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[gelbusfan]

Fight choreography. From: SoD special feature: "Battle of Bhutan"

Eddie Redmayne: One of the things that I didn't know about Mads is that he was a professional dancer. And seeing him in the duel with Jude, there was a balletic quality to that movement that was so compelling and jarring and unique that I thought, from the off, he was gonna create something special. Jude Law: I was just always very keen to try and find a grace and an effortless power to Dumbledore's abilities in conflict. The fight team, the stunt team were really open to listening to my ideas and suggestions of physical references. We looked at Roger Federer, funnily enough, who I think is a great physical embodiment of someone who is incredibly powerful, skillful, but also graceful.

[gelbusfan]

Albus Dumbledore's costume in Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)

COLLEEN ATWOOD (costume designer): When I talked to David about Dumbledore, we wanted him to be kind of young, hopeful, the kind of professor that the kids all loved. David and Jude and I had a discussion about color. [In the first Harry Potter movie,] the early Dumbledore’s in sort of plummy color tones, which didn’t seem right for real clothes. So, we found beautiful heathery grays and softer colors, softer fabrics and textures that people want to touch and that are approachable. JUDE LAW: There’s the sense of the dandy. There was a sense of a man who enjoyed a certain flair to his dress sense, but I know the vision was always that overall was gonna be to base him much more in the time of the piece. We looked at some wonderful pictures of philosophers and artists of that period who just wore suits with a certain panache. The beard was important because Jo always referenced it in the script and also because it makes him somewhat unusual in this period of context because not many men wore beards. COLLEEN ATWOOD: I really love corduroy, and I made this wide wale corduroy coat and beat it up and put it on him. It was a nod to that noir, for sure, the collar and the shape of the back of the coat. I was like, “I don’t know if the boys will go for it,” but Jude just sold it in the room. At the end, everyone was going, “I want a coat like that.”

[gelbusfan]

Dumbledore and Grindelwald, by J.K.Rowling, David Yates, David Heyman, Jude Law (2019)

J.K. ROWLING: It's not easy being Dumbledore. He is mistrusted by the Ministry. They know he has this dark past in which he flirted with Grindelwald's ideology. This was the part of Potter that I was most interested in revisiting because the relationship between Grindelwald and Dumbledore is key to making Dumbledore "Dumbledore".

DAVID YATES: They were both young men and they had this idea of making the world better. And fundamentally, they’ve basically drifted apart because Dumbledore felt what Grindelwald was advocating, ultimately, was wrong.

J.K. ROWLING: Their relationship was incredibly intense, it was passionate, and it was a love relationship. But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight, or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling. You can't know, you can believe you know, so I'm less interested in the sexual side (though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship) than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other. Which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationships.

JOHNNY DEPP: I am positive that there was a mutual respect of one another’s abilities, and I’m sure, especially with Grindelwald, there was a jealousy. Maybe a bitterness from having such love and respect for Dumbledore.

DAVID YATES: There’re scenes in the movie where I was very conscious of wanting to try and suggest that Dumbledore still held this affection for Grindelwald. There was not just regret, but there was still a love that existed between the two men.

JUDE LAW: There is a sense of loneliness to him. Terrible loneliness and isolation, where I think he's separated himself, and almost imprisoned himself at Hogwarts.

DAVID HEYMAN: At the end of this film, we discover that Credence is in fact Dumbledore's brother. You can see how important that is for both Grindelwald and for Dumbledore.

J.K. ROWLING: It's at the absolute heart of what the issue is between Dumbledore and Grindelwald.

DAVID YATES: This is a relationship that is compelling and profound and authentic and alongside all the bells and whistles of adventure and fantasy and beasts and everything else, this is a story about these two men who loved each other and ultimately, have to fight each other. It's a story for the 21st century.

Source: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Crindelwald. Special features. "Distinctly Dumbledore."

[gelbusfan]

Dumbledore and Grindelwald. From: SoD special feature: "Battle of Bhutan" (2022)

David Yates: There's something really compelling about this relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. They are two men who, I think, you know, had such a powerful love for each other. And... And in this movie, you see how that love is tested and kind of ultimately broken. They have different visions of how they see the world, but you get a sense that they still deeply love each other. And one of the things I love about the climax of the third act is that, really, it's the end of that relationship. When I watch it and what our ambition with it is, even though it's a magical kind of climax, if you like, of two men fighting, it's really about the end of any relationship. It's the end of a commitment. And you feel that when Dumbledore walks away from Grindelwald at the end. Grindelwald: Who will love you now, Dumbledore? David Yates: I hope that sort of resonates in that moment.

[gelbusfan]

I’ve also seen an interesting theory that either Grindelwald or Dumbledore himself removed a part of the Dumbledore’s memory related to Ariana’s death. That’s why he doesn’t remember it. It would be similar to how Grindelwald deleted Kama’s memory about Leta Lestrange (another theory is that Kama was actually Albus Dumbledore under a Polyjuice Potion). However, I doubt that Dumbledore would ever want to revisit this memory in his Pensieve.

SPOILERS FOR FB3

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By now we have three(ish) different accounts of the duel

Aberforth in Deathly Hallows

‘And there was an argument … and I pulled out my wand, and he pulled out his, and I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my brother’s best friend – and Albus was trying to stop him, and then all three of us were duelling, and the flashing lights and the bangs set her off, she couldn’t stand it –’

The colour was draining from Aberforth’s face as though he had suffered a mortal wound.

‘– and I think she wanted to help, but she didn’t really know what she was doing, and I don’t know which of us did it, it could have been any of us – and she was dead.’

Albus in Deathly Hallows

‘And then … you know what happened. Reality returned, in the form of my rough, unlettered, and infinitely more admirable brother. I did not want to hear the truths he shouted at me. I did not want to hear that I could not set forth to seek Hallows with a fragile and unstable sister in tow.

‘The argument became a fight. Grindelwald lost control. That which I had always sensed in him, though I pretended not to, now sprang into terrible being. And Ariana … after all my mother’s care and caution … lay dead upon the floor.’

Albus in Secrets of Dumbledore

"Gellert and I made plans to go away together. My brother did not approve. One night he confronted us. Voices were raised, threats made, Aberforth drew his wand, which was foolish- I drew my wand, which was even more foolish. Gellert just laughed. No one heard Ariana coming down the stairs. Can't say for certain if it was mine- the spell. Doesn't really matter. One minute she was there and the next she was gone."

What they agree on:

1) there was a verbal argument about their plans to leave

2) Aberforth drew out his wand first

3) They don't know which one of them did it

Albus and Aberforth in DH:

4) Grindelwald lost control

In tSoD Albus minimises Gellert's role and says that Albus drew his wand after Aberforth rather than Gellert

At this stage it's hard to say what the reason is for this difference, but I can think of a few:

1) Albus blames himself for it, so minimises Gellert's role to Newt

2) this is a retcon due to the bloodpact which would be stupid cos they could have invented another way for the pact to broken

3) The event is very traumatising for Albus and this is case of unreliable narrator