Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

My rating: *** and 1/2

The aficionado that I am for this scarhead character, the least I could do to remind myself of my fanship is to catch the latest screen adaptation on the first day of its release. And after a very long time indeed, I felt sorry. No need to get impatient yet. If you think I am going to spend the rest of my review slashing the movie to pieces, you couldn’t be more…. oh well read on.

Adapted from what I consider to be the real series defining book (even more definitive reading than the 1st 3 instalments put together)–the action was so fast I was sweating, the pace so frenetic it got me dizzy, and the sequences, scares, surprises, revelations, creatures, magic so crazily yet so intelligently built up for the absolute grand finale that 2 years on and the experience of reading was still fresh by July this year. And then the Half Blood Prince came out. And I re-read parts of Goblet of Fire again to get my facts right

Which meant that I went to the movie with a lot of baggage indeed and this is why I felt sorry for myself as I sat there for 3 hours munching my popcorn away. It was like seeing a thriller when you know the twists, when you know who kills who and who dies in the end. And to make it even worse was the film, yes Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire, itself— a film so amazingly yet so obediently adapted that everytime a well-shot scary sequence came with a “bang” and someone screamed in the theatre, I just sat there like “Oh well, I saw that coming for over 5 minutes now”. And throughout the whole movie, it was all about “Tom Riddle’s house is just as I had imagined”, “Oh no, Cho is nowhere as cute as I’d thought she’d be”, “Dammit, they don’t have house-elves or what”, “Ah, the Dark Mark is scarier than I had thought” “But wasn’t the maze sequence longer?”.

As hard as I would have liked to try, except for the intense climax (an integral twist of which I had conveniently forgotten… to my respite let me add), I couldn’t view it as a first timer. The fact that Goblet of Fire is such a pure action-and-plot oriented enterprise (probably the most in the series) with little attention to characters which had been fleshed out to their max by and till Prisoner of Azkaban, and as I said earlier, the film being such a wonderful adaptation (read translation), didn’t help the cause at all.

So in a way I was envious of all those who had discovered Potter just through the big screen and just sat there going through, I bet, one hell of a joyride. Of course, I have been consoling myself since I came out of the cinema, by remembering those nail-biting 6 or so hours in which I had raced through the book and been through all those motions in the silence of the room. In a way, that kind of un-manipulated thrill can never be competed by the audio-visual manipulation of a movie and also the fact that one is at the mercy of someone else’s vision throughout cannot just be shrugged off.

And thus, with all my justifications which have consoled me to the point where I can stop wincing, stop moaning and start concentrating on what I had come here to write about, let me review the film.

First, the performances. As the exceedingly photogenic and undoubtedly talented trio, Radcliffe, Grint and Watson turn in sparkling performances with not a twitch of confused acting. Thoroughbreds now that they are, this being their fifth year acting in this enterprise, they’ve evidently given every shot of theirs, the very best and have made Harry, Ron and Hermoine as adorable and lively as Rowling’s characters could be. Being not a character oriented film at all, evil regulars like Alan Rickman (Snape) and Tom Felton (Draco) have next to no role here but with the Great Lord Voldemort himself (Ralph Fiennes fiendishly and deliciously playing to the gallery) making his presence, I doubt if you’d care. James and Oliver Phelps are awesome as the ruffly cocky Weasley brothers; then there’s Miranda Richardson who makes the character of Rita Skeeter even bitchier, there’s Jeff Rawle whose cries for his dead son towards the finale stay with you long after the scene’s gone, there’s Brendan Gleeson whose Mad Eye Moody is fabulously over-the-top and finally there’s Stainslav M as the enigmatic Victor Krum who couldn’t be more suitably cast. Michael Gambon, though, as Dumbledore is perhaps a bit too animated sometimes.

The screenplay is a terrific image of the book, and for maximum effect, the flab (ie. Hermoine, her concern for house-elves and her SPEW plus the actual match of the Quidditch World Cup) is completely gotten rid of– to focus solely on the daddy of all the events in the series–the Triwizard Tournament. And though the tasks are shorter and snappier than a purist like me would have liked, the thrill factor is kept high. One thing for which this film would always remain ingrained is the finale—the thrill and the shock value isn’t dampened by any unnecessary editing. The length, the twists and the actual sequence is just right.

The canvas is huuuuuge. CGi splendid. Camerawork exquisite. Which means that sequences like the Dark Mark being conjured, the fire-breathing dragon chasing Harry on the broom, the Merpeople dragging him down with their tentacles and Voldemort emerging from a boiling cauldron are a treat for the senses. The sound design, though functional, could definitely have done with more background score in both action and dialogue sequences. Maybe this was deliberate, but in more than one sequence I felt my eyes were having more fun than my ears. Also, one tends to miss the moving staircases, the talking portraits and strangely enough The Great Hall is deceptively small. There are no special filters used by the look of it, and the film’s canvas carries on the unforgivingly gritty and rough look from Prisoner of Azkaban. Dialogues are fantastic and the humour, tastefully nuanced.

