Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Neither Black nor white but only grey magic
J.K. ROWLING – THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD – 2018
It’s only a screenplay. That means all the magic of the descriptions of scenes and the mental depth of the characters is absent and is only alluded to as possible special effects in the future film. I’ll have to watch the film to know what this screenplay’s potential is, but so far, the semantic content of the plot, if there is one, and of the characters is rather light.
The conflict between the Purebloods on one hand and Les Non-Magiques, the Muggles, the No-Maj, the Can’t-Spells, on the other hand, is rather simple and as such is humdrum and even slightly boring. To give some weight to this conflict it concentrates on the situation between Angus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald who were at Hogwarts at the same time and had some kind of a blood pact that made them blood brothers, which blocked Dumbledore in the fight he should have led against Grindelwald, and the stake between them is Dumbledore’s son who is known in the book a Credence Barebone because due to strange circumstances just after his birth he was swapped with another baby who died soon after. That’s, in other words, melodramatic and slightly easy and the end then is that the unknown and unknowing son of Dumbledore is captured by Grindelwald and integrated into his own camp, hence betraying his real father who is on the other side.
But that is in a way freedom because the other side, the official side, the Ministry of Magic, and so on, is in the hands of some dictator who is imposing his rule through Aurors, some kind of SS that control the life and death of people if they do not think properly, both a thought police and a tyrannical police state. What is this vision a metaphor of? It sounds like the metaphor of Brexit when a vote that had been manipulated by organizations who broke the law during the campaign is made irreversible and an absolute obligation for everyone to have no courage to say no, I must say that Theresa May as an Auror is quite convincing in her Peter’s Principle, or should we invent the term Theresa’s Principles. Kick the door as long as necessary to maybe bring it down after a long while and many attempts.
I am disappointed by this screenplay. Ms. Rowling used to be slightly more convincing with Harry Potter and even with her mysteries or detective social stories. I guess she may have lost some of her magic and she expects a filmmaker to compensate this loss with special effects. I should get the two films soon and I will be able to have a more seasoned opinion.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:02 PM 
