coincidence that the series’ best entry is also
its most stylistically versatile. Steve Kloves’ reverential adaptation (he delivered
all but The Order of the Phoenix)
isn’t so much the problem here, although he might have ironed out some of the
clunkier exposition and cruder reveals, as it is Columbus’ inability to make
hay with what’s on the page. Spielberg had also been approached (he favoured an
animated movie voiced by Haley Joel Osment, but ultimately decided there was no
challenge to it – a bit like Jurassic
Park, then), and if there’s a movie in the director’s catalogue Philosopher’s Stone most hearkens to,
it’s his overblown soundstage extravaganza and resounding turkey Hook, or the ‘berg-produced, Barry
Levinson-directed Young Sherlock Holmes.
Not that Philosopher’s Stone isn’t a better
movie, but it has that same – to use Columbus’ description of the picture – “golden storybook, an old-fashioned look”.
Of the final four contenders, I wouldn’t have wished it on Gilliam, frankly
(he’d have found being a gun for hire too frustrating, and it wouldn’t have
brought out the best in him), but either Alan Parker or Brad Silberling would
have been preferable to Columbus. The former had more than proved himself with a
child cast (Bugsy Malone), while the
latter could readily work to order and
offer a bit of polish.
It’s notable that two very different hero’s journey
narratives arrived in 2001, both kick-starting the fantasy genre (really the only significant contenders, despite
numerous attempts since by other studios to get in on the magical action). The Lord of the Ring’s Frodo Baggins was
a nobody special, just a little Hobbit (although, one might stretch the point
by suggesting he was the nephew of a special
nobody, but it isn’t quite the same thing), while Harry followed the more favoured
(currently, at least) hero through birthright, in the vein of, most
significantly in the previous thirty years, Luke Skywalker, and long before
that King Arthur and from thence even further back to the likes of demigods
(Hercules, Perseus, Achilles) destined to be just basically damn better than
everyone else. And, while the magician figure is an evergreen in mythology,
both of a benevolent and dark kind, it had been more commonly the supporting,
peripheral figure (Merlin, Gandalf), where here and in Star Wars there is a shift, that figure (Obi Wan, here most particularly
Dumbledore) training now one who is central to become one of their kind.
As such, there’s a sense of elitism – the hierarchy of the
elite – infused into Harry Potter.
The aspiration towards something the average person can never be. These are
special people, more than mere humans (Muggles), who live apart and above the
rest of us. They are the nobility – they go to public school, wear robes and
are taught a life of privilege. There’s no question that they are better than the rest, because they are born to be better.
To rub that in, the main Muggles we come into contact with
are Harry’s cruel relatives, who lock him under the stairs, in Roald Dahl-ian
fashion, and treat him like a second-class citizen (the petty revenge of serfs
who know they’re beneath their lords, see); the common folk can summon only
spitefulness and envy in the face of landed status. Perhaps they’re actually
right to resent Harry’s genetic superiority; he is, after all, one of the master
race, those deigned to secretly preserve the truth from the ordinary, ignorant
masses. He doesn’t even have to try; in this fantasy, destiny – or Robbie
Coltrane – will come to you. Even if, rather (Harry) pottily, your relatives flee
to an island in the middle of the sea to isolate you (I particularly wondered
about this wacko development, because you’d rather expect the depiction of the
“real” world to be intentionally mundane – à la Time Bandits, another story with a nobody special lead, common to
Gilliam’s narratives – so as to contrast the magical other that awaits).
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Columbus lends the
proceedings a broad, sketchy feel, as he did the same with New York in the Home Alones. Train stations are all
classic steam and wizards all pointy hats. The result is that Philosopher’s Stone is presented as
something of a fait accompli; like Harry and his destiny, the director knows he
has a ready audience so doesn’t need to exert himself beyond sorting the art
departments, costume and set design, all of whom are doing the most obvious,
expected thing. Much the same happens with the cast and plot, the latter
unfolding in a formal, stolid manner, invariably inching forward through lining
up a series of Brit thesp stalwarts to coax the fledgling leads through their
scenes.
