WASHINGTON - The Bitch is Back

Another month or so of silence and then the blog returns. Apologies, as usual, for the delays but the end of term squeeze for youth group matters followed by quick trips away and then relentless reconfiguring of my brain for summer camps has rendered me almost incapacitated as a blogger... And, at the end, a review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; a film which has puzzled me more than any other this year.

But firstly: Desolation Peak.

Of the many joys about living in the Pacific Northwest, none is more joyous than the fact that just a few hours away in every direction there is wilderness (well, an awfully wet kind in some directions...) and incredible glacial landscapes waiting to be explored. Over the long weekend, three of us headed down from Vancouver to the small town of Hope (where they filmed Hope Floats, Colin Firth fans!) and then south along gravel track across the US Border to Ross Lake on the northernmost point of the North Cascades.


Brown bear by the side of the road on the way to Ross Lake. Brown bears are the dangerous ones, but this one didn't seem too bothered by three hikers in a car. On the bear intelligence scale, he's obviously a little closer to Winnie than Yogi.

The aim of the weekend's hiking was Desolation Peak; a charmingly named outcrop surrounded by such cuddly named features as Starvation Ridge and Nightmare Camp. Obviously someone had a pretty lousy experience or two in the region at some point in their life (so much so they even named one of the other mountains Jackass) But, for some, isolated wilderness is not just something for the weekends but a real way of life. On top of Desolation Peak's two thousand or so metres of elevation there sits a lookout hut. Like many around the US, it's home during the summer to a park ranger whose job it is to look out around the surrounding area for fires. Unlike others, though, which are often towers in forests, this is one of the most isolated in the country. It's a four hour hike up on a good day; meaning that if you decide you need to get hold of someone it's a seven or eight hour round trip and there's no guarantee of encountering anyone without another eight hours hike at the bottom back to civilisation.


The shack at the top of the world.

For some, then, hiking up to such a place is a way of life. To others, something to aim for during a strenuous hiking trip. But for many it's a type of pilgrimage as this shack was once home to Jack Kerouac; who spent a season as a fire lookout on one of his many Beatnik travels. And then wrote a string of books and poems about the experience. Depending on which you read it was either the greatest, or the worst, experience of his life.

Purely from a hiking perspective, the experience is nothing but rewarding. From the gradually widening views of the lake beneath you on the way up, to the deer quietly munching beside the path to the awesome views of the craggy landscape as you break out into the alpine vegetation; there's plenty of incentive for the walk itself. The final ascent up the pillar of rock which houses the hut feels almost designed to inspire achievement, especially early on in the summer when you may have just spent five minutes trudging through still heavy snowdrifts in the blazing sun and wondering how fresh the bear prints and bloodstains are... And then there are the moments you can spend wandering around the lookout hut and the summit and viewing the snow capped peaks in every direction. It's a landscape which one might find lonely, but impossible to see as empty.


Jack's shack

Although lugging a backpack two thousand metres isn't always hilarity; it's worth making camp up on the mountain for the night. As the three hundred and sixty degree sunset gives way to starscapes (and, apparently, the Aurora Borealis over Mount Hozomeen according to Jack. We couldn't see it, though) the sense of the world being closed off around is palpable. Yet what remains in the darkness is no less enchanting; especially as when you're living in the city you miss so much of it.

One of the questions about Kerouac is why a man who spent so much time with and writing vividly about living life with a host of colourful characters would want to spend such extended periods of time alone and in such complete isolation from the world. Modern personality testing might provide some of the clinical explanations. But spending a night up on the roof of the world is how you can really begin to suggest some answers.

And now, onto Harry Potter.

Funny thing; when I first saw this poster for Harry Potter:



I was immediately reminded of this one for Alien 3:



... Which, for those who remember such things, is probably the closest cinema has ever come to producing a truly nihilistic film. From the opening minute culling of the remaining supporting cast of Aliens through to Sigourney Weaver's suicidal plunge in the closing moments; Alien 3 is an almost relentlessly bleak story of ever increasing loss against a seemingly unstoppable series of foes.

I then forgot all about that until I saw the film. Harry Potter 5 is great. It's the best of the series by far. But it is also incredibly grim. Cold, remote and unrelentingly dark from beginning to end. It may not be nihilistic; but it's certainly the most hard going film I've seen for a good couple of years. And most of those weren't marketed towards children. Like I said right at the top of this post; this film *really* confused me.

Harry Potter 5 is a fascinating lesson in the process of adaptation. The film's greatest strength is that it takes a pretty poor, overly convoluted book and turns it into an incredibly tight piece of character storytelling about how Harry, trying to cope with the darkness of film 4, sees himself at a crossroads between giving into anger and revenge or embracing his friendships and human connections. It's really the only one of the films to have a strong emotional arc for Harry which makes sense. And the credit for that belongs to new screenwriter Michael Goldenberg because those threads were all lost in the mess of the original novel. The storyline is outstanding, Dan Radcliffe's performance as Harry is mesmerising and David Yates carries on this series' fine tradition of making each entry grow up along with its characters. Prisoner of Azkaban hit the raging hormones of thirteen year old life spot on, Goblet of Fire successfully showed the change to fourteen with the utter confusion of relationships and Order of the Pheonix gets fifteen completely right with mood swings and a sneaking mistrust of all authority added to the mix. And, for once, the film makers have done it better than J.K. "CAPTIAL LETTERS TO SIGNIFY EMOTIONAL RESPONCE" Rowling. Order of the Pheonix is the best cinematic adaptation of J.K. Rowling's work.

