Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: This Year We Arrive by Flying Car!

I want to arrive at Hogwarts by flying car! Just once, mind you. The comfort of the Hogwarts Express will do nicely the rest of the time. I think I'd rather enjoy the coziness of a train compartment and all the pumpkin pasties and chocolate frogs I can eat, than brave the elements in a flying Ford Anglia with a faulty invisibility booster. But ah, doesn't the latter sound like a first-class adventure?

And so it is! Having recently seen the film version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the first time in a few years, and enjoying it even more than I remembered enjoying it the first time, I thought I'd head back with Harry and the gang to Hogwarts for a second year of fun, peril and adventure. And hey, this was the year that Harry and Ron arrived at the castle in a flying car!

Director Chris Columbus and screenwriter Steve Kloves were also back for year 2, shepherding a longer, funnier and in some respects darker film by bringing J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to the big screen.

The Mystery Deepens

It's no mystery about the ingredients that go into making the Harry Potter film adaptations such a success. It's almost impossible to fault a movie this beautifully cast. In addition to the return of the terrific actors from movie 1, including Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, Rupert Grint as Ron, Emma Watson as Hermione, Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid, Richard Harris as Dumbledore, Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, and the amazing Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, Chamber gave us Kenneth Branagh in a role he clearly relished: the funny, aggrandizing, totally inept Gilderoy Lockhart, the school's new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher.

The film does struggle a bit when it comes to pacing and length. But even that's hard to fault. Columbus and Kloves seemed loath to part with much of the book. As someone who loves the books, I empathize with hard editing choices. But the fact is: Chamber is a longer and more complex written narrative. Such faithfulness to the written text, while extremely fun for us Harry Potter purists, makes the film a tad unwieldy and overlong. That doesn't mean I'm going to make suggestions about what to cut. I enjoyed every bit of what was there!

Part of what made this a more challenging adaptation was the fact that the story was indeed both darker and funnier than the first. Rowling didn't have to spend much time setting up Harry's character or the magical settings as she did in the first book; by the second story, we're eager and willing disbelief suspenders, ready to leap into the world she's written. Fittingly, the movie doesn't spend much time on setting us up either. We jump right into the action at Privet Drive, where Harry, following the dangerous exploits at the end of his first year, is feeling rather restless. He's holed up at the home of his disbelieving and unkind muggle relatives who could care less that Harry spent part of the previous school year warding off the attacks of a dark wizard. They just want him to stay out of sight and act as "normal" as possible around Uncle Vernon's business associates.

Alas, this becomes difficult to do. On the very night that Vernon is about the land the biggest deal of his career (heh, heh) Harry gets a visit from a magical creature he's never met before. Dobby the house-elf, cringing servant of some unknown wizarding family, has taken it upon himself to try to prevent Harry from returning to Hogwarts. The batty looking creature (handled skillfully via computer imagery) hints that dark doings are afoot and evil plots will be unleashed at Hogwarts this year. Harry can't go back or he will be in danger.

But of course Harry must go back, in part because Hogwarts is the only real home he knows. He's more intrigued than frightened by Dobby's warnings. It turns out, of course, that the house-elf is only too right about the evils schemes being hatched. In one of the more fascinating plot twists of the entire series (and one that ultimately means quite a lot within the scope of the series, though most of us didn't guess that at the time) Harry and his Hogwarts friends soon discover that an ancient chamber at the school, long hidden, has been re-opened. Not only re-opened, but the monster long hidden in its depths has been called forth, and is attacking students at the school who are not of "pure" wizarding blood. Even worse, legend states that the chamber could only be opened by the heir of Salazar Slytherin, one of the school's original founders, and the founder of the house that has produced more dark wizards than any other.

Who could the heir of Slytherin be? That's the mystery that drives this plot, which does indeed feel more like a traditional mystery than any of the other Potter stories. Harry, with help from his stalwart mates Ron and Hermione, is determined to find out, not only because he doesn't want to see Hogwarts closed, but because he himself becomes a suspect.

This is the story where we begin to share Harry's discomfort with his discoveries that he is more like Voldemort than he could have ever believed, and that there is, in fact, a bit of an "inner Slytherin" in our hero. As he learns these mysterious and troubling facts, and as he ferrets out the mystery, we stay on his side, even as we begin to wonder more and more about the mysterious night of his parents' death, the night that clearly formed Harry in ways he (and we) can barely fathom.

To give any more away would be to spoil a whomping good ride. I will say, however, that I think the film does a good job (in faithfulness to the book) at maintaining the forward movement of the overall series while still being an exciting and suspenseful story in its own right. And Chamber still has, I think, the most completely satisfying ending of any of the Harry Potter stories save the last. Special kudos to the set designers who created a marvelously spooky chamber for the final confrontation, as well as a fascinating office for Professor Dumbledore. And a glass of butterbeer raised high to some of the "minor" players in this film who help bring it to vibrant life, especially Jason Isaacs as the silkily malicious Lucius Malfoy; Shirley Henderson as the petulant and wacky Moaning Myrtle; and Christian Coulson as the young and strong-willed Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Chamber of Secrets is a wonderful cinematic ride for Harry Potter fans.

~befus, 2007