Harry Potter and the Amulet of Adolescence

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/07/2011 (5172 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Oh, they grow up so fast.

It seems like only yesterday that Daniel Radcliffe was an earnest 11-year-old heading off to his first day of boarding school. And Emma Watson was a frizzy-haired swot, and Rupert Grint was a pudding-faced ginger-haired boy.

And suddenly, Radcliffe is photographed with five-o’clock shadow on the cover of Cineplex magazine and admits to a little drinking problem (which he has since overcome). Watson models for a series of Burberry ads looking like an extremely glamorous pixie. Grint belies his Dickensian name by starring in the very 21st-century movie Cherrybomb, in which a gang of teens goes on a spree of sex, drugs and stolen cars. And trying to live up to his bad-boy Slytherin rep, Tom Felton, a.k.a. Draco Malfoy, wants to break into the grime rap scene in the U.K.

They’re young men and women now, getting ready to leave home — or at least our movie screens.

The global Harry Potter empire has produced eight films in 10 years. The preponderance of sequels and series is often cited as a factor in the decline of cinematic originality and in the triumphant rise of big, loud, stupid summer movies. (Hello, Transformers 3!) But in the case of J.K. Rowling’s epically epic franchise, which has brought in a whopping $6 billion at the box office, I think the series form actually works.

Watching these kids grow up on screen over the past decade has been, well, magical. It’s different with grown-up characters: Roger Moore turning into a creaky James Bond, Sylvester Stallone playing a pension-aged Rambo, or the Star Trek crew shuffling towards intergalactic retirement just feels tired-out and sad.

But the transformation of the Harry Potter characters, from childhood to gawky adolescence to complicated maturity, has been a joy — and an integral part of the story.

With each new Harry Potter book and movie pegged to the beginning of a new school year, the series is really all about growing up. The big myth may involve the showdown between good and evil, but there is also the Muggle-ish problem of just getting through puberty. And really, confronting the Dark Lord pales in comparison to the terrifying ordeal of getting a date for the Yule Ball dance. The mysteries of the wizarding world’s shifting alliances, betrayals and turn-arounds are nothing stacked up against Ron and Hermione’s wonderfully confused, oh-kiss-her-already relationship.

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We’ve come a long way, from the rather jolly first film to the brooding middle years to the mature, somewhat bittersweet finale. In this last film, Dumbledore addresses Harry by saying, “You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man.” Thanks to the series’ almost real-time journey, viewers can experience that double-vision along with him. We can remember the child Harry once was and see the young man he has become. That’s a rare thing in the movies, almost as rare as a film franchise that actually gets better with age.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca

Alison Gillmor
Writer

Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.

   Read full biography