Authors: David Nolan
The 3D effects are low-key to the point of being hard to spot, though there’s something deeply satisfying about seeing 3D Dementors floating eerily over Hogwarts. The effect truly comes into its own with the piece by piece destruction of Voldemort, as bits of the Dark Lord appear to flutter over the audience’s heads. Emma herself was initially unconvinced by the introduction of 3D into the series. She was eventually won round. ‘It’s done really elegantly and subtly,’ she told Radio 1 after seeing the film. ‘Things don’t jump out at you. It brings you in.’
The twice-filmed epilogue of the grown-up trio is thankfully free of creaky ageing make-up effects – Emma looks largely like you’d expect her to but with a more grown-up haircut. The trio are now adults and a new generation of Weasleys and Potters are heading for Hogwarts. Then … the credits roll and the most successful film series of all time is over. ‘It’s epic times four,’ was Emma’s verdict of the film when asked by the BBC’s Edith Bowman. ‘It’s so dramatic, I was crying like a baby at the end.’
Reviewers, many of whom had fallen in and out of love with the series over the years, were near unanimous that, this time, the film-makers had got it right.
The Guardian
was clear that ‘the Potter saga could hardly have ended on a better note than this final movie. With one miraculous flourish of its wand, the franchise has restored the essential magic to the Potter legend, zapping us all with a cracking final chapter. It’s dramatically satisfying, spectacular and terrifically exciting.’
‘Our central threesome do not disappoint,’ said the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘Radcliffe’s erstwhile plankishness has transformed into a heroic stoicism, Watson has perfected the requisite winsome, fearful look, panting and gasping with the best of them and even Grint can now do “emotional”, pulling off a big scene in which one of his brothers is slain. This is monumental cinema, awash with gorgeous tones and carrying an ultimate message that will resonate with every viewer, young or old: there is darkness in all of us, but we can overcome it.’
Time Out
: ‘Everyone brings their A game here, notably director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves, who balance the source novel’s head-spinning blend of action, emotion and narrative intrigue with absolute confidence: one lengthy flashback sequence midway through is arguably the dramatic high point of the entire series and even the sugary sweet coda, so mawkish on the page, becomes a thing of quiet beauty. The special effects are phenomenal, bringing to the magical shenanigans a tactile solidity which has been missing in previous episodes, while Yates’s use of 3D is never intrusive, and occasionally breathtaking.’
With the release of the final Potter film, Emma Watson’s first professional acting job had finally come to an end – and in her words it was a ‘heck of a first job’. It would stay
with her forever, not only in terms of the fame it brought her, but also how she would conduct her acting career in the future: ‘When I’ve signed on for other projects, people don’t really understand why I get so jumpy and quite concerned,’ Emma told ITV1’s
Daybreak
. ‘I think it’s because I signed on for one thing [Harry Potter] and it became a 12-year project. I realise everything else isn’t going to be like that but … I can’t believe what it turned into. Jo wrote this incredible female role. I think it’s unprecedented because she’s not just an equal to the boys, in some respects you can see that she’s a stronger fighter. She’s a stronger witch – that just doesn’t happen in blockbuster movies. Women tend to be these generally pretty sidekicks. And Hermione isn’t that at all.’
Emma Watson is an anomaly, a blip in an otherwise crushingly predictable set of show-business rules. The ‘journey’ for so many young stars – after that initial burst – is expected to be a downward one. Young, beautiful, talented and rich? Off to rehab you go, preferably via a courtroom and an unedifying fall from grace.
It’s an offscreen drama that Emma has resolutely refused to be cast in. ‘I think it’s hard,’ she says, when asked about why many of her contemporaries find it so difficult to stay on the rails. ‘I can totally understand why they go nuts with the level of interest in their lives and the pressure to be perfect – and they’re teenagers. And that’s what you do: you screw up. It’s really hard, so I would never criticise that.’
The nurturing and protective environment of Leavesden
and the protection of the older Potter actors seems to have been a major factor in Emma and the others exiting the franchise with so few scars. ‘There’s an awful lot of
so-called
“child stars” who get sucked into this business, and next thing you know they’re 15 and in rehab,’ Robbie Coltrane said. ‘That hasn’t happened here. If anyone came here and said a rude thing about them, I think 300 strong men would leap into action and kill.’
