The sixth installment of the series, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince is simultaneously the best and the least satisfying of the films to date. The story has been pared down to the barest of bones and almost nothing of note happens. The evil Voldemort appears only in flashback, and impossibly chaste teenage romances carry the day. What’s new in this installment is an emotional richness that’s been absent from the previous installments. The end is near, and in the shadows of an upcoming mountain of noisy exposition, the filmmakers take a moment to exhale and let the kids be kids.
Half-Blood Prince begins with Dumbledore interrupting Harry’s summer vacation. This is a dark time in the wizarding world. The dark lord has returned, and is openly waging war against the forces of good. Even Hogwarts is under attack, with perpetual Potter nemesis Draco Malfoy moping about on a murderous mission from Voldemort. But even worse, Harry and Hermione must cope with the objects of their affection snogging someone else.
(Side note for football fans – Fans of the Manning Face are in for a treat. Tom Felton’s Draco Malfoy spends most the movie moping about like Peyton Manning after he tosses a critical interception. It makes you wonder if the real Manning isn’t under some dark spell to kill Bill Polian.)
Director David Yates has the courage to put the the film fully on the shoulders of the maturing cast, and Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson all respond admirably. What Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves are working with are the primal feelings of being an awkward teenager; the mysterious process of slowly coming into your own adulthood. Magic and the grim task of saving the world take a backseat to teenage confusion this time out. Harry, who faces more evil in a school year than the rest of us will see in our lifetimes, finds himself baffled by the most mysterious force imaginable – teenage girls.
Yates is a curiously rewarding choice as a director. Instead of delivering noisome set-pieces, he lets the camera linger on the confused faces and dewy eyes, giving the cast a chance to be actual teenagers instead of action heros. He also approaches the film from an painterly perspective. Scene after scene is suffused with a semi-solid glowing light, washing out color and turning the world into a wartime monochrome. All of the cast has grown into their characters so thoroughly that these genteel high schoolers feel quite real and their pains, for the first time, are tangible.
At heart, these are stories for children, and much of the magic stems from the unthinkable innocence that bathes Harry and his friends. The good guys are good. The bad guys are bad. The only shades of grey are the heavy skies overhead and towering stone walls of Hogwarts. There is a beauty in the simplified emotions, and the magic of Rowling’s books has always been her ability to channel the messy feelings of adolescent displacement into a simple heroism and, more importantly, a sense of belonging.
The rules are different for Harry Potter films.The entirety of the audience has read the books, they know the story, and they’re not turning up at the theater for the thrill of the unknown. Seeing each film is more of a companion piece to the novel. We’re going not to be told a story, but to see how the vision of a team of Warner Brothers executives matches up with our own imaginations. It’s a process of validation instead of entertainment. Under normal circumstances, that sort of executive group-think breeds nothing but failure. Newcomers to the series will be baffled. If you’re not invested in these stories by now, this is not your point of entry.
Under normal circumstances, a movie constructed like this would fall apart at the seams, but nothing in the Potter-verse is normal. Conventional movies need things like plot, action, and focus to keep the audience entertained. Harry Potter movies enjoy an entirely different privilege.Yates uses those givens to a strong advantage, getting by with the barest bits of exposition, trusting the audience to connect the dots. There isn’t another film series that enjoys the liberties that the Harry Potter series grants. But given the absolutely epic scope of the series, which will run twice the length of the Lord Of The Rings and have been almost a decade in the making, it’s an incredible achievement.
Leave a Reply