Magic!

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2010)

J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" novels have caught the imagination of the public like no other children's literature of recent years, not even Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials". Rowling's stroke of genius was to combine two areas of children's fiction which are normally kept separate, the world of magic and witchcraft and the world of the boarding school. (The "school story", dating back at least to "Tom Brown's Schooldays" from the early Victorian period, has long been a prolific source of children's literature in Britain, if less so in other countries).
The basic concept behind the stories is that, alongside the familiar everyday world, there exists a shadowy Wizarding World, all but invisible to "muggles" (those lacking in magical powers). The inhabitants of this world appear to be normal human beings, but possess magical abilities. Rowling's hero Harry Potter is an orphaned boy who lives in an ordinary suburban home with his unpleasant relatives, the Dursleys. Unknown to the Dursleys, Harry is secretly a wizard who has inherited magical powers from his late parents, and on his eleventh birthday he is offered a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a large Gothic building in the Scottish Highlands where all British witches and wizards are educated.
This was the first in the series of Harry Potter films. Each of Rowling's books covers the events of a single year in Harry's career at Hogwarts, and the original plan was for a new Potter film to come out every year between 2001 and 2007. This schedule, however, proved too ambitious, possibly because Rowling had not actually finished writing all seven novels in 2001, and the series is not due to be completed until the release of the second part of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" in the summer of next year.
"Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" essentially serves as an introduction to the series; much of the first half is taken up with introducing us to Harry, his two close friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and the various teachers, personalities and institutions which he comes across at Hogwarts. Even in the Wizarding World there are villains; indeed, like a number of other fantasy stories, like Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings", the Harry Potter series was conceived as an allegory of good and evil. Like ordinary humans, wizards have the knowledge of good and evil and the moral responsibility to choose between them. A number of wizards have gone over to the "dark side", most prominent among them the dreaded Lord Voldemort, who was responsible for the deaths of Harry's parents. The excitement really starts in the second half of the film when Harry and his friends learn of, and try to frustrate, an attempt by Voldemort to obtain the fabled Philosopher's Stone which would give him great power.
One of Rowling's stipulations was that the entire cast should be British or Irish, so this is one of the rare films to be made by a major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros.) without a single American actor. It was, nevertheless, a big success in the United States, thus disproving two major cinematic myths, namely that all successful films need at least one big-name American star and that American audiences need subtitles to understand British English, especially when spoken with a regional accent, as it is here by several of the cast including Robbie Coltrane and Maggie Smith. In neither case is their accent their normal one; as in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" the Essex-born Smith plays a Scottish schoolmistress, whereas Coltrane, himself from Scotland, plays the school groundsman Rubeus Hagrid with a West Country accent. Nearly all the cast are good, but the most outstanding performances come from Alan Rickman as the melancholy, morally ambiguous teacher Severus Snape and from Richard Harris as the wise, kindly headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore was to be Harris's last great role; he died shortly after finishing the second film in the series, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".
The first two films, both directed by Chris Columbus, are, despite the perils which Harry and his friends have to face, generally lighter and more cheerful in tone than the later episodes in the franchise. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" is an excellent introduction to the series, magical not only in its subject-matter but also in the atmosphere of joy and wonder which Columbus is able to conjure up. Particularly memorable sequences include the Quidditch match, the scenes set in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, lit by floating candles, and the life-size game of chess near the end. A magical piece of family entertainment. 8/10