All good, right? Here's the problem: Order of the Pheonix is also the worst cinematic adaptation of Rowling's work. Because, despite the ever growing sense of darkness and insecurity in Harry's world, the Potter world has never been so unrelentingly grim as it is during the two hours of this film. We begin with scenes of horror, progress to witch hunts (figurative and literal), take a quick stop at child torture before a trip into mental illness and, finally, some more torture and a good dollop of death to top things off. Pheonix may have gotten away with a PG certificate on this side of the Atlantic but I'm not sure I'd want anyone under the age of fifteen watching a scene in which a children are physically tortured and mentally abused by sadistic authority figures, as happens at least half a dozen times in this film.

All of this comes, of course, from Rowling's original novel. But that's not all there was in that book. Although the physical and emotional torture was at the centre of Harry's story; there were plenty of brighter passages to lighten the load. Characters like Tonks and the Weasleys provided comic relief and subplots like the "Weasley is our King" Quiddich saga lightened the load between he tragedy. The problem was that, without any sense of an editor's pen on the manuscript, Rowling's book was too unwieldy for cinematic adaptation. The film makers were right to focus on Harry's story (it's the film's greatest strength) but the price they've paid is to suck all the heart from the original story. And, more worryingly, to create some really rather problematic characters.

Take Luna Lovegood. Easily my favourite character from the books; Luna is from the Emma Woodhouse and Cordelia Chase school of characters who are present in the text to say all the uncomfortable things which usually remain in the subtext. In the books, Luna is a delightful character who has a kookiness and paranoia which allows her to operate on a different level to the emotionally repressed teenagers around her. She brings a childlike innocence to exclaiming and dwelling on home truths, which Harry eventually realises make her an authority... In the film, though, there is no time for Luna to be a speaker of truth. She is a kooky cipher who throws out non sequitors which all serve plot exposition rather than humorous asides. We learn quickly that she's a victim of personal loss; and Harry continually identifies with this side of her. Barely anyone else interacts with her. As such, there is no other conclusion to draw from the character of Luna in the film than that she is a terribly emotionally damaged young woman who cannot deal with the pains of the real world and so decides to live in a self created fantasy. She is a symbol of madness which Harry could become; rather than a loveable kook. It's wrong, it's unsettiling and it deeply bothers me.

So is it the best of the series? The worst? Or something in between? So much of myself tells me that it is the best; it's certainly the first time I've ever become emotionally invested in Harry's character, for example. And, coming from such a poor novel, that's an outstanding achievement. Yet (and speaking as someone who is a firm believer in the vital importance of carefully used darkness in children's books and films) I can't possibly recommend something so unrelentingly grim and horrific which clearly is advertising itself to children. If it were for adults, I might not have a problem (although it's *still* a dark film, even then) but it's not. And I do.

Ultimately we have to go back to Alfonso Cuarón's Prisoner of Azkaban to answer this question. Possibly the most important children's film of the decade; Azkaban is the perfect blend of darkness and levity. It redefined the series by basically picking up Christopher Columbus' first two efforts, shaking them violently and yelling 'grow up!' until all those starched school uniforms loosened. Its production design was second to none (and, indeed, it's interesting to note that Pheonix has taken a step back from Goblet of Fire and looks and feels almost exactly the same as Azkaban. All Cuarón's contributions to Hogwarts are revisited multiple times, from the courtyard set to the covered bridge, pumpkin patch and fabulous Clock Tower. Note that Mike Newell's Owl Tower is nowhere to be seen) but I've always had a lingering suspicion that the script wasn't quite as good as it needed to be. The greatest moments of Azkaban come from off-the-cuff interactions and pure comic improvisation which make it an *hilarious* film, as well as a dark one. So although the script is weak, the necessary story beats are all there and there is plenty of time for cinematic flights of fantasy on the side. As such, it was the definitive cinematic interpretation of Rowling's work.

Order of the Pheonix beats Azkaban on the script and performance front but chooses to confine its adaptation of Rowling's world to the grim side. As such, it is a wonderful, wonderful horror film and a great adaptation of The Order of the Pheonix, but a lousy adaptation of Harry Potter

Random points which need making:

1) Having moaned that Voldermort's return in Goblet of Fire wasn't scary enough, I was pleased to see that David Yates went in completley the opposite direction this time and made him utterly, utterly terrifying. From appearing in suits on Platform 9 3/4, to a surreal shot in which he takes over the eleven year old Harry's body (a terrific bit of referencing to his original plan in Philosopher's Stone) he is truly the stuff of nightmares. At last. Although I'm not keen on some of the other darkness of the film I do firmly believe that the Lord of all Evil should be, y'know, actually evil rather than pantomime...

2) ... On the other hand, Imedla Staunton's Umbridge is just demonic and I suspect the film makers didn't quite realise just how scary it is watching a woman in pink and her cat pictures all smile whilst a teenager is (basically) self harming. The trappings don't lighten the tone. As Rowling well knew when she created the character, these things make her *more* scary.

3) Another example of how topsy turvy the film's tone is: Harry and Cho's super sexy kissing scene is ended with a lingering shot of blooming mistletoe; a confusing image to say the least; given that mistletoe is a symbol of death if ever there was one. It's like Yates and team took every possible light moment and said "now how can we make *this* one horrible as well?..."

4) Alan Rickman and Maggie Smith, bless them, continuing to mine whatever they can from their half a dozen lines and minuscule amount of screentime. Rickman's "obviously" is wonderful. Helena Bonham Carter, meanwhile, continues her career with another barmy performance. For those who follow such things, Bonham Carter has two performances within her: corseted or MAD MAD MAD!!! Needless to say, this is one of the latter.

5) Do try and see the film in Imax if at all possible. The 3D sequence at the end rocks beyond all measure.

Basically; it's Alien 3 for children. And, as much I love both that film and this one; I don't think that's a good thing.