Nelle Engoron's Open Salon Blog

Mad Men fans: Join me over at Salon!

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:03:38 -0400

Thanks to all of you who have sent messages saying you hoped I would be writing commentary about Season 5 of "Mad Men," which premieres tonight. I'm happy to say that I will be, but over at "big" Salon. I actually have a pre-season article up on Salon right now, and my commentaries will appear there early on Monday mornings throughout the season. (Big thanks to Kerry and Thomas for this opportunity!!)

I had the privilege of seeing the (2 hour) season premiere ahead of time and trust me, you don't want to miss it!

I hope that everyone who discussed the show so avidly here on OS will join me over at Salon for the same lively dialogue that we've had in the past. I'll be responding to (the civil) comments over there just as I did here. I've really enjoyed the discussions we've had (even when we've disagreed!) and your insights have added much to my appreciation of the show, so I hope not to lose that in the move to Salon.

I also wanted to announce that I've published an e-book, Mad Men Unmasked: Decoding Season 4, which collects and expands on the commentary I wrote last season. It can be read on your PC, Mac, iPad or smartphone once you download a free Kindle app (as well as on Kindles, of course). Please consider recommending it to friends, including those who are catching up on last season!

I've set up a Twitter account in the name of my book (@MadMenUnmasked), and hope to tweet about the show during the season, including sharing little insights or tidbits that don't make it into my weekly commentaries. I've also set up a Facebook page for Mad Men related things in the name of my book, so feel free to visit me there. (Both of these accounts are new, so are a little sparse right now.)

I look forward to sharing the show with you again!

The Unsolved Mysteries of Harry Potter

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:07:36 -0400

As the final film (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2) unspools in Muggle theaters, there will be no real surprises for the fans, who know full well how the saga ends from having read the books (to pieces, in many cases). But even after watching that final scene at Platform 9 ¾ play out (through tears, I’ll wager, for more than a few), there will be unanswered questions about the wizarding world that J.K. Rowling conjured up.

No, not just what the appeal of drinking pumpkin juice could possibly be, or why eating chocolate helps when confronted by Dementors (chocolate helps with everything, after all). If I were to share a butterbeer with Rowling, here’s the top five questions I’d want to get answered:

#5: Why do witches and wizards celebrate Christmas?

As an ex-Catholic and ex-Fundamentalist Christian, I’ve always found it both funny and sad that some believers think the series promotes the work of Satan when it’s actually profoundly Christian. After all, its twin messages are that you should exercise your free will to selflessly do good rather than selfishly do evil, and that love is the answer to all things. (Not to mention that it portrays a young man giving up his life and being resurrected to save his world from a snaky figure who leads people into wrongdoing.) A resolutely moral tale in the tradition of Pilgrim’s Progress, it instills all the best values in children under the guise of simple entertainment. But that’s all subtext. I’m still trying to figure out why wizards and witches celebrate a holiday combining a religious belief they don’t hold with human traditions they weren’t raised in. Perhaps they simply enjoy any excuse to get presents and overeat, just like we Muggles do.

#4: Why do magical people need money?

Throughout the series, much is made of the fact that the Weasley family is poor while other families such as the Malfoys are rich. (Unsurprisingly, it’s the Malfoys who point this out at every opportunity.) Goblins oversee the gold-stuffed personal vaults at Gringott’s, the sole wizarding bank (which must surely be too big to fail). Even if you allow for one of Rowling’s rules, which is that items can be transformed but not created by magic, it still leaves unanswered the question of why wizards and witches need money. Even if they require it for buying essentials, why should having more of it be any better than having just enough? Surely you could conjure at least the illusion of whatever you’re lacking? (And isn’t that all that shopping does for you, anyway?) And where do they spend this money? The only shopping district we're told about is Diagon Alley, which is not exactly Rodeo Drive. And there doesn’t seem to be a grocery store anywhere near the Burrow. We might guess that they shop online, except it’s obvious that there is no magical internet, or they wouldn’t have to spend all that time doing research at the Hogwarts library.

#3: Why does magic work for some things and not for others?

