Gellert Grindelwald: revealing & admitting love
... or a study of Albus and Gellert's last encounter, revealing Gellert's feelings
In FBtSoD, Gellert Grindelwald appears to be, despite the years and the tragedies, still not over Albus Dumbledore. It is quite a surprise to me, I must admit. I have no doubt that it has already been discussed in the fandom, but I want to write down my observations — especially regarding the end of the film.
[disclaimer : i do not support JKR. english is not my native langage, sorry for the mistakes!]
The unworded and unwilling admission (a quick description of the end of the fight scene)
The most evident proof of that is, of course, their duel: Albus and Gellert feel under their palm the beating of their former lover’s heart. The troubled expression on Grindelwald’s face enables us to conclude that his heart beats as well, not just Albus’ (and he is a bit distraught by it).
First of all, a quick description of the scene: they are fighting, closer and closer, and they finally find themselves mirroring each other, palm on heart. The shot is Dumbledore’s perspective: he stares at Gellert’s face, then at his own hand, feeling the beat. The countershot reveals his astonishment (or it is again Jude Law’s choice of playing Dumbledore constantly open very widely his eyes)... and his understanding. A beat (pun intended). Then, they finally both lower their wand, giving up, looking at the world around them crumbling.
I will definitely write a more detailed analysis of that scene, which is very akin to a sex and post-sex scene (it is not a joke, but a quite serious statement based on rather obvious clues). But now, I think that we can agree on the fact that this is at least a revelation scene: Dumbledore understands that Grindelwald’s heart beats and echoes his, ergo, Gellert is still moved by Albus. They both know it. They stop the fight, because neither of them can bring himself to actually fight the other — and there is no solution.
Before diving on the subject of the heart a bit more, I just want to highlight how powerless Grindelwald seems to be at this moment: he has revealed himself.
The beating of Gellert Grindelwald’s heart
The heart beating, in Harry Potter meta and in literature/movies/art, evokes several things — life, passion, sexuality, love. It is 100% sure it is also that it holds the same meaning in the HP/FB imagery & meta, because The Warlock’s Hairy Heart, Beedle the Bard’s tale, confirms it: the warlock extracts his heart to protect himself from love [1].
This very choice of putting emphasis on the beating heart is so telling — and quite romantic, if you ask me. Let us spot the differences between Grindelwald and Beedle the Bard’s warlock (and Voldemort, because the contrast is always interesting).
Grindelwald and the Warlock are ambitious and proud; yet, the Warlock took drastic measures in order to avoid falling in love – he fears to be submitted & to sacrifice his reason. Voldemort never loved anyone: his snake nature, both thematically and physically, links him to coldness (the snakes are “cold-blooded” animals).
'I regret it,' said Voldemort coldly. He turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. — chapter 32, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (murder of Severus Snape by Voldemort)
(I think this example is quite telling; he is devoid of what is considered as “human qualities” (here, consequently, of compassion (com-patior, suffer with: he does not this)) in a few systems of morals and, more importantly, in arts (literature, cinema…).)
In a way, both Voldemort and the Warlock abandoned a human quality — love and by extension, empathy and careness; consequently, they both chose animality over humanity and its weaknesses.
On the other hand, a pumping heart evokes heat – the heat of love, of ire [2]. Gellert still has passions: strong ones, mostly destructive. He is not immune to love because he chose not to. That is a very interesting detail of his personality: he knows the pain of having a heart (having experienced love), as he says to Yusuf Kama. Yet, his heart is very most likely what moves him: his hate for muggles is a pulsion and a passion.
He chose the heart — he chose to not abandon love… and passion.
I bet that his very heart will be why he will hesitate, in 1945 — why Albus will be able to conquer the Elder wand. But I digress.
I think Grindelwald is a very interesting villain, because unlike Voldemort, he is very much human. That fact embraces the morals developed throughout the books — humans are capable of beautiful, and terrible things.
