If you die down there, you’re more than welcome to share my toilet.
-Moaning Myrtle
Details
Release date: November 15, 2002
Director: Chris Columbus
Nationality: English
Budget: $100 million
Revenue: $878,979,634 worldwide
Production Notes
Chris Columbus once again helms the movie, although Frank Oz was approached
Stuart Craig returned to design new sets and a myriad of other magical elements for the new film.
Filming began in November 2001 in many places from the first film such as Privet Drive and compilation of places for Hogwarts. Kings Cross was also used once again.
Francis Nolan, a linguistics professor, created the fictional snake language Parseltongue for the movie.
Pro Tools was used for the Sound design.
John Williams returned for the orchestral composition of the movie and was helped by William Ross.
Synopsis
Young Harry Potter finds himself once again with his extended family, the Dursleys as his school year is about to begin. While Vernon(Richard Griffiths) tells Harry to behave as he is about to make a big sale, he sends him to his room to pretend he doesn’t have a young ward in his home. Harry complains about not receiving any letters from his new friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint). Dobby then shows up in Harry’s room revealing himself to be a house-elf, i.e. wizard slave, and tells him he will be in danger if he returns to Hogwarts that year. In order to ensure that he stays put, Dobby (Toby Jones) drops a cake with magic on Vernon’s client and Vernon subsequently blames and punishes Harry for his alleged deeds. During the night, Harry hears a car in the distance that turns out to be his friend Ron and his brothers whom Harry had met the year before. The flying car is revealed to have been modified by their dad and they took it to save Harry from his entrapment. In the morning, the Weasley family take Harry to buy his school supplies in Diagon Alley where he accidentally teleports to the wrong store. Hidden, Harry sees his nemesis Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) and his father Lucius Malfoy (Jason Isaacs) enter the store to drop off some seemingly dark objects.
After Harry gets situated he runs into Hermione who is also buying supplies. Once reacquainted they all go to a book signing hosted by famous wizard Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh) and are confronted by Draco and his father. Lucius puts a book into Ginny’s (Bonnie Wright) cauldron (Ron’s little sister) but no one seems to notice other than Harry. Once that happens they all go to platform 9 and 3 Quarters but Ron and Harry are locked outside. Scared they might miss the train and their chance to attend Hogwarts the kids take the magical flying car and chase after the train. They are also promptly seen by a couple of Muggles, humans with no magic.They manage to land the car in the Whomping Willow which turns out to be a sentient tree that tries to squish them and Ron breaks his wand. The car, sentient as well, kicks the boys out and disappears into the forest. Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) yells at them and threatens them with expulsion but Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) gives them only detention.
After his detention session with his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Lockhart, Harry hears voices and follows them only to find Filch’s (David Bradley) cat petrified. A message looms overhead where the cat was hanging saying that the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. Later that week the kids are taught about the Chamber, the staff unable to keep it a secret from all the prying eyes, and was said to have been created by a founder of Hogwarts, Salazar Slytherin, who has ideas about Muggle and Wizard relations. Slytherin believed in a pure blood race and detested those who had mixed blood. He raised a Basilisk and placed it in the chamber in order to purify the school of those Mudbloods, but had since been thought to have been a myth as it had not been opened in years. In order to get more information, the trio begin to brew poly juice potion, which allows them to turn into anyone they have genetic material for, and do so in a haunted bathroom. The potion, however, would take a month to complete. At a certain point Harry ends up in the hospital wing of Hogwarts after suffering a Quidditch injury and Dobby appears yet again revealing he locked him out of the Platform earlier that year, Harry furious sends him away. Lockhart began a dueling club shortly after and instructed the children on the art of battle. He fought with Snape but immediately lost in a flamboyant manner as if he planned to do so. Draco and Harry are then made to duel but Draco conjures a snake and Harry is forced to talk to it so it wouldn’t hurt a Hufflepuff student. This act leads to the student body viewing Harry as the one who is opening the chamber. Once the potion is ready, Harry and Ron disguise themselves as Draco’s posse and find out a girl was killed when the Chamber opened fifty years before. After turning back they find out Hermione messed up her potion and was turned into a cat girl and was sent to the hospital wing.
