Check out Alan Jacobs’s speculations about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The first few are fairly common consensus: R.A.B. is Regulus Black, Snape will die a noble death, Dumbledore used Legilimency to tell Snape to kill him. There are thoughtful observations here, but the argument gets really interesting on the issue of Harry as Horcrux. Here’s Jacobs’s theory:
“Among Potter fans, an idea which has gained in popularity over the last two years is this: When Voldemort tried unsuccessfully to kill the infant Harry, he made Harry himself, or perhaps the scar which the boy received at that moment, a Horcrux. There are two problems with this theory. First, we are told that when a Horcrux is made the soul is placed in “an object outside the body,” but it is not clear how that “object” could be someone else’s body, since there would already be a soul located there. Second, the theory assumes either that Voldemort didn’t try to kill Harry at all—which contradicts Voldemort himself, who says that he tried to kill Harry—or that a Horcrux can be made accidentally.
I do not think it possible that a Horcrux could be made without intent and care; but the idea that despite what he has said Voldemort did not mean to kill Harry at all, but rather to make him (or his scar) into a Horcrux, is intriguing. I have been extremely skeptical of the whole scar-as-a-Horcrux idea until one thought came to my mind. It concerns Godric Gryffindor. Bear with me for a moment, please, as I descend into the bottomless cavern of sheer speculation.
- Dumbledore believes that Voldemort wanted four of his Horcruxes to be associated with the four founders of Hogwarts: Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Voldemort’s own ancestor Salazar Slytherin.
- But one problem with this scheme, if indeed it is Voldemort’s scheme, is that the only known relic of Godric Gryffindor, a great sword, rests safely in the office of the Headmaster of Hogwarts.
- When Harry fought against the great basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, he pulled that very sword out of the Sorting Hat, and Dumbledore told him that “only a true Gryffindor” could have done that.
- Harry takes the Headmaster to mean simply that the Sorting Hat did the right thing when it placed Harry in Gryffindor House—but what if there’s more to it than that? So far, we have learned nothing at all about Harry’s father’s family, though that is his wizardly side (his mother came from Muggle stock); in fact, Rowling has been curiously silent about that half of Harry’s ancestry. We do know one interesting fact, though: that Harry’s parents lived in a village called Godric’s Hollow—and the only Godric we have met in the six books so far is the great Gryffindor. Could it be that, just as Voldemort is the only known descendent of Salazar Slytherin, Harry is a (or the) descendent of Godric Gryffindor?
- If so, that would make him, from one point of view, a “relic” of Gryffindor, and therefore a potentially fit location for a Horcrux. It is at least possible that when Voldemort came to the infant Harry’s house that fateful night he had something other than Harry’s murder on his mind. In any case, I feel sure that we will learn much more about Harry’s ancestry in the seventh book, and that it will illuminate the nature of the bond between him and Voldemort. We may even discover that there is a reason why—this is something Voldemort’s ghostly image notes when he meets Harry in the Chamber of Secrets—why they even look alike.”
I like it. What do y’all think?
I have to admit, I’m not entirely looking forward to Book 7, because Rowling does humor so much better than she does anything dealing with good and evil (or anything of mythic proportions, really, except Snape–and I am eagerly anticipating Snape’s death, because it will no doubt be redemptive). I will enjoy the general cultural flurry surrounding the book’s release, and if my loving husband and I can share the book nicely, we’ll no doubt have it finished within 48 hours.
June 25th, 2007
(This review also appears at LookingCloser.org)
So many times in the past decade, we’ve heard a film lauded as “the return of the movie musical.” Evita. Chicago. The Phantom of the Opera. The Producers. Dreamgirls. Next: Hairspray. Though Chicago has its Best Picture Oscar to back its claim, these “reborn” movie musicals often seem to fall flat. Part of the problem may actually lie with the style of the more recent musicals themselves: stage shows like Phantom wowed audiences because they jacked up the “spectacle” factor of theater to new heights and in fact tried to challenge cinema’s monopoly on razzle-dazzle—but it’s actually difficult for film to convey the visceral thrill of having a three-dimensional chandelier come swooping down over your head. Film, however, can capture finely tuned emotions in a close-up on a character’s face, in a shot of calloused fingers strumming a guitar—and it’s this intimate aspect of the medium that Once, the new “Irish rock musical,” successfully embraces.
