And so, my childhood is over

Okay, not really.  Depending on how you look at it, it was over when I went to college, graduated from college, hit puberty, or learned to drive.  Or perhaps it will never be over, as I plan on being an actor, and acting is basically playing pretend full-time.  But no matter how you look at it, I've definitely crossed a threshold; I finally saw the very last Harry Potter movie ever.

I've had a very tumultuous relationship with the Harry Potter movies.  I usually left the theater fuming and frustrated, wishing I could give the director, screenwriter, producers, or preferably all of the above a piece of my mind.  How DARE they miscast the role of Dumbledore and make him a weirdly mean and in my opinion totally unlikable character?  How DARE they make Hermione's hair look so gorgeous?  How DARE Daniel Radcliffe grow up stocky and rugged instead of awkward and skinny? (Just let me at his genes and they won't know what hit them!)

But when it came to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One I was pleasantly surprised.  I actually liked the movie!  Though I still had many of my same complaints (curse you, Daniel Radcliffe's genes!!), overall I thought the film successfully captured the grim and gritty atmosphere of the book, and that the three main actors were more compelling than in previous movies.

Part Two fell right in with its predecessor for me.  I was pleasantly surprised by most of it.  But I did, of course, have some issues with it.  And why have a blog if not to air my grievances with random films that I watch?  Maybe someone at Warner Bros. will actually read this and realize that all along, I've been right about everything.  ("Why oh why didn't we consult this brilliant young woman on every facet of these eight movies?  How could we have been such fools?")

This probably goes without saying, but major spoilers lie ahead.  Book spoilers, film spoilers, they litter the path before you.  Don't proceed unless you've already processed the movie yourself and you're ready to read someone's at times delighted, at times infuriated opinions.

I'm going to do this list-style, touching on every point that I was concerned/curious about before I saw the movie:

The Snape Revelation

This may have been my favorite moment in the entire book and I was REALLY invested in how the film handled it.  I was incredibly satisfied with what they did.  I thought Alan Rickman was fantastic.  It was like, after seven movies in which pretty much all he got to do was be ice-cold, he busted out every other emotion he hadn't been able to convey.  It broke my heart.  I don't remember if this scene was included in the book (and I don't have my copy with me to double-check), but I thought the moment when Snape is shown finding Lily Potter dead was particularly moving.  They managed to capture the most fascinating thing about Snape and his story: he really hates Harry because Harry is James's son, but he also--at lest sort-of--loves Harry, because he is Lily's son.  Harry is the representation of the union of James and Lily that causes Snape endless pain, but he is also the only living descendent of the one person Snape loves.  I thought the filmmakers and Alan Rickman did a beautiful job portraying that cognitive dissonance and making Snape the bizarre hero he is in the books: a truly mean and horrible person, but also an incredibly brave and loving person.  That's what makes him so fascinating.  Bravo to all who made that moment excellent!  

Ron and Hermione Finally Give In to Their Overwhelming Passion

I wasn't incredibly invested in this moment, mostly because I didn't expect it to move or surprise me, and then lo and behold--it did!  I thought the placement of the kiss--in the Chamber of Secrets, when Ron and Hermione are alone--was just right (even though it differed from the books).  Both actors did a good job with it, too--it felt sincere and spontaneous.  The grins from each afterward were pretty adorable as well.

Mrs. Weasley Detroys Bellatrix Like It's NBD

And here, for the first time, I was disappointed.  What I remember from the book is that Ginny and Bellatrix are fighting, and Ginny holds her own for a while, but Bellatrix is after all an incredibly evil and powerful witch, so Ginny begins to falter and it looks like she might become yet another casualty, when Mrs. Weasley appears, hollers her famous line with power and passion, and then takes Bellatrix after exchanging a few blows.

In the film, it didn't seem as if Ginny was in that much danger, and then Mrs. Weasley didn't so much holler the line as growl it (if memory serves).  And then she and Bellatrix went back and forth a bit and then Bellatrix sort of...shrived up.  And that was it.  How disappointing!  And surprising, that a moment full of satisfying drama in a book could actually be less dramatic in a film.