Why is Ron stuck wearing dowdy old clothes to the ball in Goblet of Fire, while his father can rustle up a luxurious interior to a tiny pup tent at the Quidditch World Cup? Why doesn’t Ron just wave his wand and turn his fusty hand-me-downs into a magnificent tux? If you can transform one object to meet your desires, why not another? And while we’re on the subject, is there some rule that forbids turning your partner into someone else for the evening when that old magic just isn’t working for you anymore?

^{Dumbledore wand-ering what it's all for}

#2: What is all that magic good for, anyway?

The hippogriff in the room no one talks about. Seven years of study at Hogwarts and a lifetime of practice to become an adept wizard or witch who uses those astounding skills for…what, exactly? Yes, they are fantastically handy when you need to fight off a dark lord, destroy horcruxes, play a game that involves flying, or simply make dinner without being stuck stirring the risotto. Party tricks take on a whole new meaning, and you can imagine the enormous kick of refining your magical skills and showing them off to your friends. But these people have a (literally) stupefying amount of power, from the ability to kill with a curse or a potion, to the wherewithal to tame a dragon, to the ability to transform into another person or creature. What’s the day-to-day use for all this incredible yet arcane knowledge? And with all that know-how at their disposal, why haven’t they used it to help the Muggle world? Merlin knows we need it. (We could also use some of that gold at Gringott’s to pay down the deficit.)

A familiar scene - Harry and Hermione talk while Ron listens in the background

And my #1 question: What in the world does Hermione see in Ron?

OK, I get it. Despite the fact that they’re a natural and obvious couple, pairing off Harry and Hermione would have been too pat. And Rowling knew that her readers would want to see the main characters end up with someone from the series that they knew and loved. So Harry makes the homoerotic choice of marrying his best friend’s look-a-like sister and Hermione is left with the option of a Weasley or a Longbottom. While Ron’s humor and all-too-human neuroses are endearing, and he is the loyalest of friends, I can’t imagine what the brilliant Hermione, the "most talented witch” of her generation, sees in him. What exactly do they talk about at the dinner table after they’re married? Both in the books and the movies, the lively dialogue takes place between Harry and Hermione, or Harry and Ron, but rarely between the two supposed lovebirds, unless they’re bickering. I guess it could be a sex thing, although that’s not obvious, given Ron’s surprise at learning that romance is “not all about wandwork.” But why we love someone is the ultimate puzzle, the answer to which can’t be found stashed in an orb in the Department of Mysteries. And as Voldemort himself painfully learns, love is the one force in the universe that can defeat magical folk just as it does Muggles.

A Man Needs a Maid: DSK, Arnold and the Invisible Women

Tue, 31 May 2011 11:05:57 -0400

I spent the summer I turned 21 working as a hotel maid, cleaning up other people’s messes. Having started my work life at age 14 in a frozen banana factory before progressing up the chain of summer jobs to bus girl, waitress and fast food shift supervisor, I was no stranger to exhausting and messy physical labor. Yet nothing prepared me for how it felt to literally clean up other people’s shit.

If you’ve never worked such a job, you may be shocked to learn that many people think nothing of leaving disgusting items for “the maid” to deal with, conveniently eliding from their consciousness the fact that a real human being will be scraping and scrubbing their bodily excretions off various surfaces as well as erasing any other havoc they’ve wreaked. I knew I was signing on for some dirty work, but I was still horrified to find out I’d have to deal with regurgitated food on the furniture and even a large pile of excrement left for me on a shower floor.

You may assume I’m referring to some seedy motel where drug dealers hung out, but in fact I worked as a maid in a family vacation center frequented by affluent couples who came to play tennis, swim and party with their friends while their children were entertained and supervised by the staff. The home addresses on the magazines they left behind included such places as Malibu and Beverly Hills, leading me to suspect that many were used to having someone clean up after them without a whisper of complaint.

As is true of two famous men making headlines for their treatment of women in such jobs.