Harry later on stumbles upon Tom Riddle’s diary, a student that used to attend Hogwarts, and speaks with it. The diary shows him what happened when the Chamber was last opened and how Hagrid was blamed for what happened with the girl. Tom accuses Hagrid and a large spider crawls out of Hagrid’s box. Harry returns to his room on a later date only to find it ransacked and the diary missing. News also comes that Hermione has also been petrified. As the boys question Hagrid back in present day, he is visited by Professor Dumbledore and Minister of Magic, i.e. Magic Prime Minister, Cornelius Fudge. The boys sneak out as Hagrid gives them a clue to follow the spider. Hagrid is then taken to Azkaban, wizard jail, as the Ministry thinks its the same spider causing the students petrification. The spider reveals to the boys that he and Hagrid were both innocent and that the Basilisk was causing the petrifictation and then promptly tries to feed the boys its children. They are saved by the now feral car and it goes back to its new wild life. Harry and Ron visit Hermione and find something in her hand, a piece of paper with details on how to avoid instant death at the hands of the monster. Everyone petrified so far was lucky enough to have only seen the monster’s reflection, as direct eye contact with its eyes causes instant death. Harry and Ron then overhear that Ginny has been taken into the Chamber and will most likely die there. The school staff volunteer Gilderoy Lockhart as the one to go in to the Chamber and he agrees only to be found by Ron and Harry to be fleeing. He reveals himself to be a fraud and that he has been charming people with magic in order to pass of their deeds as his.
They force him into the Chamber, but Lockhart manages to get Ron’s broken wand. As he is casting a spell to erase their memories, it backfires and erases his own memory. Due to a collapse of the Chamber’s cave system due to the impact of the charm Harry is forced to go alone and finds the girl. Tom Riddle then appears revealing himself to be the Heir of Slytherin and the one who opened the Chamber now and fifty years ago. He also reveals himself to be Lord Voldemort albeit a younger incarnation. After sicking the Basilisk on Harry, a phoenix named Fawkes that Harry met earlier in the year flies in with the Sorting Hat. Fawkes arrived just in time and blinded the monster so Harry could look at it. The Sword of Gryffindor then appears from within the hat and Harry uses it to kill the Basilisk by stabbing it in the mouth, but gets poisoned in the process. Harry then uses the same fang that poisoned him to destroy the diary and Tom Riddle as well, reviving Ginny and vanquishing evil once again. As he succumbs to the poison, the phoenix Fawkes cries into the wound healing him completely and flies everyone out of the Chamber. Back in Dumbledore’s office, Dumbledore reveals the sword’s true nature and allegiance to loyal Gryffindors and Lucius walks in. Harry and Lucius have a battle of words and Dobby comes out from under Malfoy revealing himself to be enslaved to their family. Harry accuses Lucius of placing the book in Ginny’s things but he denies it after Harry returned the broken diary to him. Dobby opens it to find a sock effectively freeing him from servitude and promptly defends Harry from Lucius. Afterwards, everyone terrified is saved thanks to Madam Pomfrey’s Mandragora juice and Hagrid comes back from jail to the applause of everyone.
Analysis
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a fictional work with allusions to real life problems. Chamber of Secrets is a children’s movie through and through but it is definitely more grown up than the first entry in the franchise. Chamber of Secrets touches upon many real world problems such as discrimination. In fact, this is the first movie where this is really touched upon. This can be seen right off the bat when Lucius ridicules Arthur for associating with Muggles and mixed blood and also when Draco calls Hermione a Mudblood. This has strict allusions to race issues in real life and mostly those views held by Nazis and the like. The white, blonde purebloods are painted as the snobbish villains here. Of course, this also leads into the racial purity debate among the character’s of that world. Some of those prejudicial sentiments can relate to those we saw in the years leading up to WW2 and a bit after. Tom Riddle being a handsome, young man that could easily persuade people has allusions to Hitler and his viewpoints as well as his overall charisma.
Chamber of Secrets is of the Magical Realism/Fantasy genre. The film is a strictly magical but it really does have its realism far more than the first film. Other films in the same genre would be films and series like Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia. This is still, however, a continuing investigation into the wizarding world. This is only Harry’s second year in the world and is still learning about it. However, he stumbles upon the dark shadow cast by the person that killed his family and tries to make sense of it throughout the film. The film also touches on some Good vs Evil, albeit in a more murky manner, and the importance of just being accepting of others.
Chamber of Secrets is a sequel. It builds upon and continues the story without doing too much differently. In fact, both Chamber of Secrets and the Sorcerer’s Stone pretty much follow each beat for beat. Hero arrives, explores world, tries to adapt, uncovers secrets, and defeats evil and survives. It’s not until Prisoner of Azkaban that the story really starts to take off, but Chamber of Secrets does good in expanding the world and introducing the audience to the main argument of the entire series.
Citations
“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” Box Office Mojo, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl1433110017/.
“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 13 Nov. 2002, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0295297/.
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