If the youngsters aren’t quite bad, only Rupert Grint could
be suggested to possess the disposition of one approaching “a natural”
(arguably, Daniel Radcliffe still
doesn’t look like he’ll ever get there). Tom Felton shows the discernible
makings of a supremely hissable little snot as Draco Malfoy, so must be doing
something right. The movie suffers most when the main trio are in frame,
unsupported by their peers, but only a few of these seasoned boards treaders
get a chance to do more than a walk on (as far as I’ve been able to discern,
Maggie Smith spends the entire franchise doing only that).
Richard Griffiths brings the suitably obnoxious as Harry’s
uncle, while Richard Harris makes a supremely benign and loveable Dumbedore in
a way Michael Gambon just doesn’t have in him. It’s Alan Rickman who really
delivers as Severus Snape, though. There
were times when the actor’s manner didn’t quite fit with material or tone, but in
the Potter-verse, his intonation creates a refreshing rhythm, such that the
personality-free Columbus is required to keep Snape’s pace whenever he’s on
screen.
Indeed, the best part of the quidditch match – cited by many
reviews as the highlight of the movie, much as the podrace was in The Phantom Menace, but looking
altogether unremarkable in the cold light of fifteen-odd years, not to mention
its rules being about as comprehensible as Rollerball’s
– isn’t so much Harry’s gamesboyship as the misdirection of Snape’s
incantations. The actual perpetrator is a disappointment. Ian Hart isn’t really
suited to this kind of fare – David Thewlis, who auditioned, would have been
better – and he’s entirely defeated by the reams of exposition required when Professor
Quirrell is unmasked.
Of which, for such an expensive movie, the special effects
are often pretty ropey (and looked it then, so this isn’t revisionism). There’s
an all-CGI centaur, an all-CGI troll, and an all-CGI Cerberus-esque
three-headed dog named Fluffy, none of them inviting the suspension of
disbelief. The reveal of Voldermort’s head on the back of Quirrell’s is a
chilling idea, but slightly laughable as rendered (although, the scene in the
woods, with Voldermort feeding on a unicorn is one of the few appreciably moody
incidents in the picture, mustering a sense of what might have been).
The lost-in-translation problem here tends to result from
being too beholden to the source material and so coming a cropper as a result.
The obstacles on the way to finding the Philosopher’s Stone don’t really pass
muster, especially the chess game (Ron’s “self-sacrifice” is particularly weak),
an awkward Indiana Jones-by-way-of-Enid Blyton recipe. There’s attention paid
to characters no one could possibly appreciate unless one had read the novels –
Neville Longbottom, whose significance still escapes me despite his cropping up in all eight movies – and a lack of attention to those who
really ought to have been significantly more significant but appear to be
referenced as an afterthought; Nicholas Flamel, whose secret is, after all, in
the title of the movie, is dealt with in an entirely perfunctory and offhand
manner. We’re told he has agreed for the Stone be destroyed and that he’s
comfortable dying, which smacks rather of admitting defeat and represents the
worst kind off-screen “and by the way, kids” wrapping up of loose threads.
Particularly since there’s rich material in such immortal suspects, be it Saint
Germain or Arnold of Tully in The Box of
Delights.
The picture generally offers a rather anaemic approach to
its occult elements, offering plenty of signifiers but translating more as Bednobs and Broomsticks than anything
with potent overtones or undertones. Where Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone undoubtedly scores, though, is with John
Williams’ theme. Come the 2000s, the composer was mostly limiting himself to
work for his old pals Lucas and Spielberg, and I think it’s fair to say his
best days were behind him (he could yet pull something special out of a well-worn
hat), but this represents an instantly recognisable, iconic score. It does much
of the heavy lifting that Columbus simply can’t to infuse Philosopher’s Stone with atmosphere. I’ve already noted that
there’d be numerous young adult and fantasy pictures stuttering into various
states of existence in Harry Potter’s
successful wake. The irony is, as average as many of them were, they were still
superior to the first couple of Potters.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.