Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindenwald

Long story this one of Fantastic Beasts.
I requested a book review copy to Bloomsbury, leaving messages also by phone, but I didn't receive any answer.
More than a year ago.
It's normal for "little bloggers" sometimes not being taken in consideration by biggest realities or treated as an individual and not a reviewer accredited like the one of a bigger reality.
I remembered that I forgot Fantastic Beasts and I moved on.
Recently considering the movie with Johnny Depp with an important character on it, I requested again the book to the italian publishing house.
Waiting again, maybe I will be more lucky, who knows? I want to inform all of you that today I went to the cinema (hoooray! once in a while) for seeing Fantastic Beasts, intrigued by the character portrayed by Johnny Depp. Also. I add that I love Harry Potter movies and books.

I am a big fan of Harry Potter and the magical land created by J.K.Rowling was stunning and precious.
I am affectionate to the positive message that the movie was spreading. In that case books and movies were mainly thought for staying "there", you know, without any implied message for the society, viewers or readers. Harry was a teenager when he discovers that thanks to a murder he lost not just his dad but also his mother and that thanks to the spell of protection that his mother pronounced he survived; he also knows that the scar on his forehead means a connections established forever with the author of the murder of his parents: Lord Voldemort. He also discovers that he is a magician.

World was divided: there were the common people, and then wizards and other enchanting animals and creatures.

When Harry studied to Hogwarts reflections of what it could have been in the outside world didn't exist or they were just a pale idea.
He knew about other magical lands, other places connected with his story. Then once returned home, he returned to his daily routine in the disgusting house and family where he lived in, the one of his uncle and aunt.

Said that, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindenwald, let's start to saying this, to me it's not a creature of the mind of J.K.Rowling, no, but of the one of Johnny Depp. I follow Johnny Depp from 15 years and I know how he thinks, what he loves, what he dislikes and what he likes. What he adds in his movies, what he keeps out.

I saw his essence, his ideas, his massive and positive involvement in this production.

Sure: it's a mutation respect to the Harry Potter's saga and something different, there is to add this. It's a story more adult where thematic like love, sex, court, solitude, are treated abundantly. People are more alone.
If Harry was surrounded by a lot of friends, and received a lot of help the idea is that here people act differently; of course they have a story behind, they have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, but there is less company, and more solitude. The solitude of the modern man.

Protagonists: Dumbledore portrayed very well by Jude Law was a man pretty old in Harry Potter while now, like Grindenwald, a middle-age man.

The movie has lost the strong separations of the worlds existing in Harry Potter; and the fight against the terrible wizard personified by Johnny Depp is not just whispered but open. It's not a secret and there is more nonchalance.

Seeing the movie, I compared Lord Voldemort and his affiliates at a masonry group. No one would have wanted to add posters for let know to other ones that they were pro Voldemort, and they tried to be discreet (people of course knew their names but, it was a whisper, a doubts, a suspect in some cases); in this movie in this sense and where possible there is more relaxation. I didn't sleep seeing or reading some Harry Potter. I feel books and I feel movies tremendously and per decades and decades.

Grindenwald is the enemy and should be defeated. But who is this wizard? A powerful man and someone interested to conquer the minds of everyone. More close to the character of a dictator in search of approval and in search of consensus, he is a man although with a blue eye and a brown eye im grade of attracting, thanks to his fascination, wagons of people. Not only: the characterization of this character  to me is a vehicle for a strong message, implied to the years that we are living in. Confused, sad, where darkness is the main color of the souls of people and where smiles and trust, and happiness seems like lost.
At the same time it's this one a powerful message: let's always continue to use our heart and our mind, because maybe what we think that it is true it's not true and vice-versa.
It's a strong strong movie, this one, I can tell you that, with strong signals for the world and the actual historic moment.