The nearly simultaneous bombshells about these two powerful figures and the women who served them are eerily similar and yet quite different: Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to a consensual sexual relationship with the long-time family housekeeper, while Dominique Strauss-Kahn stands accused of (but strongly denies) sexually assaulting a maid sent to clean the luxury hotel suite he’d spent just one night in.

While the particulars of the latter case are still shrouded in mystery, Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer has intimated that the defense will not deny the sexual contact, but claim that it was consensual. A reasonable argument in many sexual assault cases, but which this time requires you to believe one of three possible scenarios: That a 32-year-old maid assigned by chance to clean a hotel room found a pudgy 62-year-old man sexually irresistible at first sight, or was spontaneously offered and accepted payment for sex with a stranger, or is the Mata Hari in an elaborate political plot to derail Strauss-Kahn’s political career, and has not only played him sexually but fooled hardened New York City detectives into believing her story. None of these scenarios squares with the accounts of her as a religious woman and exemplary employee of the hotel, toiling away at a low-level job for years to support herself and her child.

Even if the alleged sex in the Strauss-Kahn case is found to be consensual under one of these scenarios, the fact would remain that a powerful and wealthy man saw a woman assigned to clean his room as a plaything to satisfy his desires. And frankly, when someone is responsible for cleaning the toilet you use, as well as dealing with any other horrors you’ve inflicted on the place, such a leap may not be so psychologically strange.

When we put people in the position of serving us in such an intimate and at least subtly degrading manner, it’s a challenge to think of them as human beings exactly like us. After all, if the person who cleans up after me feels exactly as I do, how can she bear to do this job, which I don’t want to do myself? And how can I bear to have her do it? It requires a certain dissociation to even allow such a transaction, requiring the person being served to see a function rather than a person standing before them. (A complaint I’ve heard from more than one exhausted mother about how her children view her, as a consequence of similar domestic service.)

Even greater familiarity doesn’t seem to change the equation, when this disparity of power is in play. Schwarzenegger dallied with the family housekeeper, despite the risk of detection and marital disaster, thus begging the obvious question of why a world-famous movie star didn’t find a more suitable person to satisfy his extramarital desires. Was the famously ambitious Schwarzenegger really so lazy that he simply settled for what was convenient? Or did he see it as all part of the service due to him as master of the house?

An outlandish scenario, you may argue, yet wives have been treated precisely that way for most of human history. In societies where such behavior is no longer acceptable (especially when married to the formidable women that these two men are), some men may feel the desire for a maid, someone who will obediently serve them and then quietly leave without complaint.

On my own last day as a maid, the crew of college girls I’d worked with all summer went out for pizza and beer and one of my co-workers jokingly punched up a song on the jukebox with that very theme. As Neil Young whined about how a man needs a maid, someone to clean his house, fix his meals and then “go away,” I didn’t know that he was defining a very particular desire; I just felt liberated from the worst job I’d ever had. College graduation was still a year away, and I longed for work that didn’t require a long hot shower at the end of the day. My first post-college position as a secretary was in fact thrilling simply because I could work sitting down while wearing something other than a hot polyester uniform. Like Scarlett O’Hara, I made a dramatic vow that no matter how desperate I might get in the future, cleaning up after other people would be the last job that I’d ever do again.

Ultimately, it wasn’t the bodily excretions that got to me – years later, I was a volunteer caregiver for the dying and dealt with far worse quite happily. It was the invisibility of the position: I was the unseen creature required to come in while the room was empty and take care of whatever had been thoughtlessly perpetrated. Just as I removed all traces of what the guests had left behind, I was required to leave no trace of myself, coming and going like a phantom, as if the work made me not just untouchable but unworthy of even being seen. The restaurant work I’d done was just as exhausting but at least it required that people acknowledge me, even if only in the background, as a person who was serving them.

It's no surprise to me, then, that some people, perhaps including the men themselves, have trouble seeing Arnold's housekeeper and the Sofitel maid who encountered Strauss-Kahn as fully human as the famous, larger-than-life men they are linked to. Both women played a role in which invisibility and silence were required, something that these men may have counted on to a treacherous degree.

