FINAL CUT: Play With Fire

The birthday weekend was celebrated with two voyages to the local cinema, which -- compared with the once in four months that preceded it -- was a veritable bounty of filmed entertainment. The second outing, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, may be saved for a later discussion. (Or may be forgotten altogether.) The short review was supplied by Edison Girard, who noted that it would make a fine HBO special. Amen to that. But the bigger review goes to the bigger movie. For Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire cannot be sloughed off with a pithy one-liner.

Why not? Because any movie based on a 734-page novel that clocks in a little bit short of three hours merits a little depth in the discussion. (Incidentally, I've completed my review of the original novel, so that'll be going into the queue over at BookADay soon enough.)

The fact that we're even talking about a 734-page novel that didn't require an adaptation the length of War and Remembrance is a real tribute to the red pencil of screenwriter Steve Kloves. He's walking a real tightrope here: Goblet of Fire is a crucial pivot point in J. K. Rowling's saga. It's the book that transitions the story from a schoolboy's magical adventures to a battle between good and evil that threatens a civilization. It draws on characters, situations, and ideas that have been planted in the first three books, and that are essential to a satisfactory resolution of the story in the last three books. Everything seems crucial. To a more literal-minded filmmaker (I'm looking at you, Chris Columbus), it all would have been essential.

Kloves and director Mike Newell have found another way, and I'm still impressed that they managed to jettison so much of the book and still make it work; not just as a self-contained film, but as part of a series that doesn't betray the source novel. It's possible to honor the spirit of a book but change the specifics of the plot dramatically. The film version of John Grisham's The Firm comes to mind, as it completely re-works the troublesome ending of the book, even while it uses the very words of the novel to justify the liberties. Kloves has not so much altered as streamlined Rowling's prose, shaving away every bit of excess weight that he can to make a movie possible. This could be a valuable screenplay to use, if you want to teach a class on film adaptation.

That's not to say nothing is lost. For one thing, the characters who Kloves must include are frequently given short shrift. Alan Rickman's Professor Snape, for example, is essential to the advancement of the story. But in this truncated telling, he barely exists, and doesn't even get a line of dialogue until the two-hour mark. Evidently, he also felt compelled to bring in nosy reporter Rita Skeeter, embodied here by Miranda Richardson. The choice is odd, though, because Rita's ultimate fate in the book is not part of the film, which suggests that it will not factor into the movie of the next book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which begs the question why she had to be here in the first place.

Characterization also takes a major hit. Harry's fellow school champions are reduced to the simplest outlines. Viktor Krum is sullen and stuck up, with two lines of dialogue at the most, while Fleur Delacour is pretty, but hardly seems capable of competing in the contest, given the skills we see here. There is an unavoidable sense that you're getting the Cliff's Notes version of the story. If you've read the books, then you can fill in the blanks. But that doesn't make Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a moviegoing experience -- it makes it a multimedia experience.

I liked the movie a great deal, though. It's quite entertaining, very exciting, and carries the sense of dread that typifies the book. And as much as it races to get from one plot point to the next, it doesn't shirk the other key responsibility of tracking our three heroes' growth as teenagers, which culminates in the charming-yet-painful Yule Ball sequence (which is somewhat more tolerable onscreen than it was on the page, despite Harry and Ron's irritating attitude towards friends and dates).

I have one complaint, and it lies with the casting of Michael Gambon as Dumnbledore. He's not getting it. Part of what makes the Hogwarts headmaster such a compelling figure on the page is that he seems utterly simple, almost addled, yet harbors a deep wisdom and vast emotions well beneath the surface. It makes the moments where his feelings present themselves a great deal more potent. The late Richard Harris touched on this, infusing Dumbledore with a frailty that no doubt could have been cast away at a moment's notice. Gambon, on the other hand, plays everything right on the edge, and he hardly seems the rock in the storm that Harry should be turning to with his troubles. Dumbledore's unhappiness in the scene revealing the school champions is the first sign that something has gone wrong, and the situation does not improve. Gambon is a fine actor. But he's either being mis-directed, or he's failed to understand the dynamics of the character.

I remember reading that Richard Attenborough was campaigning for the part. I think that would have been a good call.