Magic Beyond Words: The J.K. Rowling Story

The film covers J. K. Rowling's life up to the writing of Harry Potter: her mother's illness and death, a marriage in Portugal, the divorce, the return to Edinburgh alone with a baby, the years on benefits, and the first book written in cafés. Then the rejection letters from publishers. Paul A. Kaufman directs. Poppy Montgomery plays Rowling. It is a television film, made for the American channel Lifetime. The known limits of the format apply: the budget is small, the scenes are short, and the narrative proceeds by direct recounting of events. What it leans on is the story itself: a woman writing a book in a very hard period, and that book becoming one of the best selling series in the world. It was not made with Rowling's approval and no visual material from Harry Potter could be used; quotation from the books is limited as well. The best section is the period of poverty. The benefits application, the flat that cannot be heated and the choice of a café in which to write stay concrete even inside the television shape. Its weakness is simplification. The whole life is presented as a line running towards a single goal, with the hardships arranged as obstacles. Who it is for: anyone curious about the background of the Harry Potter series and viewers who like television biography. Who it is not for: the production values are low, the narrative is shallow, and the complications of a real life are flattened out entirely.