(I am so disappointed by the FB films, because they could be so much better (I really don’t like them), they have such a good raw material)
“Who will love you now, Dumbledore?”
Anyway; regarding our first question, I would like to raise Grindelwald’s — already much discussed — question:
Who will love you now, Dumbledore?
He says this seconds after they lower their hands; after he made a small step towards Dumbledore (as if to… be closer? I can’t help but wonder if he wanted to touch his face, or kiss him, and for a reason I am about to expose, I think he is doing it sincerely). The pendant is slowly falling, and he is a mess — dishevelled, panting, glancing around him with a very expressing face.
I would like to stress the fact that it is implied that Grindelwald actually loved him (meaning: before the moment Dumbledore started to fight him, several minutes before). Just after that, the pendant breaks, the world appears again, and he adds:
You are all alone.
It is a Albus’ leitmotiv — and a GGAD essential dynamic: only he can truly understand me. Quite toxic, already confirmed since HPDH, I still hesitate if Gellert can understand Albus entirely in 1932. Not the subject. But here is the context of the infamous quote.
Of course, it could be Gellert playing gleefully (cruelly) with Albus’ feelings — just like he did in the diner scene, at the beginning of the movie: he is glad Dumbledore love(d) him. My personal interpretation is that he intended to do just that, but failed miserably: he was losing the battle (not of wands, but of the lethal game they are playing not really willingly) and grasped the most accessible and more deadly weapon he had within reach — out of sheer anguish and, most likely, heartache.
Somehow, I think that this move revealed more of his own despair than Albus’ suffering: he lost Albus and managed to admit, unwillingly, his feelings (a second time in a minute). I think it is a mistake to believe that he is mostly troubled by the loss of his immunity: Grindelwald is moved.
(I want to highlight that I love how Mikkelsen plays Grindelwald, really)
The fact that the world is breaking, the pendant is breaking, while Dumbledore walks away, might refer to both of their (broken) hearts, by the way, both magically and metaphorically (the more I think about it, the more I find that scene actually rather tragic, I must admit).
Not much more to say about that, except the fact that I will analyse also that part in a future post, and that Gellert’s cruelty is literally deadly — but in a more subtle way that it was in FB2: in FB2, he was killing babies, now he strikes right to his former lover’s (beating) heart, albeit not that efficiently. A way better characterisation, in my opinion, showing several facets of the man at the same time.
The heart and the question have something in commun: they reveal Grindelwald’s emotions. The beating heart states that Gellert is still very human in front of Dumbledore. The question fails to be rhetorical: his desperation shows the fact that he is probably concerned by the answer – that someone will love him, and not nobody, just like he wanted to imply.
“I was never your enemy”
Another (last) moment quite telling about Grindelwald’s feelings is his last speech before disappearing. Dumbledore walks away (you can see him at the bottom of the shot), while the rest of the group (Newt, Theseus, the officials, etc) are approaching and trying to fight him, without success.
He speaks one last time. It is clear that his speech has two addressees: the world, and Dumbledore.
“I was never your enemy.” A beat. He looks in the direction of Dumbledore, whose eyes are piercing him. “Then, or now.”
(the description is written by myself, I am guilty)
“I was never your enemy” is partly addressed to the world, because he seeks support among the wizarding world. But despite the fact that he says this while he looks at the crowd gathered in front of him, I believe it makes even more sense when we consider he says this to Albus.
“Never his enemy” may imply several things considering the context:
not his enemy when they made the blood pact: I am a firm believer that the pact was not just a move to protect himself, but a way to protect Albus as well (I refer to the theory of the 1945 vision Gellert might have had in 1899) and an act of love (which is almost confirmed by Dumbledore, if I am correct) (once again talking about the blood pact, but it is first and foremost a troth, something evoking marriage and bonding)
not his enemy when he sent Credence: he probably knew that Dumbledore would be largely capable of overpowering Credence, or hoped so; even better, saw (thanks to his visions) that Albus would not be defeated.