Harry's Long Walk of Doom Complete with Ghosts

I was really worried about this.  I was concerned about how Daniel Radcliffe and David Yates would choose to handle the big moment when Harry Potter walks to certain death.  How to do it without seeming melodramatic?  But also accurately capturing the intense emotions someone would experience walking to their death?

Given my concerns, I was relieved and surprised to find that Harry's Walk of Doom worked beautifully.  I think it was an incredibly smart move to play up the fact that deep down Harry had always known his days were numbered.  Melodrama was avoided because instead of freaking out, he was more resigned, which made sense with the fact that he had sort of known all along.  But it also wouldn't have seemed right if there were no strong emotions at all, so I think again it was a wise move to let Hermione carry the weight of emotions when she and Ron find out Harry is going to die.  Because Hermione was upset, I, the audience member, could identify with her and allow myself to be upset, without Harry having to be the one getting upset to catalyze catharsis.

The appearance of the ghosts was beautiful, too, I thought.  And I LOVED how Ralph Fiennes played the moment when Voldemort kills Harry.  It was like he understood that on some level he, Voldemort, was actually losing.  Voldemort may have been "winning" in that he was about to kill Harry at last, but ultimately he was clearly the weaker man because Harry could face the one thing Voldemort most fears: death.  Thank you, Ralph Fiennes.


Neville Longbottom is a BAMF

I have always loved Matthew Lewis.  I have always been pleased with his performances.  And in this one, we got a slow-motion shot of him slicing the head off a ginormous snake.  Awesome.

Voldemort Finally, FINALLY Bites the Dust

SO anticlimactic.  He just sort of...dissolved.  What??  It was so undramatic!  Once again, the book actually succeeded in being more theatrical than the movie--not the way it's supposed to work.  Why couldn't he have died in a huge, satisfying burst of light, and THEN dissolved into thin air?  In the book, Voldemort dies when his own killing curse ricochets back at him (if I remember correctly), which makes his death interesting in that Harry doesn't actually directly kill him.  In the movie I wasn't sure what was going on.  Why did he suddenly start disintegrating?

To quote a brilliant fellow Harry Potter fan: "Who knew Voldemort was made of paper mache?"


Harry Rocks the Love Magic

I thought Daniel Radcliffe did a really great job delivering that all-important line in which...wait...what?  Where was that moment?  They didn't include it??

The moment I'm talking about is the one in which Harry (sort of awkwardly, it must be said) explains that Voldemort can't hurt all the people Harry died for because by sacrificing himself Harry called up the same deep magic that Lily activated when she died for her son.  Just as Harry was protected by his mother's love, the people fighting at Hogwarts are protected by Harry's love.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought this was, you know, kind of the whole point of the entire series, put in one little moment.  And yes, it was a bit blunt, hit-you-over-the-head, etc., but also really moving.  And satisfying, because Voldemort wasn't just defeated in that he was physically destroyed, but he was defeated in that all his power was sapped away by the deeper power of love-protection.  That's where he really got beaten; his physical death was almost less important.

I don't know why the filmmakers chose to cut this.  I think the ending of the film would have benefited from its inclusion.  The climax would have been more dramatic with a symbolic/psychological defeat of Voldemort as well as a physical defeat.

The Epilogue

I felt ambivalent about the epilogue when I read the book. I didn't hate it like some people did, but I wasn't incredibly taken with it, either.  I didn't really understand why it needed to exist.

The epilogue wasn't perfect in the movie, but I think I understand now why it needed to exist.  As I watched the grown-up Harry, Hermione, and Ron usher their children onto the Hogwarts Express, I felt a tug in my heart and my tears started flowing in earnest for the first time.  It was like Joanne Rowling was saying to me, "Peytie, it's okay to grow up.  Just as you've fought with Harry, cried with Harry, failed and succeeded with Harry, you can grow up with him too.  Hogwarts is not gone; your children will go there.  You haven't lost Harry and his friends; they are grown-ups with you, too."

I think I needed to be 22 years old and embarking on my post-college adult life to fully feel the weight of this final moment.  I continued to cry as the credits rolled, not in grief but in gratitude for the series that defined my childhood.

