«Fantastic animals», a new saga in the wizarding world

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier

We are back in the same fictional universe as the saga Harry Potter. Except this time, the story takes place in New York in the 1920s, seventy years before the adventures of the young wizard. The American city is shaken by a series of inexplicable catastrophes. The wizards, like the viewer, soon guess that these have a magical cause. There's a central opposition in this spin-off series from’Harry Potterthe opposition between magicians and non-magicians.

A political backdrop

Among the «non-mages» (called «muggles» by the British), anxiety and mistrust reign. The Salem Faithful sect is even fighting for the extermination of wizards. As for the American Congress of Magic, the watchword is simple: don't reveal yourself, to avoid a war with the non-mages. The setting for the first episode written by J. K. Rowling is therefore above all political; historical allusions to the fate of the Jews, the witch-hunt and totalitarianism are of course not absent.

In the midst of this interwar climate, actor Eddie Redmayne (A marvellous history of time, The Danish Girl) plays the role of a young man with a passion for fantastic animals, whose aim is to draw up an inventory of them: Norbert Dragonneau, one of the characters mentioned in Harry Potter. In New York, where magical animals are not allowed, Norbert faces two problems: finding the creatures he let escape from his suitcase, and convincing Congress that they are not responsible for the attacks on the non-mage world.

After Harry Potter, difficult to do as well

Another character making the link with Harry Potter deserves all our attention: Gellert Grindelwald, a dark wizard whose trail has been lost for two years. A former companion of Albus Dumbledore, with whom he planned to take over the world, this character, who will no doubt play a crucial role in the new film series directed by David Yates, only appears at the end of the first opus, after a very well imagined turn of events. Played by Johnny Depp, Grindelwald doesn't quite inspire the same terror as Voldemort, but is just as interesting.

This instinctive desire to compare Fantastic animals to Harry Potter shows just how big a challenge J. K. Rowling: to do, if not better, at least as well as her global success. In fact, two main audiences stood out at the screening I attended: a generation, my own, whose childhood was imbued with the world of’Harry Potter, and another generation, ten years younger, who know little or nothing about this world and are discovering it with their own eyes. Fantastic animals.

Provisional results

So, if we are to judge this first film objectively, it is first and foremost the quality of the casting (Eddie Redmayne is a better actor than Daniel Radcliffe), well-crafted interactions between the magical world and the ordinary world, music by James Newton Howard that is somewhat inferior to that of John Williams or Alexandre Desplat (fortunately, the main theme of’Harry Potter is taken up again at a few points), and finally a magnificent tableau of magical creatures.

In short, J. K. Rowling's imagination combined with David Yates« talent for directing makes the viewer say, just like Jacob Kowalski's character: »I don't think I'm dreaming: I'm incapable of imagining all this." And therein lies the undeniable strength of fantasy cinema - or, to be more accurate, marvellous cinema.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: AlloCiné