Once, which has been charming film festivals, critics, and audiences alike, is about as far from grandiosity as you can imagine. In fact, the label “musical” is a little misleading, because all the movie’s songs occur in the context of rehearsals or performances by the musician characters; no random bursting into song here. Glen Hansard, real-life lead singer for The Frames (the band for which Once’s writer/director, John Carney, was formerly a bassist) , plays a Dublin busker moping after his lyin’, cheatin’ girlfriend (as he relates in a hilarious song called “Broken Hearted Hoover-Fixer Sucker Guy”—in addition to busking, he also helps out with his father’s vacuum cleaning business, hence the “Hoover-Fixer”).
He is prodded back into life gradually through the tenaciousness of a young Czech immigrant woman, also a musician—and, even better, she’s a musician with a broken vacuum cleaner. Once’s protagonists, known simply as the Guy and the Girl, discover how well his guitar-playing and her piano-playing blend, and they wonder if this musical harmony means that they are meant to be together romantically.
Once has also been dubbed a “love story,” and it is one, but not in the standard Hollywood mode. The love between Guy and Girl develops into the true kind of love that will sacrifice self-interest for the sake of the other. In some ways, the relationship between Guy and Girl actually reminds me of the relationship between the two main characters in Lost in Translation—both pairs have other commitments, but both pairs are drawn together in part by their shared status as outsiders. Guy and Girl, however, are much more easily likable and probably less in need of anti-depressants than Bill Murray’s and Scarlett Johansson’s characters. And, as compared to Lost in Translation, Once suggests much more hope in the ability of humans to communicate with each other, at least through music.
Watching Once, I several times wished for subtitles, for the song lyrics as well as the dialogue. The Dublin accents can be difficult to decipher. In spite of sometimes making up my own lyrics when I couldn’t understand the real ones, I didn’t feel mystified at any point about what the characters were feeling. Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who plays the Girl, are not trained actors, but they are musical collaborators in real life, and they prove to be powerful performers both of their own songs and of the dialogue written by Carney. The lyrics certainly give us a window into the characters’ lives, but it’s not necessary to understand every word.
Carney chooses the phrase “visual album” rather than “musical” to describe Once’s genre, and it’s true that, in some ways, Once is like a concept album illustrated with film. The music is the primary driving force, and the story seems to form organically around the songs—you never get the feeling, as you sometimes do in a musical, that the composers scratched their heads and said, “Now how can I make a song fit here?” No, as much as I love 1940s and 1950s musicals, I think the era of the “I’m going to break into song now” movie musical is gone. It either has to be done with self-reflexive cynicism, as in the hospital delivery-room dance scene in Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You, or simply and naturally, as in Once.
Once’s low budget is almost as famous as its rave reviews: the movie was made for under $200,000. (A higher budget had been planned, and rising star Cillian Murphy was slated to play the role of the Guy, but when he backed out, the film lost some of its producers. It’s only at that point that Hansard was cast as the singer of his own songs.) One of the things I noticed about Once was that neither Guy nor Girl had a cell phone—an oddity indeed in contemporary, tech-savvy Dublin, and no doubt a symbol of their outsider status. The lack of cell phones could also be a metaphor for the movie itself: a low-tech movie without glamour or special effects, relying on old-fashioned methods of communication—and delighting us, without the razzle-dazzle.
P.S. A couple of people have reminded me that Moulin Rouge is one recent movie musical that has succeeded artistically, critically, and popularly. True. And I like it, too. However, it is different from your standard movie musical in that (1) like Once, it never was a stage show; and (2) most of its songs aren’t original. In fact, the latter characteristic is one of the reasons it’s so interesting: the anachronism of 1980’s rock music in around-1900 Paris works, strangely. The movie does have one original song, “Come What May,” which is pretty standard musical fare in that it’s two people singing their feelings to each other. Maybe I’d like this song better if Ewan McGregor’s singing voice didn’t make me cringe.
June 25th, 2007