Heretical Thoughts

[poliphilo]

I've seen a couple of the Potter films- they're fun.

But I don't feel particularly drawn to those characters or that world. Maybe it's because I went to a boarding school- and have no wish to go back- not even in my imagination.

And life is too short for 600 page books- unless they're by Dickens.

Besides you guys can keep me abreast of what's happening. **********'s dead- right?

Comments

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

Hey, that's no heresy. I felt much the same only as recently as last Xmas. What converted me was a combination of fancying Alan Rickman and chatting to friends who were very into it, and knew all sorts of exciting things about people's allegiances and motivations which I hadn't picked up on even from seeing all three films.

TBH, I don't actually think the main characters are all that compelling, although some of the secondary ones like Snape and, yes, **********, are more interesting. What matters to me is the carefully structured plot, and once you've got into that, nothing can put you off! (Especially once you find out that some of the characters can read each other's minds. I think that was what really hooked me). Quite frankly, JKR could have written this latest book in note form, or as a series of bullet-points, and I'd have been perfectly happy - just so long as she tells us who knows what, who believes what and what happens!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Hmm- mindreading: that sounds interesting. I didn't pick that up from the movies.

And I must say i hadn't considered the series as a long drawn out exercise in plotting.

You've gone a long way towards converting me.

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I do beg your pardon! I didn't actually mean to go converting anyone - just to explain.

The mindreading helps with one of JKR's greatest strengths - making the allegiance of various characters ambiguous. Once you know who can do it, and how strong or weak they are at it, you can get into all kinds of debate along the lines of "Would he have known what she was thinking, and if so, was that why he did X?" etc. Snape is the most obvious character to whom this applies, but actually there are very few characters for whom you can't have big arguments about what they knew when, and how it affected their behaviour.

Rowling has been incredibly clever at keeping certain key characters ambiguous, with a major device for doing this being the use of unreliable witnesses: the three kids, and especially Harry, who are more than capable of misinterpreting other's behaviour. This means that still at the end of book 6 we don't really know who we can and can't trust, or what some characters really want. She apparently had the whole thing plotted out from the beginning, and has huge piles of note-books full of incidental details about all her characters, places, magic spells, etc, and this really shows in the way the books are coming together.

*ahem* Anyway, I said I wasn't going to write about this today, and look at me, being naughty and getting drawn in!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You know this is the first time anyone has suggested to me that there may be more to the Potter series than at first meets the eye. You've got me interested. All this playing around with unreliable witnesses and mindreading sounds fascinating.