Recap Reviews: Harry Potter 5-7a

All three films left to recap share a director, David Yates, probably the most successful director in the series to meld the young-adult adventure and mystery of the books with interesting filmmaking and an even-handedness towards the darker themes of the stories which attract myself and many other adult fans. Two of the three share a screenwriter, Steve Kloves, who wrote the screenplays for all four previous films. He took a break for film 5, bringing in Michael Goldenberg, a writer with surprisingly few credits before taking on Harry Potter; then again, book 5 is so bloated and poorly written, I’d wager a first-time screenwriter could make a decent job of it. However, something in Goldenberg’s favor was the screenplay for 1997’s Contact, where he successfully turned Carl Sagan’s mumbo-jumbo into something human. Kloves resumes the writing chair for films 6 and 7a, and the break results in even better scripts for those films.


5. the Order of the Phoenix, July 2007. One thing Rowling did do correctly, and Goldenberg & Yates pick up on well, is establish from the beginning, with the dementor attack on Harry and Dudley, that Harry is fundamentally not safe anymore. Under attack from outside, and soon enough from within, not only from nightmares of Cedric’s death but Voldemort’s attempts to take advantage of the psychic link between them, Harry, already feeling isolated from his friends and teachers, withdraws further. Even the wizarding world at large is hostile or mistrustful of him; the scenes surrounding the hearing at the Ministry of Magic go on too long, but do a good job of making this point. The central struggle here, to accept the help of others and together take action, is the choice he has to make, something half-buried in Rowling’s novel. The scenes where Ron and Hermione push and plead with Harry to teach secret classes in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and then his subsequent relief and feeling of usefulness from doing so, is powerfully acted and shot. Sure, there’s loads of special effects in the Room of Requirement training scenes (and weirdly, much of the movie’s effects seem suffused with an unrealistic blue color, which doesn’t seem to have much point), but Yates smartly focuses on the characters instead.

The two newest characters with the most screen time, Dolores Umbridge and Luna Lovegood, are brilliant, and brilliantly played by Imelda Staunton and Evanna Lynch. One quibble is that, if only Goldberg and Yates had realized, something special could have done in setting up these characters as opposed to one another, not overtly or directly – they barely have any scenes together – but through a filmic device or two. Much could be made of contrasting Umbridge’s inherent paranoia and grasping for control with Luna’s naturally trusting, easygoing and intelligent nature: it’s no accident that Luna’s patronus is a rabbit. The subtlety of Luna as an echo for Harry, identifying with his new degree of being an outsider, but being quite happy regardless, is done primarily in the writing and acting, and done well. Even more impressive is the true Britishness of Umbridge; no schoolmaster from anywhere but Britain could be so primly evil. Cruel, haughty, and at bottom cowardly, some of the best scenes revolve around Umbridge, from Harry’s and later the Order’s detentions, to the Weasley twins disrupting the OWLs and throwing her into total disarray, to her hysteria at the brink of torturing Harry for information. I can offer no greater compliment concerning Umbridge to Rowling, Yates, and Goldberg than to say she is a true offspring of Dickens and Roald Dahl.

An abundance of exposition, always a thorny problem in these films, is dealt with through swooping headlines of The Daily Prophet, with ingenious use of the fact that photos in the wizarding world move and speak, letting the newspaper be both textual and visual transition. The budding romance between Harry and Cho, which frankly I could have lived without, is treated fine enough, though nothing results much from it; other than a line by Snape about using Veritaserum on her to find the Room of Requirement, Cho is unceremoniously dropped once the, ahem, important stuff starts happening. Snape himself is mostly ignored as well, save for the Occlumency lessons he gives Harry and the important flashback showing that even James Potter wasn’t always a great guy. A little more of how Snape fits/doesn’t fit into the Order would have been nice. The filmmakers rightly spend relatively little time at 12 Grimmauld Place, ancestral home of the Blacks and current hq for the Order, diminishing the storylines around pureblood issues, though not ignoring them. While the house elf storylines are ignored altogether, this was a blessed relief, though I do regret it meant there was little incentive for the statues in the Ministry to come alive at the final battle to fight Voldemort. The few scenes with the Order, showing them eager but frustrated, both with the Ministry and each other, felt right and it gave more meaning to the hopes of the next generation as they trained and struck out on their own. Though it's in retreat, the younger generation do indeed acquit themselves well in the prophecy room fight with the Death-Eaters. The arrival of the Order and ensuing battle hits the exact right notes, down to Jason Isaac’s sneers and Bellatrix killing Sirius but then almost surprised after doing it. (Helena Bonham-Carter may be typecast as a mad hatter, but for good reason; her eyes fixed in hatred and fear, with just her lower lip quivering as Harry debates killing her, is sheer mastery.) The swirls of black and white smoke as the wizards charge and battle one another are a nice touch, too.