It’s telling the number of times the 1960s is referenced with Emma Watson. Harvey Weinstein compares her to model Jean Shrimpton; she references sixties muse Jane Birkin and walks into a hair salon with a picture of Mia Farrow, asking to be made to look like her. In many ways, Emma Watson is a performer out of her time, with more in common with actresses of the 1960s such as Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave and the late Susannah York. She’s glamorous, well brought up, yet committed and active in social and humanitarian issues.
We expect more of Emma than a Lindsay Lohan and a Miley Cyrus – and we are rarely, if ever, disappointed. It’s a measure of how much we have invested in Emma that being seen in the same cab as someone like Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell, wearing a short skirt or having a haircut is seen to send out such shockwaves. But maybe, with the responsibility of representing the Potter empire receding, the shackles are starting to come off. ‘I wished I’d done more naughty things,’ she told the
Sun
. ‘I’m ready to start taking risks.’
Emma’s background – the word ‘privileged’ is not too wide of the mark – meant that fame was never going to be her salvation. She would have done perfectly well without
it. It’s a side issue that is an inconvenience rather than a reason for living. ‘I have enough to hold me together without fame,’ she points out. This means the way she deals with it is very different from many of her contemporaries. ‘That’s how I am. Fame never attracted me. Actually, I’m quite shy, I’ve never liked attention and money. I feel myself a little bit like
Finding Nemo
’s Dory [the fish with a non-existent memory]. I just keep swimming and don’t turn around to watch the mess.’
Emma is neither the first nor the last performer to be the product of what used to be called a ‘broken home’, but her way of dealing with it has been refreshing to say the least. No self-pity or woe-is-me here, just a heads-down,
let’s-get-on-with-it
attitude coupled with an adaptability that treated the Leavesden Studios as a consistent and remarkably nourishing environment. She didn’t grow up in Hollywood or even Oxford: she grew up in an old aircraft factory. ‘Harry Potter was entirely filmed in a studio in the middle of nowhere, in the most stinky, leaky, falling-apart shed you can ever imagine, and I went to that place every day for ten years. Yes, I made these extremely famous movies, but everything was inside a bubble, with the same people. Everything was really contained. The crew became my family. I wasn’t involved with all the Hollywood stuff, that would’ve made me feel really disturbed and lost. No one ever treated me as if I was different from anyone, nobody treated us as stars.’
Emma has even dared to use a word you very rarely hear these days in an effort to explain why she has thrived under such unusual conditions. ‘There’s also my
breeding
. My
family – and I can’t really make enough emphasis in this – isn’t interested in the artistic environment at all. In my house, nobody watches movies, they are
academic-oriented
, they are just not interested in this. My being an actress is not their dream made true. They just want to watch me happy. Their main focus is not my stardom.’
She may have been born in France and lived in Oxford and London, but Emma Watson spent most of her time on the set of the Harry Potter films, either racing around on her bike in the less-than-salubrious environment of Leavesden Studios in Watford or out on location in far-flung corners of Britain. ‘I don’t think I’m as black and white as the media like to make me out. I’m not your classic public-school girl because I’ve been brought up here, in Watford. And I’ve met and worked with people from a million different
backgrounds
. Everyone’s going to think different things about me and I can’t control that. You can’t please everyone. And that’s something that I’m learning.’
It has sometimes been said that working on the film series is referred to as the ‘Potter Pension’, thanks to the long-term and financially rewarding nature of the task. But for Emma the investment has been an emotional one – the men and women who worked on the films became her family and have given her a consistency that was lacking in her life split between her parents. ‘God knows how many hours – years – I’ve spent on set,’ she told
The Times
. ‘But my driver Nigel was trying to work out how many hours he’d driven in the car, and he says the distance was twice around the world.’
