Movie Report: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
J.K. Rowling doesn't get enough recognition. I don't mean about the success of her books and the movies made from them: she gets plenty of recognition for that. I mean recognition for what she has managed to accomplish with her writing. The Harry Potter stories are, essentially, an account of a civil war in the world of wizards. Snore! Yet, she has managed to take what could have been a fairly dull and pedantic fantasy history and create tales so engaging that most people don't even notice what the main story is about. She does this by focusing on the people involved, their everyday lives, and the wonder of magic in their world.
The movies made from the books have followed the same strategy. This is the sixth installment out of seven, and their world is tipping toward all-out war. The impact of magical warfare is even affecting the world of muggles (non-magic folks like me and, presumably, you), as in the first scenes of the movie.
However, Harry Potter's first scene is very different. This handsome young man is sitting in a coffee shop, flirting with a waitress, who flirts back. Their planned meeting after her shift is cut short by the appearance of Dumbledore, who whisks Harry away from life, the life he deserves, and back to the front, where his power and influence are needed.
Dumbledore has a secret plan for tackling Lord Voldemort, the infinitely evil and powerful sorcerer who is at the core of the civil war. In flashback, we see Dumbledore when he first rescued Voldemort – then a lonely orphan named Tom Riddle – from an orphanage and brought him to Hogwart's to learn how to control his already powerful magical abilities. This kid was scary. He makes the Omen kid look like Hayley Mills. Here's a question: what do you do with a child who is both evil and powerful?
It's a tough question, and it's not the only one. What can Hermione do when Ron, whom she cares about, falls in love with someone else? The situation may seem far-fetched, given that Hermione is played by Emma Watson, but teenage boys are notoriously dense, nearly as dense as grown men. This adolescent romance – like the Quidditch matches, the quirky classes, and the always-surprising meals – is not a trivial matter. It's life. And this movie makes clear, as the books make clear, that the reason wars are important is because they affect lives, for good or for bad.
Dumbledore's idea is that there is something in Voldemort's past, in his life as Tom Riddle at Hogwart's, that is a key to disarming the evil Lord. That something is locked in the memory of vain and vapid Professor Slughorn. Harry is set the task of getting Slughorn to relinquish that memory. How far do you go to recover something so vital to winning this war? Harry, a powerful wizard in his own style, could probably go very far. But at what point do you become like the enemies you're trying to defeat?
The weapons of the evil wizards include ambush and assassination. They lure Harry into an ambush where they hope to eliminate him for good. And they assign Draco Malfoy, the supercilious git with the snowy blond hair, to assassinate Dumbledore. He experiences real anguish about this, and you get the feeling he's realizing that evil isn't as fun as it sounds.
Other characters from past installments appear, but fleetingly, just enough for you to say, Oh, hey, it's Hagrid. The focus is on Harry and Dumbledore as they race to patch together a defense against a foe who is too fast, too powerful, and all too willing to take lives. The questions never stop. In a war, where does your duty stop and your life begin? How much are you allowed to hold back of yourself? How far can you risk the lives of those you care about?
If you read the book, you can tell that they left out a bale of material, which is good: at two and a half hours, the length feels just right, especially considering the gut-punch ending. The movie itself is visually very dark, which makes sense symbolically, but made it hard to always tell what's going on. The British accents were harder to penetrate this time around also, although the acting is so good that you always know what they mean, even if you don't know what they're saying.
If you remember the first few Harry Potter movies, you can tell that the kids are growing up. The question the movie leaves us with is: what kind of a world are they growing up into?
Comments