The students in my spring 2002 class, Harry Potter's Library: J.K. Rowling, Texts and Contexts, were evenly divided in their responses to the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Columbus, 2001). Those who read the novel before seeing the film gave the film--at best--a mixed review. Generally speaking, they felt that the movie was not as good as the book, even if (as one student put it) they "did enjoy the money that was spent on making Hogwarts castle look real." In contrast, those who saw the film before reading the novel really liked the film because, unlike many film adaptations, they said this movie did not distort the book. Both groups are correct: The movie was not enough like the book and, at the same time, very much like the book.

This paradox resides in the difference between seeing and feeling. As enjoyable as it is to view the film's special effects, director Chris Columbus's movie rarely engages the emotions. Watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone if you see the British version) is like watching a historical re-enactment: You may be interested to see how it's done, but there's not much suspense. In the movie, the filmmakers want the audience to notice how faithfully they have re-created Hogwarts and how vivid the Quidditch match is, and--to their credit--they have done an outstanding job in representing the look of the novel. However, the film's lavish attention to the visual leaves little time for the characters to interact with one another.

J.K. Rowling writes great dialogue; the conversations between her characters give us insight on their lives and allow us to care about them. For example, the film includes some of the dialogue between Harry and Ron on the Hogwarts Express, but instead of focusing on their friendship (as the book does) the movie shows off its special effects, giving us chocolate frogs that actually jump. But they do not jump in Rowling's text and need not do so in the film. In the novel, Harry's purchase of these treats from the witch's concessions cart ("trolley," in the British edition) provide an occasion for Harry and Ron's friendship to grow. It's touching to learn that Ron is embarrassed about his family's poverty and that Harry is anxious about attending wizard school. It is what the characters say, not how they look, that enables us to make an emotional connection with them. Though some of the excellent cast manage to act their way beyond the special effects (notably Alan Rickman's Snape, Robbie Coltrane's Hagrid, and Emma Watson's Hermione), many characters get lost in the dazzle of light and sound that filmmakers feel compelled to throw at us. If characters, and not scenery, had the starring role, viewers could become as involved with the film as they were with the novel.

Is Comparison Fair?

Is it fair to compare these two very different media? Because film is a visual medium, perhaps Columbus's film must focus on visuals. However, Peter Jackson's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings eloquently demonstrates film's narrative power by providing a stunning visual experience without losing any of the novel's emotional intensity--in fact, Jackson's 2001 film The Fellowship of the Ring is more intense than Tolkien's text. And yet Jackson invested an incredible amount of work in making Middle Earth look as Tolkien described it, including growing the plants and trees of the Shire a year before filming. But the effects never seem to be there for their own sake; the story takes the foreground, and the brilliant visuals augment the story without detracting from it. So, as Jackson's film demonstrates, film can be as powerful a storyteller as a novel can.

To keep the film to three hours, Jackson and his creative team had to condense Tolkien's novel drastically. Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves had to condense Rowling's novel, too, in order to create a film with a running time of two and a half hours. As Reader's Digest or Cliff's Notes might suggest, to condense a novel usually means to simplify it. The challenge for a filmmaker is to condense the source texts in a way that retains the central experience or meanings of the original. For example, Jackson and his crew simplify the debate at the Council of Elrond, but they distill the essence of the scene--we glimpse Boromir's half-concealed ambitions for the ring and Frodo's troubled but brave decision to bear the ring himself. Columbus's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone does not succeed as well as Jackson's film, though it does at times hit its mark--as when, for instance, Harry goes straight from Diagon Alley to Platform 9 3/4 (in the novel, he goes back to the Dursleys first). More often, however, the filmmakers' infatuation with special effects leads them astray. Dudley Dursley actually falls into the cage at the reptile house in the movie, and the glass magically disappears and reappears, trapping him on the wrong side. Furthermore, Harry seems quite aware that he has imprisoned his cousin. In the novel, Harry seems a bit bewildered by these occurrences and is not truly aware that he made them happen. His confusion during the scene sets up his later surprise at learning he's a wizard. At the hut on the rock, where Hagrid finally reaches Harry with his Hogwarts letter, Harry says quietly, "Hagrid, [...] I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a wizard." Hagrid chuckles and adds, "Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared, or angry?" (Rowling, 1997, p. 58). Harry then remembers the mishap at the reptile house and realizes he was the cause. This belated recognition of his magical powers may seem a minor point, but small details like these add up over the course of the movie.

It's In the Details

The accumulation of minor details can create a markedly different experience between a book and a film, which may explain why my students who read the novel first were so critical of the film. The movie looks like the places in the book but it doesn't "feel" like them because these little details accumulate. To turn to another example, Dumbledore's sense of humor remains hidden until the very end of the movie when, at Harry's hospital bedside, he selects an earwax-flavored jelly bean. In the novel, his offbeat wit makes earlier and more frequent appearances: At the opening banquet, Dumbledore says, "Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!" (Rowling, 1997, p. 125). The film omits these delightful absurdities and also subtracts Harry's asking Dumbledore what he sees in the Mirror of Erised. The headmaster replies, "I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks" (p. 214). As a result, the Dumbledore of the film more closely resembles Tolkien's Gandalf. While Gandalf and British author T.H. White's Merlin are literary antecedents of Rowling's headmaster, the film emphasizes Dumbledore's serious side. A sense of humor may be a minor detail in and of itself, but it is the kind of detail that, over the course of the film, distorts the original character in ways that inspire criticism from fans of the book.

