13. The Letters That Find Us: Learning Magic in Our Lives With Harry Potter
A love letter from Aryan Vyas to "Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone
Dear Harry Potter, Mon Amour
You were the first DVD I ever owned. I remember going to my maternal grandmother’s place to watch you because at the time we didn’t own a DVD Player at our house. Even in that regard, you have become sacred to me. I turned my lonely summers and the burden of going to school daily into magical adventures, by letting the room bathe into your warm images as I sat down to re-watch you over and over again.
According to literary theorists, children’s literature is about discovering that there’s a world beyond you and through that discovery, figuring out where its limitations are. Young adult literature on the other hand, is about what happens when one transgresses those limits. Harry Potter remains a cultural phenomenon till date, because of its magical metaphors for adolescent struggles. There’s both a sense of longing and belonging in the story. The greatest strength of the first Harry Potter film lies in that we learn things as Harry does; he’s already a legend in the world he didn’t even know existed for all his life. His journey into the wizarding world always acts like a catalyst (or an excuse) for me to mark a new beginning going into new years. The fact its production design and thematics align so well with it being an ideal Christmas movie makes that even better.
According to the German Philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel, the point of art isn’t to come up with startlingly new strange ideas, but to take the good and ideally important thoughts and values that we think we already know, and make them stick more imaginatively into our minds. As the Harry Potter films evolved year by year, we started asking ourselves deeper questions about the themes that laid at the center of JK Rowling’s world. Maybe if Harry would’ve been raised as Dudley, he could’ve very well turned into a Malfoy. Maybe he would’ve looked down upon someone like, say Ron? But due to the fact that he was indeed raised the way he was, Harry reflects and contemplates upon who he’s truly becoming from what he initially was.
The greatest strength of the first Harry Potter film lies in that we learn things as Harry does; he’s already a legend into the world he didn’t even know existed for all his life. Every once in a while, I have to watch these films in order to make sure that those images and that feeling don’t fade away with time. When I re-watched Philosopher’s Stone this time around new years, it was all still there as I had remembered. I remember always staying on my couch as the film finished, watching the credits role, unwilling to accept that the experience of watching something so profound had already ended. I used to sit there letting John Williams’ score do the magic, unable to accept that I would now have to go back to the muggle world, away from Harry Potter. As I grew old, I realized that life doesn’t actually have to throw five-thousand letters swirling right at you; if there’s a path it’ll come to you no matter what. The Harry Potter films act as a reminder of how important it is to surround yourself with love. That’s always a good portal to venture new beginnings on.
Love,
Aryan
About Aryan
Aryan Vyas is a film critic who shares an equal fascination towards science and philosophy. Alike most cinephiles, he too believes that films carry the potential of acting as windows to peep into different cultures in search for the human condition. He has written for publications such as High on Films, Film Companion and Asian Movie Pulse. Through his write-ups, he looks at the artform through a sociopolitical lens, as he believes art is always better consumed knowing the subtext.