The questions about Emma’s childhood would have a
remarkably similar ring to them over the years: Are you sad that you missed out on your childhood by being involved in the Potter films from such a young age? ‘It’s difficult to talk about the things we missed when we gained so much,’ she pointed out. ‘We probably had to grow up a lot quicker than normal children, we had a lot of responsibility. In that sense, it was difficult and a lot of pressure, but the experience has been so amazing and unique.’
It’s an unprecedented achievement for an ensemble cast – particularly such a young one – to emerge intact from such a marathon bout of filmmaking. To have the same people playing the same roles from such a young age until adulthood is unique. It will be a very long time until it’s equalled – if ever. ‘I think it’s amazing to look back and think I’ve been part of eight big, big, big films. I’m so proud,’ Emma said. ‘It feels like a real accomplishment. I actually find the earlier ones a lot easier to watch, because I’m able to detach myself from my
young
self a lot more. Whereas maybe watching the fifth or the fourth one, I’m just a couple of years younger – it’s
me
, a younger me. I find that more cringey. It feels like I’m watching someone different on screen when I’m nine or ten.’
Emma’s relationship with the co-stars who have shared those eight big films is the one that’s fascinated the public the most – a public who saw no reason why the fairytale couldn’t have a logical conclusion. As we saw earlier, Daniel Radcliffe has said that there was never anybody he really fancied in the cast, in spite of the constant expectation from fans that he and Emma were dating. The fans always seemed to expect that the young Potter stars
spent all their spare hours having sleepovers and larking about together. They have all toed the party line on this, politely pointing out that, as they spend such a vast amount of time on set together, it would be reasonable to spend spare moments with family and friends back home. Emma admits that hanging out together off set would be ‘overload’. ‘I love them, but I need to see other friends off set. They’re like my siblings now.’
Only Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) seems to have broken ranks with a rather frosty response to one journalist who asked whether he had seen Emma now that Potter filming was finished. ‘I haven’t seen so much of her,’ he told the
Daily Mail
. ‘She is very professional and seems like an intelligent lady.’
But it’s the onscreen relationships between the young stars that set the Potter series apart from other film franchises. As cinemagoers, we knew where we stood with the world of Harry Potter. James Bond changes – Pierce Brosnan one minute, Daniel Craig the next – but the Potter kids remained the same. ‘The audience and fans have a relationship [with the actors] that goes back ten years, and that’s something really magical,’ director David Yates told the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘That is actually more important than all the battles, frankly, and all the special effects, and everything, because they are going through the cycle of life that we’ve all been through.’
It’s the young actors who are the secret ingredient to the Potter franchise and its multi-billion-pound success. It certainly isn’t critical acclaim that’s led people to pay their money at the box office for the best part of a decade. Harry
Potter films rarely get the plaudits bestowed on less successful films. Their performers don’t appear onstage at the Oscars when Best Actor or Best Actress statuettes are being handed out and the films don’t top the critics’ lists of their favourites. As
Sunday Times
film critic Cosmo Landesman pointed out, ‘If the Harry Potters really are such great films, why is it that they are never cited in reputable newspaper and film magazine polls of top films? In both
The Times
100 Best Films of the Decade and the
Sunday Times
Top 40 Films of the Millennium – devised by polling teams of critics for their opinion – none of the Harry Potter films makes an appearance. Is this just filmic snobbery? It seems not. The same is true of best-film lists found in film magazines such as
Empire
and
Total Film
, even when the polls are based on readers’ votes.’
As it happens, Emma was given an award for Child Performance of the Year by none other than
Total Film
in 2004, and
Empire
magazine gave the Potter films an Outstanding Contribution Award in 2006. But Emma’s awards have tended to be of a more populist nature: National Film Award for Best Female Performer and Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award for Best Movie Actress.
Any lingering feeling that the Harry Potter films hadn’t quite received their due was finally dispelled in February 2011, when it was announced that the franchise would be honoured with an award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards. Despite a decade of astonishing success, getting the nod from BAFTA seemed to mean a great deal to Emma: ‘This is a huge honour! I
am so proud to have been part of the incredible team both in front and behind the camera that made these films. Thank you to Jo Rowling for writing such wonderful books, to David Heyman for shepherding us all through the past ten years and to all the loyal fans who have been with us throughout.’