The importance of a performance like Kenneth Branagh’s Gilderoy Lockhart

When you look at a character like Gilderoy Lockhart, he has to be bigger than life and that’s why it is important to have someone like Kenneth Branagh bringing him to life.

Gilderoy Lockhart is a villain, many would say, because of how he reacts to what happened to Harry and his friends under Lockhart’s care. During Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Lockhart uses the children and is about to wipe their memory when the charm backfires.

Luckily, he was being played by Kenneth Branagh, who understood the impact of this character and what it meant to have him be over the top. He was doing so because he was a fake, someone who didn’t deserve to be where he was.

If he wasn’t over the top and proud of his accomplishments, it’d be a bit suspect. So to have Gilderoy be so flamboyant, it means that we’re thrown off the scent. People loved him, they wanted him to be this figure in their lives. What they didn’t know was that his stories belonged to someone else.

So sure, it is fun to see him have these big gestures and essentially be a character out of a Shakespeare play. But when you stop and look at him out of context, it’s so obvious that he’s hiding something. Sure, we can say that after the fact but still, if you look at him and don’t know, it isn’t exactly a hard thing to see. But someone like Kenneth Branagh understands that and makes Gilderoy funny, lively, and every bit the fraud that he is meant to be.

Did you like Kenneth Branagh’s take on Gilderoy Lockhart? Do you think he did justice to the character? Let us know what you think in the comments below!