>The ArcLight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood was fancy pants. After all it is (“Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams…” –Pretty Woman, obvi) Hollywood, so it stands to reason that their theatres should have assigned seating, epic screens and validated parking.
Following my friends to our seats, I cooed at the ceiling, “It looks like we’re inside the Epcot Center ball!” (I’ve always had a bizarre affection for that giant Epcot golf ball… but I digress) It wasn’t my idea to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I was willing to come along for the ride.
I am not a Harry Potter fan. That is not to say that what I think J.K. Rowling has created with her empire is anything short of, well, a capital “S” Superstah fairytale international kingdom, well gilded with riches and notoriety. I am in curious awe, of course, of any realm so far reaching in scope and power, and kudos to her for the genius marketing of her corporate team’s vision to propel the mega world into mega bucks. Always a voracious reader, I remember being quite surprisingly captivated by the 1st book, that momentum propelling me to slurp up #2 and #3 quite quickly thereafter. By the time #4 came along, I had to wait for its arrival. The wait dampened my enthusiasm; I was jaded to quidditch as just another sport, and when eyeing its thick hardcover I remember surmising, “It was fun, but not fun enough to haul around with me as dead weight.” (I’ll refrain from any gauche relationship metaphor here.) I wonder had Kindle been around then, if it could have persuaded me into a perusal of #4.
I kinda assumed that the #6 film would give a once over, “last… on Harry Potter” sequence, bringing illiterates up to date with its characters, but it seems they deduced rather than waste time on needless exposition, to dive right in. So basically I had no idea what was happening throughout the first act of the film. It seemed very slow. And very dramatic. Soap operas seemed like sitcoms by contrast to the lethargic anticipation that was this 1st act.
Anyhow, I was oh-so-patiently waiting for the movie to progress for two and a half hours. About 2/3rds of the way through (I’m assuming if you care at all about HP you will have seen the film by this point and there is no need for a spoiler alert here, although, in any event, here: spoiler alert) there is the big scene between Harry Potter and his bestie Ron Weasley, where Ron has to face his biggest fears before they can progress.
Now in all the slow moving drama that precedes, some pretty big things are on the line. People are dying right left and center, there are battles and incredible healing powers sealing what would be fatal wounds, faces are rivers of tears and foreheads webs of wrinkled anxiety. People are being chased and go into hiding from monstrously hideous bad guys, all in a vast, disparately landscaped set of varying shades of darkness. It seems existence as their race knows it is ultimately being threatened and it’s up to HP and crew to do that “the one” hero thing and, in seven books/films or less, ya know, save the world.
So in this moment, where Ron has arrived in the nick of time to save Harry, up comes a swirling black mass of ghoulish black clouds, illustrated and sounded elaborately as Ron’s fears. Ron has to be able to face his fears in order to conquer them and save Harry. In the theatrical panorama that is the ensuing armageddon of the HP saga, are Ron’s fears centered around the expulsion of their race, or the fall of life as they know it? Are they masses of worries about those dying or of his own possible extinction? No… it’s all… “mommy didn’t love me, the girl I want loves Harry more, and ‘Harry can do better without you.’”
I loved this part of the movie, because this is where it got real.
It reminds me of the portion of Elizabeth Gilbert’s star memoir, Eat Pray Love.
(wow, aren’t I being a little media piglet with the topical blockbuster pop-culture references in this post) where she speaks about meeting refugee girls in a camp. Instead of being worried about their displaced homeland or future as a community, their counseling with her consisted of, “OMG—there’s this cute boy in the refugee camp, I don’t know if he likes me.”
This is the human condition. As much compassion as we can and do muster for the atrocities befalling many parts of the world, generally our greatest fears and our most prevalent thoughts are not of inhumanities elsewhere. The kryptonite that is our ego mind saddles us with the running dialogue of things close to our hands and heart.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Hallow is not in my daily lexicon, so I google’d it for the purposes of this blog. “To make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate.” The ‘deathly’ hallows could easily be defined as examining those darkest parts of ourselves by taking the ugliest fears and making friends with them, thereby transforming them to “holy.” Or as I would put it, as more one with ourselves. This is after all, what my teachers, Buddhist and Indian (and any wealth of other traditions) urge us to do. By facing the ego, we not only befriend it, but the ultimate spiritual enlightenment they say, is the ultimate death of the ego, creating an intrinsic sense of oneness with all. HP is another modern mass media outlet underlining that the courage to face these fears is where our greatest strengths lie. Hallowed be the death.
What I liked most about this Harry flick was not just the stadium seating and the company of my loveliest of friends, but that within the melodrama that is an uber-blockbuster and all of its surrounding brouhaha, the underlying message is simple. When the world is falling apart, start where you are. That’s why the Harry and Ron scene rang real—if your true fears are girl problems or jealousy of your best friend, be there. Be here. All you have is what’s right in front of your nose, and the healing can only begin when you get real about what’s really in your mind. To throw in a last pop reference, by the perhaps not so esteemed and yet still admired En Vogue: “free your mind, and the rest will follow.”
