Two decades on, Harry Potter magic endures

Diti Pujara goes down memory lane to describe how JK Rowling's fantasy book series became a cult classic movie franchise

In Kolkata, winters are the most beautiful time of the year after Durga Puja. Just as the season’s greetings light up the city, another event is eagerly awaited — the book fair.

Two Harry Potter books — the Goblet of Fire and Prisoner of Azkaban — were the most awaited books then. It was 2001, the year when Harry Potter, author JK Rowling’s cult character, emerged out of the books and thrilled us on the big screen.

The first Harry Potter film (The Philosopher’s Stone) opened to a terrific response in the city. I watched it in Hindi and much later in English, swayed by the magical Hogwarts but understanding very little about it. All I knew was we must strive to be like Harry, ‘the boy who lived’.

As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, the cast of the film series’ will reunite on January 1 in an HBO Max retrospective special. Even as we wait for the show, it is worth looking at how the casting and the characters influenced our opinion of the series, far different from the way we perceived the books.

I read the books as an adult and they shaped me in a different way than the films. I found themes such as depression, courage, friendship, loyalty, and the power woven beautifully with the narrative of Harry’s coming of age. The struggles of Harry and his world were just as much the struggles of myself and those around me.

The films inspired a different sensibility through their iconic scenes, the splendour of the wizarding world, and enrapturing shots that spanned the beautiful landscape of a different universe. The franchise became the talking point among my school friends who were awaiting their own letters, ready with their Harry Potter-themed water bottles and school bags.

Room for nuance

“The films often focused on the complexity of the setting as opposed to the complexity of the characters. They used physicality in appearance to show a character’s most essential quality. Hence there was little room for nuance,” Siddharth Panday, a UK-based financial analyst and an avid reader, said.

Each director lent his own style to the seven-part series and one of the best of the lot is Alfonso Cuaron. In ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’, his artistic abilities shine bright.

The series saw a major shift tonally. The palette moves from a different set of colours and warmer tones from the beginning to a much darker side of the spectrum later, in line with the story and the development of the characters.

“It started with something I’d watch during Christmas to adolescent problems to a journey of self-discovery and forces larger than you can see,” says Nayyar Abdul Rasheed, a Potterhead who discovered the books first and then watched the movies.

The chemistry between the actors was so iconic that it defined what most people perceived Harry, Ron, and Hermoine to be.

“Many characters do get left out in the films but whenever I think of Harry, Ron, and Hermoine, I imagine Daniel, Rupert and Emma hunched together, whispering,” Nayyar adds.

However, most fans agree that the films faltered in one major aspect: the relationships between characters and subplots.

“The medium is time-sensitive and does not allow you to gloss over the relationships. The nuanced relationship between Sirius and Harry or Dumbledore and Harry or the story of Snape cannot be fleshed out well in such a short time frame,” Vaibhavi Khanwalkar, an avid Potterhead, points out.

The popularity of the films led to more people seeking the series, many of whom turned to it for solace and many created from the Potterverse, worlds of their own.

A happy 20th to one of largest fan-fiction enterprises that continues to unravel something special. As a fan rightly puts it, “I prefer to see the Harry Potter films as films that grew up with their audience.”