This type of distortion is particularly ironic if the tepidness of Columbus's adaptation derives from a desire not to upset the Harry Potter franchise. As Robert W. Butler wrote in the Kansas City Star, "The book was for everyone; the movie is for kids and true believers" (2001, p. 7). He added, "This may be precisely what the majority of Harry Potter fans demand, but it makes for a movie that is poorly paced and frequently dull" (pp. 7, 9). The film does no violence to readers' imagined versions of characters and events, but it does not offer its own creative vision. In watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, you get the sense that its makers have tried to film a novel instead of make a movie. If so, this approach is a mistake. Films do not need to be true to the books from which they originate; films need only be true to themselves. As Anthony Lane observed in The New Yorker, "The question should therefore be: Is this movie faithful to itself? Does it, like the better make of broomstick, have a life of its own?" (2001, p. 78).

It does not. But, to be fair to the filmmakers, they add some nice touches to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, such as the gathering of owls at the Dursleys when the Hogwarts letters are not delivered, and the medieval look of the Quidditch robes as Gryffindor's team enters the arena. John Williams's music has captured the combination of Harry's qualities-confident and heroic on one hand, sad and full of doubt on the other-that make him such an appealing character. We admire him and feel a little sorry for him. The film uses this music more frequently than it ought, but the theme is evocative.

In any case, subtlety has never been a strong point with Chris Columbus, whose best-known pre-Potter works were Mrs. Doubtfire and Home Alone. The open-mouthed Home Alone scream makes several appearances in the Potter film: When Harry, Ron, and Hermione first meet Fluffy they do their best imitation of actor Macaulay Culkin, and at the Halloween feast, after Quirrell's announcement of the troll's entry, an entire roomful of Hogwarts students shriek in the Culkin style. Moments such as these call attention to perhaps the most striking difference between Columbus's film and Rowling's novel: Columbus condescends to his audience, but Rowling does not. Asked if she writes the Potter novels for children or adults, Rowling replied, "Both. I wrote something that I knew I would like to read now, but I also wrote something that I knew I would like to have read at age 10" (National Press Club, 1999). Like all great children's literature, Rowling's books offer pleasures for readers of any age because she does not write down to readers. In contrast, Columbus imagines his audience as children, and fairly daft children at that. It seems he doesn't trust the viewer to "get it" unless he overexplains. Take, for instance, Slytherin's excessive rule breaking during the film's Quidditch match. Only in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling, 1999) does the Slytherin team indulge in the degree and scope of deliberate fouls witnessed in the film of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. In all of Rowling's novels, Madam Hooch punishes those who commit fouls. Columbus's film, in contrast, lacks the supervision of such a referee. To make absolutely sure that we perceive the Slytherin team's treachery, Columbus amplifies their cheating to an absurd extent and then-to make sure that we grow sufficiently indignant-allows the cheaters to get away with it. Yet his attempts to connect us emotionally to the Hogwarts team fail because we have never been given any reason to care about these characters.

Perhaps Columbus's version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (in production as I write this column) will succeed where the first film failed. The second novel has a greater sense of narrative drive than the first one does. While Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (like all the Harry Potter novels) is a mystery, its pace is slower than Chamber of Secrets or Prisoner of Azkaban. What sustains our interest in the first Potter novel is its narrative voice, as it offers bemused commentary on the Muggle and wizard worlds. Lacking Rowling's narrative voice, Columbus's film finds no narrative drive to replace it. Fortunately, the second Potter novel provides an abundance of narrative energy: It is more of a page-turner than the first novel. So, if Columbus is taking the same directorial approach toward filming book two, his Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets should succeed where the first film fails. In other words, if he again attempts to film a novel rather than make a movie, he ought to end up with a better film of a plot-driven book.

In its fidelity to the novel's landscape and indifference toward the story's emotional center, Columbus's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone both bores and enchants. Though its pace drags and the effects are overdone, the movie's lush effects nonetheless create an almost nostalgic appeal: Like Harry, we may wish to remain at Hogwarts instead of going home. As the Hogwarts Express prepares to take the students to their homes, Harry says "I'm not going home, really." Screenwriter Steve Kloves's line (it does not appear in Rowling's novel) neatly conveys the point that Hogwarts has become Harry's home. Harry's line-his final words in the film-also expresses the mixed emotions that viewers might have as they watch the credits roll. We enjoy the world to which the film transports us, while longing for the film that might have been.

References

Butler, R.W. (2001, November, 16). Mild about Harry. Kansas City Star, pp. 7, 9.
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Columbus, C. (Director). (2001). Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Brothers.
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Jackson, P. (Director). (2001). The lord of the rings: The fellowship of the ring [Motion picture]. United States: New Line Cinema.
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Lane, A. (2001, November 19). Nobody beats the wizard. The New Yorker, pp. 78-80.
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National Press Club. (1999, October 20). Book-TV [Television broadcast]. Washington, DC: C-SPAN2. Available online: http://www.npr.org/programs/npc/991020.jkrowling.html
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Rowling, J.K. (1997). Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone. London: Bloomsbury.
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Rowling, J.K. (1998). Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone. New York: Scholastic.
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Rowling, J.K. (1999). Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets. New York: Scholastic.
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Rowling, J.K. (1999). Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic.
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Tolkien, J.R.R. (1982). The lord of the rings, part one: The fellowship of the ring. New York: Ballantine.
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About the Author

Nel teaches courses in children's literature at Kansas State University. He can be contacted at Kansas State University, Department of English, Denison Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-0701, USA.


The editor welcomes reader comments on this column. E-mail: Lmeier@ksu.edu. Mail: Lori Norton-Meier, Kansas State University, 206 Bluemont Hall, 1100 Mid Campus Drive, Manhattan, KS 66506-5301, USA.


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Citation: Nel, P. (2002, October). Bewitched, bothered, and bored: Harry Potter, the movie. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46(2). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/jaal/10-02_column/index.html