But even more important: “then, or now”. He says that looking right at Dumbledore. If he is still not his enemy, in my opinion, it means two things:
Gellert does not want to fight Albus.
Gellert still wants Albus by his side.
The former is obvious, we talked about it in the fight and the heart section.
The latter might seem to come out of nowhere and I must admit we cannot be sure; but the context forces us to at least seriously consider this possibility. Indeed, the pact shattered and their bubble exploded — but Albus walked away before Gellert had been able to talk to him. Thus, it is quite possible that he feels the urge to express what he has to say quite cryptically. In that context, he may have chosen euphemism — not your enemy now, so your ally tomorrow, if you want to.
Dumbledore understands that Grindelwald is talking to him, of course. I am still unsure about how he deals with it, but his melancholy before the wedding (even though he seems genuinely happy for Newt’s team) makes me wonder — he does not enter, after all; he chooses to stay alone, and that is the end of the movie. That is why I tend to believe, for the moment, that Dumbledore thinks Grindelwald is right: despite his relatively close friends and numerous acquaintances, he is… alone — guilty of his past, penitent [3].
Conclusion
I repeat that I am surprised about the film: somehow, I thought the film would be far less talkative about GGAD. I focused a lot on Mikkelsen’s acting here, it surely contributes to the overall experience (the man knows how to play the well-dressed handsome enemy in love with the main morally grey character) (I am referring to Hannibal NBC)
I have not evoked Albus’ very direct (and a bit performative, if you ask me, but still welcomed) declarations of love (the poor man can finally talk about his crush and he does, without filter and to everybody, he is just like me fr); a win for the GGAD nation — even though I am convinced the film itself is quite a disaster, both on a narrative and on a coherence-of-the-universe level (but it is my humble opinion). Anyway, back to the conclusion.
Gellert Grindelwald and Albus Dumbledore’s short but intense encounter has a lot to offer, first and foremost answers: neither of them is over the other, as far as I can tell.
But Albus seems to be healing. He refuses to stay near Gellert and has the upper hand in their last encounter — whereas Gellert has the upper in the very first sequence of the film. It indicates an evolution of the two of them as characters which might be very interesting in the future, especially in a crisis context like 1945…
Notes:
[1] – It is 100% sure it is also that it holds the same meaning in the HP/FB imagery & meta, because “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart”, Beedle the Bard’s tale, confirms it : it might seem a stretch to give that importance to a tale. Yet, I think it is justified.
Roughly, tales (as literary genres) are meant to:
be a thesaurus of the morals and knowledge of the human heart: they synthesise people’s common knowledge and their brevity enables the author, a moralist (someone having knowledge about the human soul and heart), to convey a lesson.
represent a system of signs the reader has to decipher: works referring to tales refer actually to a system of signs and convey a message thanks to those signs.
Thus, a work referring to a tale builds a metatextual/metacinematographical level of communication made of correspondences: a scene in a film is thus multilayered — a layer of signs and associations, a layer of knowledge of the human heart (emotions and morals). JKR actually wrote tales in the universe, meaning they are all the more relevant regarding the correspondences of signs, and the morals in the wizarding world (in the UK). That is why, I think, we can affirm that the theme of the heart, in HP/FB, has to be linked to The Warlock’s Hairy Heart and hold a similar meaning (or at least, the tale can inform us on a metatextual level).
[2] – a pumping heart evokes heat – the heat of love, of ire : I don’t want to develop that aspect that much, but throughout literature or arts history, it is quite often linked — just think of Achilles and the Iliad beginning by “ire” as its first word — and artists always look back to what has been made before.
[3] – he is… alone — guilty of his past, penitent : a Gellert’s word struck me when I watched the film, “sinful”; the religious dimension on a textual level (what the characters think and how they see themselves) and a metatextual level (what religious figures are they embodying?) has to be addressed at some point. (once again, I highly recommend the fanfiction “Illumine” by meanwhiletimely, exploring (among others) the theme of religion)
Anyway, thank you for reading! :)
