Again, England’s most popular wizard has taken over the world’s movie screens. David Yates is the fourth director in the series, but this is the first of the five films not to feature a screenplay by Steve Kloves. The difference isn’t jarring, but the script by Michael Goldenberg (Contact, Peter Pan) encompasses a little less. Depending on your point of view, this means that it’s a more streamlined story that’s easier to follow, or that a lot has been left out.
In an apparent effort to have every living British Oscar nominee appear in the series, Helena Bonham Carter and Imelda Staunton are new to the cast. Carter, to feature more prominently in later films, has a small part as a villain. However, Staunton (Vera Drake) is, other than Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), the only major character in this episode, although newcomer Evanna Lynch has a substantial role as guileless Luna Lovegood, new friend to Harry. Hardly anyone’s left out of the story entirely, but such figures as Draco Malfoy, Harry’s least-favorite fellow student, make only token appearances. In his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry has more significant concerns, not least of which is the threat of being expelled at the outset of the film. Staunton’s Delores Umbridge becomes his newest nemesis after she’s hired as the new teacher of the Dark Arts. She’s also the leader of the naysayers at the Ministry of Magic, who disbelieve Harry’s assertion that evil Lord Valdemort has returned.
Thus the movie’s plot is set up within the first fifteen minutes, and almost everything else has to do with that. If Hogwarts were a Catholic school, Umbridge would be the nun who rapped naughty students on the knuckles, fought the teaching of evolution, and railed against rock and roll. Allied with Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore, Harry tries to rally the opposition in secret. The last movie in the series introduced more personal themes as the young wizards and witches felt the stirs of puberty, but Harry barely has time to kiss his girlfriend from The Goblet of Fire. Umbridge is a straightforwardly evil character who manages to cow even the imperious Professor Snape (Alan Rickman). Why she and the Ministry of Magic so oppose the notion of Valdemort’s return isn’t well explained, but in any case good and evil are clear enough.
Harry himself provides the three-dimensionality. It’s not that he’s a morally ambiguous character. When he frets about losing his sense of right and wrong, you won’t believe it, but you’ll believe that Harry does. Much credit here belongs to Radcliffe, who conveys real, ordinary emotions, like fear and uncertainty. It’s this that sets him apart from all of the action heroes of summer. Faced for the first time with being disbelieved and rejected, he is anxious. Aside from the plot, this installment is Harry becoming an adult.
On the whole, #4 remains my favorite of the films. It’s more fun, and nothing here is as exciting or as visually inspired as its dragon battle. The interplay of the various personalities perhaps get short shrift here as well. But the extended showdown at the end is well-crafted, and some new creatures are introduced. There remains an intelligence that helps the series continue to attract a wide audience, so I’ll be happily anticipating Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in 2008.
IMDB link
written 7/16/07
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