meish dot org: life, unfolding

I’ve just come back from seeing the latest HP outing, in which Harry and chums do, y’know, wizardy things in the face of evil. This is the fifth in the series (the ‘difficult’ fifth Harry Potter tome is apparently much like most recording artists’ ‘difficult’ second album) and I don’t think I’ll be spoiling it for anyone if I tell you that the fact that there are two more books after this one both of which contain his name means that Harry scrapes through this one ok.

This was the book I didn;t read – or rather, this was the one that I bought, tried, and eventually hurled at the wall in dismay after several chapters – which took a sizable chunk out of the plaster, unfortunately, though that’ll give you some indication of its main problem – with a cry of “For feck’s sake, won’t someone get this woman an EDITOR!”

See, I’d read the first few books, though not when they’d first come out. I’m a bit anti-hype when it comes to media consumption, which means that the more people are shrieking about how everyone simply MUST read X or see Y, the less likely I am to do it. I’m contrary like that.

So thanks to having been blogging for yonks, I am able to note that in the middle of 2000, I still hadn’t read any Harry Potter, and in fact was steadfastly holding out on doing so, thanks to this contrary streak.

In this post, I predicted

what will probably happen is this: I’ll hold out on reading them for another year or so, until the fuss has died down, and then I’ll read them surreptitiously, and probably bore everyone to death on how much I enjoyed them, waaay after the fact is pertinent. I did it with Trainspotting. I did it with Memoirs of a Geisha. I did it with Letter to Daniel. I’m doing it with Cryptonomicon. I think I can manage it with a twelve year old wizard, don’t you?

Though that’s not quite the way it happened, because for one thing, the fuss didn’t die down in a couple of years, and for another, I suddenly found a pressing reason to read them, unrelated to having something to consume on the tube.

About 6 years ago, I was running a commercial publishing department within a big media company, which meant that my team dreamt up, designed, developed and delivered bespoke editorial projects for commercial partners. Essentially, whenever an advertiser or agency was talking to the general ad-sales team and said they wanted something “a bit different” – and remember, back then, that “a bit different” was anything that wasn’t a flashing gif banner, or a straightforward sponsorship – my phone rang. Drywipe markers were my wands, and with them I’d convene brainstorming sessions with people from all over the company, sketching possibilities on on the whiteboard until we came up with something magic.

Anyway, one Friday afternoon in August 2001, I got a phone call to say that we’d been asked to pitch for a particular piece of work with a major global brand, who were launching a promotion with a Potter theme, and wanted us to come in and talk ideas with them first thing Tuesday morning.

Around me, the team started buzzing excitedly, reaching into a vocabulary which I had no familiarity with, chuntering away about sorting hats and muggle this, dumble that. When someone said we could create a virtual Hogwarts, I thought “hog-whu?” and said we should take the weekend to think and come in with ideas on Monday.

On the way home that evening, I eschewed the lure of my friends and the pub, and went instead to Books Etc, where I bought the box set of the first three books and the fourth for good measure.

And then I sat down and read them.

Now, given that the first three are about the thickness of a Sunday paper (though happily, not as wide) they took no time at all to plough through, and the foourth was polished off by the time I sat down for the meeting on the Tuesday. They’re not exactly a challenging read – all a bit formulaic, really – and in this post from that weekend, I took a break from reading to offer some thoughts about the story so far:

It’s going to make a great movie.

It’s written in the formulaic movie style that so much fiction relies on these days – we live an increasingly visual age, and it’s no surprise that written words start to echo screen logic.

Basically, narrative disappears almost entirely, relying instead on dialogue and action sequences (meticulously, almost scriptically described) to carry the story along. There is one piece of minor action per chapter and the whole thing neatly follows the 80/20 rule for cinema – that a movie will spend 80% of its length building up to a climactic moment and then 20% recovering from it.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with writing a book which is going to be a great film. I’m almost certain to see it, and I have enjoyed reading them so far. But it feels sort of…empty.

You can see the plot devices (what few there are) a mile off. You can picture every scene vividly in your head – and not because you’re using your imagination, but because you’re being told what scenes look like, the exact cut of a characters’ hair, the precise moment-by-moment account of their actions. You don’t need no steeeenking imagination to read Harry P.

And so, seven years later, with precisely that in mind, I’m strangely reassured that while I didn’t actually get around to finishing Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix, I didn’t have to, because there it was this evening, laid out on the screen and (I assume) dizzyingly faithful to JK’s words on the page.

It’s a film in a series, and for that reason it doesn’t stand alone – you can’t come in at film #5 and expect to understand what’s going on – and besides, there’s precious little time to spend on backstory when there’s so much to get through. Though, of course, the story is basically the same as in all the HP books – good, evil, boarding school pranks and hormones, with a well-cast brood of British actors at the helm (Imelda Staunton was magnificent, as ever) and some very nice special effects thrown in for good measure.

In fact, one of the most pleasing things about the HP flicks is that the special effects aren’t all in your face – there are a lot of atmospheres and subtle things which have been created for the screen which help to immerse the viewer into a magical world, and that makes a difference. The set pieces in this one are beautifully thought out and presented, too.

In all, it’s a romp – an enjoyable, not hugely memorable or spectacular, magical romp. It’s much the same as the ones which came before, only the kids are taller, more square-jawed and/or buxom then previously, and there’s a more perceivable momentum to the plot than in the first couple, if only because in film one, for example, there was so much explaining to do about wands and magic and muggles and school and classes and spells and whatnot, there wasn’t much room for any plot.

So, in summary, it’s a pleasant way to spend a few hours, like the films which came before, and undoubtedly like the ones which will follow it. The film is well-made and well cast, and yet the audience is left slightly frustrated because we all know there’s more to come, and that it can’t possibly all be resolved by the time the titles roll. That’s the problem with series.

As another short magician once said, “you’ll like it…not a lot” …but you will like it.