I was fortunate enough to get the college education that all those summer jobs helped pay for, and after that, to work my way up from secretary to professional staff to manager. Yet the residue of my job as a maid has stayed with me. The deep-seated feeling that people should clean up their own messes is why I’ve spent the past thirty years doing just that, no matter how busy or tired I was. It was only a few weeks ago that I hired a cleaning service for the first time in my life, after years of urging by the man I live with, who was tired of my gripes about housework. Having already fought down the urge to pre-clean the entire house, I nervously apologized for how dirty it was the moment the two women arrived. Then I took a deep breath, looked into their eyes, found out their names and thanked them for helping me.

Sometimes a woman wants a maid, too – although just to make the bed, rather than to chase around it.

My Hairstory: Why I’m Going Gray

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:01:49 -0500

The color nature gave me (at age 20, in the French Alps)

How I look today, unplugged (early AM, no make up), 30+ years later

In Nicole Holofcener’s recent film, Please Give, a middle-aged woman acidly characterizes her grandmother’s hair color as being “stuck in a shade of menopausal red.” As a woman on the verge of menopause whose hair has been getting redder by the year, I would have felt stung by this line – except that by the time I heard it, I’d already decided to make 2011 the year I finally go gray.

That scathing assessment underlined one more reason to go through with my Hairy New Year’s resolution. Just the week before I heard it, I’d looked in the mirror and seen a faint but uncomfortable echo of my mother’s face when she was my age, with her hair dyed a harsh reddish-brown that didn’t flatter the pale Irish skin that I’ve inherited from her. When my sister came to visit at Thanksgiving, her reaction to my decision suggested she was seeing the same thing, as she immediately recalled how much more attractive Mom had looked once she ditched the Clairol.

Even my long-time colorist, who I’d dreaded breaking the news to, was warmly supportive, saying she thought that my real silver-gray color (which she and I glimpse each month before she covers it) would look “very pretty.” No small concession given she’s going to lose a significant monthly fee once she’s finished helping me through what I’m calling “my transition.”

No doubt some eavesdroppers will think that means I’m having a gender change, and frankly, it feels a bit like that. I worry that I will feel unsexed, unfeminine – OK, I admit it, just plain old -- once I’ve traded my falsely red-brown locks for a naturally silver-gray pelt. Part of the problem is that I have to make a leap of faith. I can hope that I’ll end up looking like Emmy Lou Harris, but the reality will in fact be far less stunning (especially since my resemblance to Emmy Lou was slight even when we were both young). Every time I’ve pondered making this change in the past decade, I’ve wished there were some magical device that could show what I’ll look like when the real me is revealed at last.

It’s strange not to know what you actually look like without cosmetic intervention. (Unlike make-up, you don’t take your hair color off at night.) I haven’t seen my real hair since it was a medium brown divided by a skunky streak of gray. Surveying the half-inch of roots that grows in each month, I’ve watched it slowly progress from that single streak to full-on salt and pepper to mostly silvery salt with pepper holding on for dear life in back. But I have no idea what I’ll look like with a full head of platinum.

And the answer to that question is still a ways off since, other than shaving your head, there is no quick and easy way to go gray. Even my fast-growing hair only manages six inches a year, and I don’t look good with a truly short cut, so I have about 18 months of slow transformation ahead. My colorist will start things off in a few weeks by shifting me from red-brown to a pseudo-salt and pepper look, with a dark brown base and slender blonde highlights. Then month-by-month, she’ll add and subtract with increasing restraint in order to let my natural color slowly take over. As skillful as she is, and as preferable as this approach is to the hideous two-tone method of growing gray out cold turkey, I know that at times this transformation will feel as awkward as going through puberty.

So why the heck am I putting myself through this, especially since my hair color fools people into thinking I’m several years younger than I really am?

That’s the question I’ve had from several women, who have visibly cringed at the idea of the coloring bottle being pulled away from anything other than their cold dead hands. But it’s precisely cold, dead hands that worry me. Yes, the research is mostly only suggestive that hair coloring products are bad for your health, but the fact is that they are full of nasty chemicals that I otherwise avoid putting into or onto my body. So how can I justify soaking my scalp with them every four weeks, year after year?