All in all, a remarkable film where my own movie-watching experience was spoiled by being a compulsive reader. But I am sure I am not the only one.

PS: Big thumbs up to Mike Newell. I so badly wish he was directing the sinister and cerebral next one too.

Black

One of my all-time favourite movies reviewed originally for dogmatrix.com. Read on:

Black (2005):*****

45 minutes. Yes, you heard it damn right. For the final 45 minutes continuously, I found myself sitting in the darkness of the cinema and weeping like a 2 year old. Truth be told, good scenes and honest cinematic moments have worked my tear-glands for 5-10 minutes in the past, but 45 minutes! As scene after scene of this unabashedly moving motion picture flowed on screen, so did my tears. If this isn’t proof enough of how emotionally potent Black is, I wonder what could be.

A memoir of an Anglo-Indian deaf-and-blind Michelle McNally (Rani Mukherjee) which commences in her frustrated, violent childhood (as young Ayesha Kapur) that is reformed by a teacher Debraj Sahai (Amitabh Bachchan) who himself gets inflicted by Alzhiemer’s later; this haunting and emotionally intense tale’s effect should be seen to be felt.

Singling out the best scenes of the enterprise would be both unnecessary and unfair as this amazingly edited film is chockfull of never-seen-before scenes in undiluted continuum. But commit this sin of singling the scenes I will, because this review would be so incomplete without them (Spoilers abound aplenty, so those haven’t yet seen the film, stop NOW).

~~The Moments~~

In approximate chronological order, Debraj being told by Mrs Nair to go to McNally house to teach Michelle is the first memorable sequence just for its sheer tongue-in-cheek nature as Debraj translates Mrs Nair’s words in sign language, with hilarious effects. When the lady tells him to stop his sign-language bull-shit, he even contorts his hands to show a bull shitting! Marvellously canned. In the same scene, Debraj realising the irony of his job as a deaf-n-blind teacher (his students waved him goodbye looking in the opposite direction when he gets kicked out of the school for being a drunkard) is heart-rending.

The violence, the power and the energy of the young Michelle is so over-powering on screen, its haunting. Each of the scenes… where she pukes rice on Debraj’s face after being forced to eat calmly at the dining, where she kicks him hard and grabs the cake, tears it like sponge and gorges on it like some beast—the animalistic trait is so effectively captured by the young actor’s (Ayesha Kapur’s) squinting eyes, Debraj’s struggle, the dark-light frantic play of the camera and genuinely chilling background music that witnessing young Michelle finally eating calmly makes you heave a big sigh of relief.

The whole of first half is dedicated to young Michelle learning the connection between words and their meaning, and just before the lights go up to mark the intermission, the impossible happens—she learns the first meaningful word–water. In the very next scene, the way this girl runs around feeling the grass, the flowers, her mother, her dad and finally her teacher is the moment where I personally wanted to jump and scream out aloud (the impact of the emotions in this scene is overwhelming) and at the same time get a strange cognizance of the sheer limitlessness of the world around me.

I guess, it is somewhere here that the viewer develops a very strong affinity for all of the film’s characters and from here on, one winces every time Michelle fails her first graduating year, one aches to hold her and hug her as she phones her mom and struggles to utter “Ma Fail” and one wants to kick her sister Sara for being so evil to Michelle. Every struggle, every victory, every failure of the characters become your struggle, victory and failure. You feel their pain, their glee, their gloom… seldom have I come so close to a film’s characters.

The second half touches another pinnacle of raw emotion with Michelle continuously failing her graduation (the fact that you see Debraj and Michelle working hard through all the texts pronounces the disappointment even more). The scene where she’s made to realise that she’ll remain physically alone by her sister and being told to behave at the latter’s engagement dinner is another memorable scene. Rani’s expressions as she stares empty-eyed into the mirror are piece-de-resistance… her very look makes you wonder aloud if such a pure, innocent person ever deserved the harsh treatment. The very next scene where Sara reveals how in her own small ways, she always succeeded in torturing Michelle and Michelle’s outburst thereafter hits you hard as Debraj reads out Michelle’s small, loving speech for Sara. The beauty of the scene is – one empathises with both Michelle and Sara – innocent victims of sibling rivalry.

The last two sequences I’d love to pen down are where Michelle asks Debraj to kiss her once for he’s as close as she’d ever come to a man (watching Rani going all flaccid and falling back in the chair with a loud sigh before Amitabh kisses her is one helluva cinematic moment!) and where she stands in the hospital ward all decked up in her graduation gown as Debraj, an Alzheimer’s patient, tries to remember Michelle (Rani’s graduation speech and watching Amitabh as he feels the cape n the cap of Rani is a gem and makes one’s belief ever so strong that the film’s got a heart).

