BEGUILING BEASTS
JK Rowling has made a fantastic film — with no help from Harry Potter
IT’S hard to imagine a time when Harry Potter wasn’t part of the cultural landscape — when Hogwarts and muggles, death eaters and horcruxes weren’t part of our everyday vocabulary. My own son was five in 1997 when Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was published. The phenomenon took a while to reach South Africa, but once we encountered the first book, we were hooked. I read the first three to him, and as he got older he read the subsequent titles himself. Rowling’s magical world was the backdrop to his childhood and we mourned when in 2011, the last film in the series was released and the great story arc was concluded.
Or was it? Last Sunday afternoon, I watched the cinema screen transfixed as an awkward, stooped young man carrying a scuffed brown suitcase stepped off the boat at Ellis Island in 1926. This was Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in which Eddie Redmayne plays zoologist Newt Scamander, who has travelled the world collecting the beasts of the title. He is a shy, preoccupied anti-hero, no good at social interaction but knowledgeable and confident around his creatures. The magical version of 1920s New York he enters is both recognisable and exotic, a steampunk revision of a reality we know so well. It appears that JK Rowling has indeed worked a long-wished-for miracle. She has opened the door to a whole new chapter in the saga — a world of magic that extends far beyond the walls of Hogwarts and Platform 9¾.
Newt’s case contains a collection of the extraordinary creatures he has gathered on his travels. Naturally, some escape into the city, wreaking havoc and threatening to expose the hidden magical world that exists alongside the everyday one. A series of chance encounters brings him into contact with Tina (Katherine Waterston), an intense and recently demoted auror from the Magical Congress of the USA, and hapless Kowalski (comedian Dan Fogler), a No-Maj (the American name for a muggle) who gets caught up in Newt’s adventures. Together with Tina’s glamorous and telepathic sister Queenie (singer Alison Sudol), Newt, Kowalski and Tina embark on an adventure in which they travel between worlds and battle magical forces of great evil, all the while concealing their activities from the suspicious No-Maj world.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that this film has everything. The chemistry between Redmayne and his three co-stars has the same collective power as the Harry/ Ron/Hermione trio. Much of the magical lore is recognisable, but we see many differences; where the British public in Harry Potter’s world seem largely oblivious to the magic in their midst, it is treated with great suspicion by the No-Maj population in the US.
Indeed, there’s a terrifyingly brilliant cameo from Samantha Morton as a puritanical witchhunter. This new world is dark, visually spectacular and sometimes quite frightening. This is definitely not a film for small children.
As the film unfolded, I found myself drawn into this vivid place, and as the credits rolled I realised that Rowling had done it again. She has rebooted the world of magic, blown it wide open and massively extended the possibilities of stories and adventures to come. Just before the film was released, it was announced that it was the first of a planned five.
When I met producer David Heyman, he confirmed that this was the case. The fantastic beasts will form the thematic link in a story that will take us from 1920s New York around the world, and end in 1945. True Potterheads will know that 1945 marks not only the end of World War 2, but the great battle between Dumbledore and his arch-enemy, Grindlewald, so this possibly offers a strong clue to the climax of the story arc. But who knows for sure? Only Rowling herself, it would appear. N a day of interviews with Heyman, director David Yates and five of the cast, the three words I heard most were, “I don’t know”. Will Newt be the hero for all five films? Who will play a young Dumbledore? Will all the films be set in the US? None of these questions could be satisfactorily answered. The intriguing answers can be found solely in one place — the mind of JK Rowling, a space as infinite and spectacular as Newt’s magical suitcase.
Rowling herself was not available for interview, but she was vividly present in the room. Director, producer and cast all speak of her with great love and respect, saying that she gave them immense creative freedom, only intervening when she felt a detail needed to be corrected.
“We had some designs for Newt’s suitcase,” said Yates, “which were very exotic — plenty of gold and elaborate detail. She pointed out that this was quite wrong. Newt wouldn’t want to draw attention to the case. It needed to be plain and brown, as if he had made it himself.”
Fogler mentioned the detailed and specific directions Rowling gave in the screenplay, giving each actor clear and inspiring guidance to develop their character. This is Rowling’s first screenplay, and she brings her novelist’s sensibility and attention to detail to the process. They all described her as immensely kind, generous with her time, and thoughtful.
“She did have to stop coming to the set though,” Sudol observed. “Every time she did, all work would grind to a halt and everyone would crowd around her. It was like the queen had come to see us.”
So what is to come in future adventures? Redmayne and Waterston confirmed that they are contracted for the first three films of the five, and all the main cast members seemed certain they will be appearing in the next film at least. But whether they continue as the protagonists, and where the story goes, remains to be seen. I do know, however, we will all want to be along for the ride.
This new world is dark, visually spectacular and sometimes quite frightening