And those years do add up. I started going gray in my 20’s, and have been coloring my hair for a quarter of a century. I began with semi-permanent products, but eventually had to go hardcore because I have what colorists call “resistant gray hair” that fights being covered. (Perhaps I should have been listening to what my body was trying to tell me?) Going by one rule of thumb -- not to use permanent hair color for more than 10 years -- my crystal has already gone dark. Especially since dark is what I’ve been making myself – marinating my noggin in the shades that contain the most potentially harmful dyes.

And dying is what I don’t want to do any earlier than I have to, and so dyeing is what I’m going to give up. Still, despite the health concerns and the hassle and cost of monthly hair appointments, the decision to become what I can’t help but think of as a “grayhairedoldwoman” (as if it were all one thing) is not easy for someone whose tresses have always been her literal and not just her proverbial glory.

Age 16. I'm not sure what astounds me most about this picture -- how long my hair is, how thin I am, or the fact that I actually have a tan!

Growing up, I had a horse’s tail of thick glossy hair and wore it all the way down to my waist in high school and college before going nutty with perms, layered cuts, mousse, gel and other nonsense as a young career woman in the 1980’s. Eventually I accepted that string-straight is what my hair wants to be, and simple is the style that I’m capable of maintaining. For the past 15 years, my hair has fluctuated between the long waterfall of my adolescence and the chin-length bob of my childhood, with only minor variations.

In 1979, I chopped off my hair and got a perm, in the style of the times. The woman who cut off my hair nearly broke down and cried.

^{I was cross-addicted to mousse and hair spray in my late 20's (it took a load of product to get my hair to do this). People started calling me "Spike" (really).}

When I was young, my hair got so much attention that I actually found it annoying. Even in the hair-glorious days of the 70’s when almost every girl – and many boys – had cascades flowing down their backs, mine was singled out for its length, thickness and gleaming brown beauty. Everyone wanted to touch it, and many people did so without asking, stroking me as if I were a cat with particularly silky fur. Even strangers who saw me in public felt they had the right to fondle it, making me wonder more than once if “hair molestation” was a crime.

By my mid-30's, I'd recovered from my dependency on hair products and was heading back to a long thick straight mane.

Going a little Veronica Lake in my late 30's.

As is the way of youth, I didn’t appreciate what I had, accepting the bounty that nature had awarded me as merely my due. When I began to go gray in my twenties, I had intimations of mortality, but coloring quickly covered up this uncomfortable reality, and I continued to take my still-luxurious locks for granted. It was only in my 40’s, when a hair stylist made a throwaway comment about the thinning at my temples, that I shook myself awake and realized that my crown wasn’t nearly as glorious as it once had been. While I’d been sleeping, age and hormones had been busy in the hidden places, reducing the follicular surplus I’d always taken for granted. I’d had hair to spare my entire life, but to my shock I realized that it had dwindled to just enough.

“Hormones,” stylists said when I asked them the cause, identifying as turncoat the previously sexy friend of my body. (An enemy that was about to wreak other havoc, as perimenopause set in.) It seemed incomprehensible that my once near-Olympian skill of growing scads of hair could have come to an end without my even being aware that my powers were fading.

And, horror of horrors, was it going to get worse? Was I going to end up one of those old women I’d always secretly pitied, desperately trying to coax thin strands into covering her scalp? For several years, I anxiously watched both my hairbrush and temples, but detected no further losses.

So, with my hirsute stores in a holding pattern, I’ve decided to end their chemical dependency before more damage might be done. Within a year and a half, I’ll be off the bottle – the coloring bottle, that is.

And if at some future date someone wants to stroke my lovely silver hair – well, I just might let’em.

The Real Magic of Harry Potter: Acting!

