“You’re a wizard Harry”. Imagine you’re an orphan, except that you’re not, but only because things are much worse. Instead of battling it out on the street making it on your own, you’re locked in a cupboard by an abusive step family and treated worse than a stray animal. It’s not the treatment that gets you. It’s the reality they spin around your head, “This is who you are!”, “This is what you deserve” and “This will never get any better”. You act out every now and then but the consequences take away any joy you can experience from the rebellion.
And just when you have surrendered yourself to a gloomy fate and an even gloomier ending, one day a giant crashes through the door, scares the living Jesus out of your tormentors and yet his voice is as soft addressing you as it is menacing addressing them. A complete reversal of the humiliation you have been subjected to as a scapegoat at the hands of the undeserving “golden child”. And then this gentle giant laughs at the ridiculous falsehoods your tormentors have been spinning around your head for years, looks you in the eyes and changes your whole world forever with the words “You’re a wizard, Harry!” And no one will ever be able to imagine anyone other than our beloved Robbie Coltrane in that role. For he left both metaphorically and literally, very large shoes to fill.
A screen character that defied imagination
Alan Rickman as Severus Snape and Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid — two screen characters that defied imagination Warner Bros.
One might argue, of course, that the books are a different experience from the movies. Never mind that today some folks are arguing that the author is a different experience from the books. A book allows you to imagine a character in your own image. But once you’d seen Hagrid in the movies, it was hard to imagine anyone else. One could say the same about the late Alan Rickman who played Severus Snape. It’s a strange time to be a Harry Potter fan when both Snape and Hagrid of our childhood are gone. Perhaps there is a sorting hat up there that decides who gets hit with the avada kedavra (killing curse) of natural causes.
As an artist myself, the age-old question of whether you can separate art from artist, the persona from the actor and the actor from the person are questions that will always remain vexing. While his image of Hagrid will always remain larger than life (all too literally) Robbie did play an interesting role as a semi-villain, semi-ally of James Bond from the Pierce Brosman era. At a time when Bond was as much Remington Steele as he was The Thomas Crowne Affair. Robbie also played a rather entertaining role in a much panned, but retro niche cult hit Krull.
Robbie Coltrane in 1983’s Krull
The fantastical world of escape and the Hagrid in all of us
As a child I was fascinated by the name and hoped to go on the same campy adventures as the aforementioned hero. Perhaps fantasies are where children escape to deal with the stresses and trauma of being a child in a world not always built for children. For it is our hurt inner child that finds solace in children’s books even when we are old enough to have children of our own.
There is a reason that heroes from the MCU and wizards from the Harry Potter universe find resonance across age groups. Sometimes the reasons are commercial as well, of course. But if it wasn’t for commerce, we wouldn’t have made the movies on such a splendid scale and the battle of the great hall wouldn’t have felt so grand.
So let us put aside our ideological differences just for one day for I’m sure the love for Hagrid cuts across all political and social strata. And hope that someday we can also help a lost orphaned child find his way back home by just looking in their eyes and saying “It’s going to be alright. Because you’re a wizard”.
The author is a Marwari investment banker turned corporate comedian. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the website.