This young woman is so freaking talented

And delightfully geeky.

http://gingerhaze.tumblr.com/

The Hunger Games

Yesterday I finished reading Mockingjay, the third volume in the Hunger Games trilogy, and immediately started crying.

I expected the trilogy to be the sort of thrilling, fast-paced sci-fi/fantasy experience that I enjoy.  I didn't expect the trilogy to provide such a heartbreaking look into the horrors of war.  I cried when I finished it not so much because of the fictional events in the books themselves, but because the devastation, the senseless violence, the utter waste that the books so vividly portrayed are present in real war.  The reality that there are wars being waged right now, that there are people dying right now, in the same stupid and horrific way as in these books, hit me all at once and I had to take a while to process it before I could surface back into the equally real everyday world that I live in: my family, my cats, my new house, good food, great new plays written by dear friends.  And just as the trilogy called up real-life horror, it called up real-life beauty, too.  The love and humor amongst the characters resonated with me just as deeply as the violence and suspense in the action sequences.  After I wiped my tears away I took a moment to feel the intense gratitude that followed my sorrow: gratitude for all the amazing people in my life, and gratitude for the fact that all of those people are relatively safe and happy.

Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, can best be described as charming and endearing.  It's the best one of his films that I've seen (which is saying almost nothing, since I haven't seen his famous older works).  Owen Wilson was disarming in the lead role, channeling Allen's trademark speaking/writing style winningly.  The film's exploration of nostalgia, romance, and making peace with your own life and your own time came across with a lot of humor and some feeling, but I was never deeply moved or provoked to life-shattering revelations.  But then, I don't think that was the purpose or goal of the movie.

My only major complaint with the film is a feminist one.  I was really disappointed by how the women surrounding Gill were like paper-doll cut-outs that only stood for one thing throughout their time in the movie.  Gill's fiancee was the classic harping nag who didn't appreciate Gill and had no imagination.  It didn't take a genius to figure out she and her family represented the unromantic materialism that trapped Gill and made him feel like he should have been born in an older, more romantic Golden Age.  When Gill gets transported back to the 1920s, one of many people he runs into is the alluring Adriana (Marion Cotillard), girlfriend of painter Pablo Picasso.  Admittedly, the camera loves Cotillard and it's not her fun that she's unavoidably, stunningly gorgeous.  But it seems that's all she gets to be.  She is The Beautiful Girl Who Could Take Me Away From All This.  Just as Inez (Rachel McAdams) stands in for the dull real world that's choking Gill, Adriana stands in for the sweeping, sentimental romanticism that Gill believes he really belongs to. 

The only woman who does anything interesting or full-bodied is Gertrude Stein, played with typical brilliance by Kathy Bates.  She speaks eloquently and bluntly.  She is a woman with heart who also uses her mind.  But then again, I couldn't help but cynically note that she also seemed to be presented as asexual (although I could be wrong about that), which would mean that in the universe of this film, women are either strong-willed and brilliant or sexy/nagging or sexy/alluring. 

No movie is perfect, and goodness knows I've seen or heard of films with far more problematic, even horrifying sexism, so the faults of this film appear mild in comparison.  But then again, if some nit-picky blogger like me doesn't identify potential sexism wherever she sees it, who will? :-)

Jumping on the Blog Bandwagon

I've thought about starting a blog for a while, and now that I'm a lost and semi-panicky college graduate, it seems like a perfect way to distract myself from the confusing mess that is my life while reminding me that there is one thing I learned to do very well in college: articulate my opinion about anything.  1,000 words on why Lady Gaga is awesome: Go!

Puzzling over the title of this blog?  I want to be able to write about anything and everything my wandering mind lands on, so I figured this blog is like a collection of all my two cents on anything: my two cents on Harry Potter.  My two cents on the MN government shutdown.  I'm not promising profundity or accuracy or even coherency.  Just a little glimpse into my musings and ponderings.  :-)

And now my first penny trivia question!

In which musical do these song lyrics appear?

A penny for your thoughts
A dime for your dreams
Would a bright shiny quarter
Buy a peek at your schemes?

Guess in the comments!  The winner will receive a virtual high-five from this nerdy girl. :-)