When for example I saw Grindenwald surrounded by a lot of people. speaking to the assembly I thought: he speaks like a dictator. He remembered me old dictators. While I was thinking this I saw the atomic bomb and I saw war. Why this wizard  wants this power?
He is not immaterial; so he has a body, his tongue is back (long story you will see.)
Someone who wants to let believe to people that he is in the right, that he is the best option to them, and that all the other ones are nasty people; of course he is strong enough for accelerating this process of brain-washing in people's minds. Yes it doesn't have any kind of sophistication as maybe had Lord Voldemort, because the name couldn't be pronounced; Voldemort could be discovered in bodies of other people or creatures because de fact he didn't have body at all; he was a sort of Sauron, see at the voice The Lord of the Rings.
In this case, what Grindenwald wants is to be surrounded by a beautiful court of people telling him how adorable he is and he wants power because he knows that power is important. For changing as he wants, and as a dictator, the course of the events and of history.

People are, of course confused and when they saw him they embraced what he says as if he would have whispered a spell or if he would be a new savior.

I want also add that Grindenwald is pretty mundane.

He didn't ask to people of joining him with scaring messages launched by terrible creatures but calls people through elegant black velvet "wake" caressing in this way an entire city, and asking to people of joining him.

Black: our man loves black. Why? Black is the color of melancholy but also a color that can't let us see other colors, can't let us present any escapism. It's the color of the night, the color of death, the color of dark mood.
There is not joy in this color and London reflects this in the movie.

Important choices will be taken by the various protagonists;  killing is a gratuity, to Grindenwald. They are in the right; also when they kill. Why?  Because their opponents are the violent ones; but what is, if not a strong lack of freedom an action when the reaction is being killed? Tell me if Grindenwald presents to people freedom of speech, freedom of a pacific reaction against his thoughts.

Why the cemetery? There is in fact a scene in a cemetery. To me there is a reason and more profound than the one that we see on the big screen.
You see: death exists, and when there is a war we lose a lot of people and who is still alive  is tired, because fought for everyone and not just for his/her interest;  for values more big than what he/she thought and he/she can't cope anymore with what he/she saw and lived and experienced; the cemetery is this: it testifies the loss of many people, the memory of the lost ones not forgotten but strong in the living people.

The fight between the blue force, and the red one; the first one of the cold Grindenwald the red one of the good people can be synthesized in this way: the blue one means cold and it would bring at the world just desperation; the red one is life, energy, progress, not the regression Grindenwald would want for the other ones. Not for him, careful: he loves luxury and he is a man in grade of manipulating people.

I loved when the protagonists at some point will visit a place where they must find something. There is confusion, a continuous changes of game, a labyrinthic situation and you can't never tell where reality is, and the protagonists must run, run away for then, finding what they are searching.

The complexity of the movie is also seen in the society experienced by Grindenwald; a society without anymore any kind of values, and in grade also of killing babies without feeling anything just for opportunism.

Close friend with Grindenwald, Dumbledore can't fight against him because of a past story of strong respect, friendship and a promised marked with their blood.

The movie let us discover again the Gothic but a the same time, tranquil world of Johnny Depp; at the end I found Grindenwald comical when he said: "I hate Paris" after a scene pretty dramatic.

I didn't like the new uniforms of the students. I think that the ones seen in Harry Potter are more beauty. And not only: in general in British colleges uniforms remain the same ones per centuries and centuries.
Plus I think that there was an abuse of magic. If sometimes tea is served by a man or a woman when someone visits a house it's better.
In Harry Potter there was parsimony in the use of magic.
It's better if people demonstrate without the use of magic that they're able to do something in life; also little things.
Oh: now the mirror of memories: I wait for some explanations.
When Dumbledore saw Grindenwald in the mirror of memories I think that he wouldn't never have seen him as he is now, because reflections are only from the past. But he did.
I also found less beauty Hogwarts. Less precious and choreographically less studied and more poor. Rich of special effects, but without that touch of extreme elegance that had in Harry Potter.

Apart this, the movie is beautiful and I highly recommend you to go to see it.


Anna Maria Polidori