Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is now twenty years old and in celebration some cinemas were showing it for a few days recently and I was lucky enough to go and see it. I think it may actually have been the first time I’ve seen this entry from start to finish.
The film opens with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) spending his summer with his (so far only remaining) relatives the Dursleys, when a ‘house elf’ named Dobby (Toby Jones) comes to warn him that terrible things are going to happen at Hogwarts. Despite efforts to keep him away, Harry along with his two best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger (Rupert Grint and Emma Watson) starts his second year at the school. Strange things do start happening and it all points to the titular Chamber where a monster that petrifies people into a comatose state is said to be living.
Just about all the major cast and crew came back again. Much of the cast return, from Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall to Alan Rickman as Snape. Something I think I have tried to do when reviewing films that I saw a lot of growing up, is to appreciate the things that I probably didn’t when I was younger. An example is the quality of the acting. There is no denying the three leads all work very with each other but luckily that takes nothing away from what the more seasoned actors bring to the film, especially Rickman’s Snape. I heard a lot about his time in the role, but only recently have I come to the same conclusion. Yes, he is still very much at a point in the story where all he can do is play the role of the unreasonably mean and sarcastic teacher. He can’t yet give Snape any sense of nuance, but does really play up what seems to be his character’s sole personality trait. He always seems to be shouting and acting very intense.
There are a few new faces in the cast, the main two being Jason Issacs as Lucius Malfoy and Kenneth Branagh as new ‘Defence Against The Dark Arts’ teacher Gilderoy Lockhart. Both are used sparingly and while Issacs shows promise as a man who gets what he wants all the time, it’s Branagh’s Lockhart who is really able to steal every scene he’s in and walks through them all with an annoyingly charming smile and similar demeanour. He’s very much hamming it up but is undeniably having a great time doing so. It does amuse me a little to think that if things had been different Tom Riddle would have been played by a young Eddie Redmayne. I’m glad he wasn’t, Christian Coulson does just fine.
This was also of course the last time Richard Harris played Dumbledore but he still had the character’s wisdom and likeability.
I am a bit unsure who is really responsible – whether it’s the capable directing skills of Chris Columbus or the screenwriting talents of Steve Kloves – but this film is surprisingly well paced. Yes, it’s very much a family film with a very generous runtime of over three hours, and there are some scenes where not a great deal happens, but everything progresses so quickly that it feels hard to get bored. I’d say the major exception to that is the Quidditch match where it’s just a lot of flying around and things getting smashed up.
Something else I noticed for the first time is that being a sequel, this film didn’t need to set up as many story details – it could just let the plot unfold. Kloves does manage to sneak in some of the darker themes of the series that would become more prominent in the latter half of the story. He also stays very faithful to the novel making a few changes, the most notable being the omitting of a chapter called The Death Day Party.
Chris Columbus is obviously directing this at a very child-friendly level. Hogwarts still has the bright, warm look that his entries are often associated with, but thanks to the cinematography of Roger Pratt and the lighting, the school does sometimes appear a little dirtier, greyer and darker – reflecting the slowly changing tone of the story.
I can’t talk about this film without talking about the production design. The first film gets a lot of praise for how well it brought the world of the book to life, and that carries on here especially with the look and feel of places such as The Burrow. I guess things like that must really make the hardcore Harry Potter fans really happy.
Something that I don’t think gets too much attention in this entry is its animatronics. Creatures like the Basilisk and Aragog really don’t feel fake. I think this is especially true of the latter which is just unnerving to look at, never mind being voiced by a very hoarse Julian Glover.
John Williams is of course behind the music again. I especially liked the last piece during the film’s final zoom out of the castle.
If I really had to find something to complain about, it would be certain small details that in the long run don’t make a lot of sense. For example, Uncle Vernon thinks barricading Harry’s window will stop him from going back to school. You would think he would remember what happened the last time he tried to stop Harry from going to Hogwarts. I know it was in the book, and suspension of disbelief should be in full effect, but I think a bit too much suspension is being asked for here.
Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets does a lot of things the way its source material did by way of developing the characters, ideas and overall story. While slowly laying the foundations for what would come next, it also brings an end to the more light-hearted part of the Harry Potter story, and does so in very entertaining fashion. It might even be just a little better than The Philosopher’s Stone and in term of Columbus’s track record for sequels it’s miles ahead of Home Alone 2 – as well as managing to be a darker sequel without forgetting who the core audience is.
I like some things in the other films well enough but considering that Half-Blood Prince was shorter but felt longer, I think I know which one I would rather watch if given the choice. I would recommend this one and would certainly go to another rescreening of a film that I liked if the chance came along. As long as it wasn’t the kind of film I would be petrified to have missed.
