May 25, 2004

I am not a Harry Potter fan.

I haven't read the books. I couldn't stand the first movie. I didn't much like the second one.

So why am I so taken with Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban? There is one central reason… Alfonso Cuaron. He makes this episode of the ongoing series into an actual movie, not just another children's toy in shiny cellophane.

The differences between Cuaron's Potter and Chris Columbus' are endless, both large and small. But the key thematic difference is that Cuaron treats his primarily young audience with the respect that viewers who will watch a movie over and over and over again deserve. What is said is said once, not repeated until the filmmaker is sure that the least perceptive viewer got the message.

But it's not just dialogue. The most striking thing about the effects work in this film is that it has an assurance that few directors are willing to risk in an effects film. There is a flying animal sequence with Harry that for the first time in a long time does not include what I now think of as the "Neverending Story Insert," where you go to that close-up of the young actor being thrilled by the experience of flight, usually while sitting on a rug that matches the color of the effects-created creature. Instead, we get an absolutely beautiful series of long shots that are perfectly cinematic. Eventually, when appropriate, we get the Harry single (only one, as I recall), but only after a really wondrous CG close up of a large talon skipping along some water.

And Hogwarts itself has gone through a remarkable transformation. For the first time, it feels like a boarding school and not just like a series of remarkable sets, one after another. Cuaron's Hogwarts has dirt… it has hillsides that students use as apparent shortcuts… it has more realistic encounters between students. But best of all, it has context for the first time. Michael Gambon, who has no trouble handling the bittersweet task of filling Richard Harris' robes, is no longer just a wise old man who runs a school. He is a hippie with a kofi, newly purple robes and little rubber bands in his beard, running a commune for other freaks like himself. He is joined in this reflectivity by Emma Thompson's Professor Trelawney, a master of fortune telling whose classroom décor may well come out of her VW van each semester.

The now veteran team of Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman are there, with Coltrane's Hagrid expanding his role. (I have this TV historical notion that Hagrid is really Potter's father, as he had an affair with Geraldine Somerville, who plays Harry's mom, a decade ago on one of the great all-time drama series, Cracker.) But the additions, beyond Thompson, include more of the U.K.'s very best, with David Thewlis, Timothy Spall, Dawn French and the ever-gorgeous Julie Christie.

But it is Gary Oldman who makes the greatest impression, in two different ways. First, he manages to steal a couple of scenes before he even gets in a word of dialogue. And then, when he starts to speak, he is almost unrecognizable. For whatever reasons, he decided not to rely on any of the magical tricks that we all know as Oldman's and instead voices his Sirius Black without being showy, but without any Oldman landmarks. Not many people will appreciate how much Oldman becomes an actor in this role (he's always brilliant, no matter the role) and not a movie star. I'm sure that it was Oldman's idea for the character, but again, the choice is part of Cuaron's signature on this film.

The story of the film is fairly simple and though I was never bored, I was aware that there was a bit of sagging in the middle of the movie. But there were so many small delights hidden in plain sight by Cuaron that I was always with the film. Every time you think that you are about to get some of the same old same old, the werewolf turns out not to be right out of An American Werewolf in London or Harry is acting more like a petulant teen than expected or the ever present clock parts look like an amazing piece of art instead of a set.

John Williams' score is jazzy and bouncy most of the way through. Cinematographer Michael Seresin, who works here for just his third director in 25 years (the two directors he has worked with repeatedly are Alan Parker and Harold Becker). The work here is beautiful. He and Cuaron use the entire palate of visual tricks, from desaturation to extreme blacks to intense rains to some of the most beautiful CG landscapes imaginable, which unlike so many CG movies, never read false.

I don't want to give any scene away, but one early scene ends with Harry Potter walking down the street and there were some laughs circulating around the audience and my nephew says to me, "What are you laughing at?" And I pointed to the corner of the frame to a "topper" to a joke from a few minutes earlier. It was clear and it was funny, but few directors would have been brave enough to just let it play and not point it out to the audience.

Not only is this the best Harry Potter movie, it is the first Harry Potter movie that actually qualifies as cinema. I'll be going to see it again before it opens… not because the kids will drag me, but because I want to.

READER OF THE DAY: I was a little shocked by how small the e-mail flow from yesterday's column was. It was a trickle. Most of what came was from right-leaning readers offering congratulations. One even offered a lie from the movie… but I wasn't commenting on the movie, just the hype spin. (Which by the way, continued today with a spin story in the New York Times, that looks to blame Disney for the delays in closing a distribution deal, which may be what Miramax is telling people, but which is a ridiculous piece of spin. Disney is on the public record saying Miramax is free to sell the rights. Does anyone really believe that Weinstein is waiting on paperwork to make even a handshake deal? Please!)

There was one piece of hyperbole in yesterday's column that was mentioned repeatedly, repeatedly using the word "lie."

NOT PM writes and starts by quoting the offending comment: ""The Palm d'Or will not sell a single ticket in the U.S."

I'm afraid I'm going to single-handedly prove you wrong on that one.

I don't like Michael Moore. I loathed Bowling For Columbine. I had no intention to see Fahrenheit 9/11 until video. Then a little thing called the Palm d'Or came along. I agree - to say politics had nothing to do with the win is to say politics had nothing to do with the film's content itself, which would be the greatest lie of all. That said, it did win, and that to me at least guarantees, like the best picture Oscar, that while the film is probably hardly worth the hype, it's at least competently produced, and worth a look. Plus, in my neck of the woods -- and though I hardly represent a cross-section of the U.S., I'm sure I'm not alone either -- Cannes darlings actually are ripe for water cooler discussion.

Shallow, maybe, but what the hell; sometimes the truth is shallow. Consider that single ticket sold."

DAVID RESPONDS: Okay… fair enough. The Palm d'Or might sell as many as 50,000 tickets. In this case, I would assume that most of the people who would be drawn to the Palm d'Or will be drawn for more traditional reasons to Fahrenheit 911. Still, those 50,000 hard cores still are not enough to change the distribution opportunities for this film. In fact, the real money on the film will be in home entertainment, where Sony still seems the likely rights winner in the end.

This came in from NOT BILL SHATNER and I think it is quite reasonable and reflective of the opinion of many Moore supporters: "As I sit hear looking at your column and listening to Bush on the TV spin a new web of 'untruths', (" the acts of terrorism taking place in Irag are not due to any of our actions" - give me a break!), I can only think - who cares if Michael Moore is a pathological liar? If that, and the other actions you accuse him of, is what it takes him to get 'Fahrenheit 9/11' in front of the American people and the rest of the world then I say, go Michael go! If it takes one liar to expose another, then so be it. The worst President and the most misguided and deceitful administration in the history of our country has got to be removed from power for the sake of America's future. If this movie can persuade just one person to vote against Bush then it is worth whatever actions are taken to get it out.

From what I know of Bush and this movie, the facts Michael Moore are presenting in Fahrenheit 9/11 are just that, facts. Ironic, if what you say is true, that lies are being used to expose the truth. I don't know anything of Michael Moore other than his movies and what I read in columns such as yours and I can't say that I really care to know more. In this situation, at this time in history, 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is a case where the message is much more important than the messenger. Although a Veteran, registered Independent, father and husband of a full-time Captain in the National Guard, I still can honestly say that I am ashamed and embarrassed to be an American. I don't like feeling this way.

I want to go back to being proud of America and what it stands for. In order for that to happen, things have to change and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' can only help. Sorry, but the points you made, while maybe valid, and definitely well constructed, just don't mean a thing to me."

E ME: There you go… happy Tuesday.