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:11:26 -0500

One of the great pleasures of the Harry Potter movies has been watching the extraordinarily deep bench of British acting talent fill literally mesmerizing roles. At this point, so many of the country’s best-known actors and actresses have appeared in both recurring and one-off parts that it might be easier to name those who haven’t (Tom Wilkinson, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons spring to mind as regrettable absences). With the first half of the final chapter of the series, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, opening this week (and the second half already filmed although not to be released until next summer) and all major characters revealed, it seems that we’ll narrowly miss a clean sweep by British acting royalty. But whingeing about the omissions would be crying into our butterbeer, when we should be cheering at the Gringotts of performances we’ve feasted on in a decade of Potter films.

Beyond their considerable individual talent, the mix of seriousness and lightness that British actors bring to their work has raised the quality of the movie series beyond any other in the fantasy genre (yes, including that series about hobbits). Generalizations abound about the differences between English and American acting styles (usually summed up as classical technique vs. “the Method”) but even if most theories are too simplistic, there seems to me a distinct, observable difference in how British actors approach their craft: They appear to take a workman-like approach to their profession in which all parts are treated equally – a job is a job, and to be done as best as one can. Taking the part seriously rather than themselves, they don't seem self-conscious (in either sense of the word) while acting.

If cast in a children’s fantasy series, most American actors would feel the need to somehow signal that they were above the job – winking subtly at the audience (or not so subtly, if you’re the likes of Robin Williams), failing to fully play out the more serious emotions, and generally holding back out of a fear of making themselves look ridiculous by taking it seriously. American actors want you to know when they feel a bit silly playing a part, and so will refuse to fully immerse either themselves or their audiences in the role.

By contrast, British actors fully commit themselves to their roles, whether playing Hamlet or Voldemort. As luck would have it, Ralph Fiennes has played both, and I have no doubt that his experience in the former helps him with the latter. Despite his impressive list of acting credits, he doesn’t condescend to playing Voldemort but instead embraces it, playing not an idea of a villain, but a thought-out character.

I once read an interview with the American actor, Brent Spiner, who played Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which he explained that acting in that fantasy universe wasn’t as easy as it looked, being a combination of performing Shakespeare and running around your living room with a towel tied around your neck pretending to be Superman. So perhaps that classical theatrical training comes in handy even in the most Diagon of Alleys.

The greatest argument for this theory might be the Harry Potter films themselves, in which the three young leads (Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson), all cast when they were young children without any theatrical training, are regularly acted into the ground by the dazzling adults who surround them. Given such a stellar group, it's tough to make choices, but here are my ten favorite actors/performances in the Harry Potter series:

#10 Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart

I’ve never been a big Branagh fan (his lack of lips has always distressed me) but he absolutely nailed the comedy gold of a wizard whose ego is in inverse ratio to his talents. Branagh is so hilariously smug and inept as a trickster unable to teach what he also can’t do that many viewers may have missed the slyest joke of his performance: He plays Lockhart with an American accent.

#9 Timothy Spall as Wormtail

I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be a character actor like Spall, whose odd and homely looks and distinctively annoying voice limit his options, but he’s had a wonderful career of supporting parts. As the fanatically loyal Wormtail, he manages to make obsequiousness touching, his hero worship of the glamorous Voldemort utterly believable as a motive for the heinous acts he regretfully but dutifully performs.

#8 Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy

Cast as one of the key villains of the series, Isaacs plays evil to silken perfection. He’s said in interviews that the part is all about the hair – once he gets that blond wig on, he’s Lucius. But let’s not underestimate the power of that seductively menacing voice softly unfurling insults towards mudbloods and, well, everyone who crosses his path. The man also wears a cape and cane in a more sinister fashion than anyone since Jekyll and Hyde.

#7 Gary Oldman as Sirius Black

Before the HP movies, Oldman was one of those actors I’d admired but felt repelled by. Having made a big splash as Sid Vicious, he later seemed stuck in clichéd villain roles that were based on his physiognomy rather than his talent. The role of Sirius (who is mistakenly thought to be a different kind of Vicious) allowed Oldman to play on his blunt-faced menace while also revealing his sensitive side. Daniel Radcliffe has said Oldman became both a friend and acting mentor, which may explain why their scenes have more texture and emotional resonance than almost any others in the series. When Sirius is killed, I was surprised by the sadness I felt – a tribute to the warmth that Oldman brought to the character.

