Book-Movie Comparison: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

This is another film that was largely faithful to the book.  Like The Sorcerer’s Stone, it covers all the major events of the book and brings the characters to life wonderfully, but the overall feel of it is missing some of the spark from the book, and various little edits result in the story not feeling quite as tight (spoilers.)

Nearly every important book scene (and plenty of the non-essential but memorable ones) is present here, mostly as it happened.  There’s a little condensing, and some things happen a bit differently to get more to the point – for instance, the first attack is moved up to right after Harry first hears the basilisk’s voice, with everything about Nearly Headless Nick’s deathday party getting cut out.  But all the big set pieces are there, all the major themes, and a lot of the humorous bits.

For me, the highlights include the Flourish & Blotts scene (both Gilderoy Lockhart’s goofy introduction and the quiet, chilly menace of Lucius Malfoy – Kenneth Branagh and Jason Isaacs were inspired choices for the characters) and Harry’s confrontation in the Chamber with Tom Riddle.  Again, the villainous exposition, on the whole, is handled in a cinematically-friendly way; Christian Coulson nails the characterization, and mixing in flashes of Ginny under his control breaks up a dialogue-heavy scene.

My biggest issues with the adaptation are several series of little things that add up.  While the book continually throws in little mentions of Ginny, keeping her present in a pretty unobtrusive way, she’s virtually a non-entity in the movie until she’s revealed as under Riddle’s control.  Similarly, the movie doesn’t include those passing notes about various characters’ blood status, and as a result, it talks about the prejudice behind the Chamber of Secrets without doing much to demonstrate it.

Also, two books in, I’m really noticing how the movies don’t do as much as they could with Ron growing up in a magical family while Harry and Hermione are raised by Muggles.  Sure, he’s Harry’s introduction to wizarding world candy and whatnot in The Sorcerer’s Stone, but the movies I’ve compared so far have wasted opportunites to show that Ron knows this world better than his friends do, like explaining the slur “Mudblood.”  (That said, I do like that the movie shows Hermione already knowing the term and feeling hurt by it – given the prejudice in the community, it seems unlikely she wouldn’t have encountered it at all during her first year.)  The movies have also eliminated little details on the flipside, like Harry teaching Ron about telephone numbers.  These are good moments in the books that reflect the kids’ varied experiences, and leaving them out of the films make the movies feel just a bit flatter.