Always

I was, I will admit, fairly disappointed in the final Harry Potter film.  The first of the two part adaptation to book 7 was, in many ways, the best film in the series, and I had high hopes for the second.  If you read this: http://dulacian.blogspot.com/2009/08/art-coma.html you'll probably realize that I was bound to be disappointed.

One shouldn't ever have too high of expectations for a Harry Potter movie though.  As movies go, only three of them even stand up as enjoyable on their own.

But there's a sort of magic to seeing the world of Harry Potter come alive that makes the unconscionable pacing, the terrible acting, and the saddeningly poor camera work null.  The characters, the world, the wonder, are just too good to defeat, even with drastically sub-par filmmaking technique.  Seeing a Harry Potter movie is experiencing a Harry Potter book in a new way for the first time.  Reading any Harry Potter book for the first time was the most enjoyable reading experience I've ever had and the emotions those 7 books can conjure in me is indescribable and incomparable.  Even getting to grasp at that for a bit over an hour or so while staring at a screen is worth every penny.  No film, I think, could actually capture the Harry Potter experience, so I can't fault any of them too strongly.  But I would have loved a better attempt, to be sure.

Even so, I will never stop reading, watching, altogether consuming everything Harry Potter, because there is a wonder there that isn't anywhere else, and it's more true than any fact, more beautiful than any sight, because it happens on the inside, from the inside out, as Harry Potter reveals something in us that has always been there.  It's a beautiful mirror, if nothing else.  It's a beautiful mirror we can't get anywhere else.  Or at least it is for me.  Intellectually, there are more stimulating experiences in film and literature.  Technically, most people are better writers than J.K. Rowling, I sometimes believe.  But spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, philosophically, and metaphysically, nothing else comes close.

As of now, there isn't anything left.  No more movies.  No more books.  I do think they'll remake at least some of the movies, somewhere down the road in 20 years.  But it will never be the same.

And yet, I would rather live with the failed attempts to rekindle and the memories, than to never have had them at all.  I joined the bandwagon late, but I think that was good.  More than anything else, Harry Potter showed me who I am, who I was, who I will become.  If I were but 8 when I read the first book, I don't think it would have meant nearly as much.  But perhaps I just want to rationalize my failure to grow up with Harry Potter, as so many of my peers did.

But we cannot change the past. I can't go back and tell 8 year old me to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone right after it came out.  The question though, really, is if I would.....

The other day, Alexandra mentioned that she's looking forward to having kids at least in part because we get to relive the wonder of our childhood with them; things like catching lightning bugs and keeping them in jars; tea parties and action figures, believing in Santa.  I wonder, in light of all this, if I will introduce Harry Potter early for my kids or not.  That is a decision along way off.  But in any event, perhaps then, Harry Potter will be a bit of wonder to relive with my kids, and grandkids, and, Lord willing, great-grandkids.

I will never stop reading, and I hope, someday, that means I will never stop introducing Harry, Ron, and Hermione to my own descendants, somewhere down the road.

It was, indeed, a disappointing film.  But it was nothing if not a fulfilling experience.

I don't know how.  I don't know why.  It's just magic.
-Zack

"I'd rather be a comma than a full stop"
-Coldplay