#6 Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall

Smith is literally pitch-perfect casting as the Scottish McGonagall. An inverse of Smith's well-known role as Jean Brodie, the teacher from hell, McGonagall is the no-nonsense backbone of the films, a firmly moral presence that grounds the (often literally) flighty enterprise. Smith rarely gets much of interest to do in the films, yet she’s irreplaceable, both for the kids and for us, the mother figure you never quite appreciate but would be bereft to lose.

#5 Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid

J.K. Rowling wrote the character of Hagrid while picturing Robbie Coltrane, so it’s no wonder we can’t imagine anyone else in the part. Like Smith, he’s a mainstay of the series as a delicious combination of outsized protector and comic relief. Coltrane, an underrated and terrific actor (as his British series Cracker showed) is so grounded and sympathetic as Hagrid that we never fail to believe this gentle giant really exists – and is as good a soul as ever appeared in any size package.

#4 Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort

As the embodiment of evil (at least after he’s reconstituted in Goblet of Fire), Voldemort may have been the toughest role to cast. (Who would you get to play Satan?) The character had to be terrifying, other-worldly and yet recognizably, if not human, at least wizardly in the way we’ve become used to. In choosing the feathery-voiced Fiennes, the filmmakers shrewdly selected a man who could convey the banality of ego-driven evil – but then his stunning work as Nazi officer Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List probably tipped them off. Fiennes’ portrayal of Voldemort is no retread of that role, though, but a fully-conceived creation of a man of parts (conveniently stored in horcruxes until he can get himself together).

#3 Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge

Forget Voldemort. Umbridge is actually the most terrifying character in all of Harry Potter. Voldemort has no illusions about his motives – he knows he seeks power for his own glory and satisfaction – and that transparency of motive is why most people won’t follow the Voldemorts of the world, thus thwarting their villainy. But Umbridge is a type we see every time we turn on the TV – the person in authority who sincerely believes she is helping others while committing utterly horrific acts of control against them. And people keep voting for those types. With her tinkling laugh, frozen smile and “I thought so” tones, Staunton makes Umbridge utterly real and far scarier than she ever was in the book. She’s a nightmare in a pink wool suit, and long-time unsung character actress Staunton seems to savor playing every moment of both her ascension and her fall.

#2 Richard Harris and Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore

The ethereal and wispy-voiced Harris seemed perfect casting for Dumbledore, capturing the kindly father figure vibe that both the main characters and readers of the first HP books loved. When Harris died and the far more robust Gambon stepped into the role, my initial reaction was that a fine actor had either been miscast or poorly directed. I’ve loved Gambon ever since seeing The Singing Detective 20 years ago, but he seemed to be getting Dumbledore all wrong, butching him up by yelling and posturing. But the change from Harris to Gambon has turned out to perfectly parallel the revelation that Dumbledore isn’t a doddering and sweet old man as both the Hogwarts kids and we readers first think, but actually an immensely powerful wizard. Gambon has pulled off that crucial pivot in a way that Harris might not have been up to, given his health. Gambon’s final scenes as Dumbledore were heartbreaking in their portrayal of what it is like to face death, which we suddenly realize to our shock even the strongest and most well-loved wizard must do.

#1 Alan Rickman as Severus Snape

After every Potter movie, I say the same thing: “Not enough Snape.” Every second that Rickman is on-screen as Snape is to be relished, just as he relishes not just every word but every syllable of dialogue he gets to utter. Was there ever an actor who could get more out of a single consonant or vowel? In the books, Snape is terrifying and mysterious, but Rickman has added a deep overlay of comedy to the character without sacrificing his darkness. He’s also an ideal actor to carry the essential secret of the series: That there is much much more to Snape than we or the characters know. Rickman conveys entire novels of sublimated information with the haunted look in his eyes, which are a match for his unmistakable and, yes, magical voice. I’ll have to wait until next summer to see him play the final scene revealing Snapes’ true feelings -- but I already know that he will make me weep.