~~The Players~~

Like candles in a room burning the wax and spreading light, each of the performers in Black burn in their characters spreading raw emotion. Each shine with his own brilliance and in doing so, complements the brilliance of others.

If there’s anything eluding the status of “legend” to Rani Mukherji, Black is going to make sure its removed and she gets it much before any Indian actress ever did. The Bengali lass goes from strength to strength in every passing frame and is excellent throughout. That staring-in-space gaze (no, I can’t get that look out of my head) , those few words she utters with immense difficulty (“Ma Pass”, “Ma Fail”), the loud throaty sighs when she’s uttering her words, fuming or is excited; her reactions to the world around her (besides the above sequences, watch out for scenes where she learns walking with a stick, or bumps into a candelabrum-fells down and laughs at herself), and that daffy-duck walk… Rani’s made Michelle timeless.

I so dreaded coming to this part of the review as I am at utter loss of words for Amitabh Bachchan’s performance. Let’s not call it a performance to make my job easier. He’s reacted (not acted) all through like Debraj Sahai would. That pain in the bloodshot eyes, that energy in the animated hands, and that fatherly concern in the baritone… its all there to watch and relish. Though it’s surprising how someone so intellectually stimulating could develop Alzheimer’s but when Debraj does develop it, an emptiness envelopes you, the viewer. As the camera pitilessly captures the I-don’t-know-what-you-are-talking-about look on Amitabh’s face time and again, one’s moved beyond words. Its such a towering performance, I doubt whether BigB himself would ever better it.

Criminal it would be to not appreciate the quality of work that Shernaz Patel (watch the lady weep on realising her baby Michelle is deaf-n-blind and when Michelle learns her first word), Nandana Sen (as Michelle’s sis, Sara– she’s one of the reasons why the engagement sequence is memorable) and most importantly Ayesha Kapur (as the young, violent Michelle) have put in and who together with the efficient supporting cast make Black an intense experience.

At times reminding one of Devdas’s theme, Monty’s background score is an ace and the composer’s ability to carefully dissect every moment and inject a bang there and a tinkle there takes Black’s sequences to new levels. The film’s theme carries as much soul and emotional weight as the film’s story. And so does the visuals. The constant black-white play of the light and the sets, the visual metaphors which are abundant all through (cold, snowing exteriors and warm, oak-wood interiors of McNally House), the leisurely camera “watching” the life of Michelle from hidden angles only seldom going into “celebratory” mode (there’s the Bhansali favourite overhead shot where the camera rotates above the dining table as everyone raises a toast to Sara’s engagement and as it “flies” away into the whiteness towards the climax with Michelle-Debraj feeling water) and the wonderfully crafted out McNally House (its dark and opulent yet never overbearing or distracting). The difficult-to-place geography and ethnicity of the performers, contrary to what I read elsewhere, go that extra mile to make Black a universal venture.

Very snappy editing further polishes Black and in fact sometimes the scissors being run are so sharp, the film resembles a collage of images played in quick succession (the scene where Michelle finds Debraj tied to a bedpost with metal chains— one shot sees her struggling to free Debraj and screaming. Cut to next one—she’s walking with the chains down the corridor. The effect of editing makes this otherwise gut-wrenching sequence bitter-sweet). At 120 minutes long, there isn’t a single wasted scene, a single ill-chosen sub-plot or sequence… every scene is momentous, every character in very moment present for a reason. There’s little relief from the dramatic sequences in the 2nd half and coupled with the sympathetic tone that the film possesses all through, it makes it extremely difficult to sit-through the screening dry-eyed.

Everything kept aside, if there’s a man who deserves a bow from the viewers, its Sanjay Leela Bhansali who weaves this powerful tale with such astute precision both aesthetically and emotionally, that its doubtful if Black actually came out of Bollywood. There’s so much implosion of pain on screen in the film to take in for the senses, its overwhelming. If the man took everyone’s breaths away with his craftsmanship in Devdas, he does that again with his storytelling in Black.

Hope after watching this film, the so-called bigwigs and showmans of the industry sit-up and realise what’s cinema actually all about and what tosh they have been dishing out in the name of cinema in the past years. 2005’s already turned a vintage year for Bollywood with Black’s release– hope there are more such honest, heart-rending films from the world of Indian cinema.

Even as I wrap up this critique, I can’t help but wonder if there’d be anything as rich, as warm and as wise as Black this year, or for that matter the coming years (yep, call me a big pessimist you can). Seeing the immensely lovable characters struggle through their darkness and finally finding light—this is cinema at its best. Played beautifully, its combination of gentle realism in the dark worlds of mentally and physically disabled people makes for what is essentially a modern day masterpiece. A masterpiece just as dark, warm and magnetic as the colour BLACK.