Michael Gambon re-earns his chops as Dumbledore, after a less-convincing performance in film 4. His initial firmness and fierce defense of Harry, resulting in his gradual diminishment by Umbridge and eventual need to escape capture by the Ministry, adds a nice degree of complexity in his arrival to help Harry fight Voldemort: his confidence in literally saving Harry from Voldemort’s spells; his impotence in Harry’s internal fight against the Dark Lord’s possession. It’s seeing Ron and Hermione and remembering his love for them and for Sirius which gives Harry the strength to resist Voldemort. The shift here, with Dumbledore as powerful but flawed; or rather, human, as James Potter was, as Harry is, capable of making mistakes and poor decisions, is huge for the remainder of the series.

Best line: There’s lots of good ones to choose from, from Hermione explaining the emotional upheavals of teenage girls to Ron getting a number of good one-liners throughout the film, to Harry saying to Umbridge, as the centaurs drag her away and she wants him to tell them she doesn’t mean them any harm, that he must not tell lies. But I’ll go with the most unexpectedly touching moment, when Harry and Sirius are fighting Lucius and another Death-eater side by side. Harry disarms the second Death-eater and as Sirius is grappling with Lucius he says, quite unconsciously, “Nice one, James!”


6. the Half-Blood Prince, July 2009. While #4 is my favorite book, and #3 is likely my favorite movie, the runner-up to both would be this book and film, so Half-Blood Prince tends to get my highest overall rating taking both mediums into account. Pretty much everything until the last few scenes of film 4 are essentially kids’ movies; of the other three we’re considering here, film 5 feels very choppy overall and film 7a has great pacing, but the jury is still out until I see the last movie. Only film 6 feels altogether smooth, and develops more realistically as it goes along, especially emotionally. Where the romantic aspects of films 4 and 5 (the Yule Ball and stuff with Cho) feel rather tacked on, the romance here is more organic and ties into the overall story better and more directly. Jessie Cave does a great job of interpreting the half-child, half-harpy nature of Lavender Brown, and her scenes with Ron are invariably funny and cringeworthy at the same time. Yet I had forgotten how masterful the scene at the bottom of the staircase is, with Harry trying to comfort Hermione and the interruption by Ron and Lavender.

Bonnie Wright has always been very good as Ginny, but there’s something endearingly awkward about her and Harry dancing around one another emotionally. The filmmakers repeatedly emphasize her steadfastness and inner strength, in situations both small (the Quidditch tryouts) and big (in the marsh as Bellatrix and Fenrir attack; comforting Harry after Dumbledore’s death). Over the course of the film I grow convinced that, where it might have started as a cute little infatuation – and there’s hints of that as far back as film 2 – their relationship could be a meaningful and strong one. On the other side of things, Yates takes great care to show Draco continually alone and lonely, something I don’t quite remember Rowling capitalizing on in the novel. (It’s actually quite nice, seeing as how Draco was barely used in films 4 and 5, how much he’s a part of this film, and Tom Felton’s performance has improved immeasurably as well.) Lastly, Emma Watson nails Hermione’s slow-thaw-romantic-feelings thing towards Ron, and Rupert Grint’s doe-eyed performance as Ron under Romilda Vane’s love potion is brilliant slapstick.

From all this you will easily gather that I disagree with the critics who think the romantic subplots being given just about equal time as the main plot was ill-advised. In fact, the levity provided by them does a good job towards that smooth tone I mentioned. Think about it: film 5 is a very grim movie; Ron’s one-liners and the Weasley twins’ fireworks are so good in it mainly because they’re such a needed release from the doom and gloom. Here the balance of comic and tragic is well-considered, providing a broader palette and more complexity. In many ways this increased depth can be seen encapsulated in the character of Slughorn. As played by the great Jim Broadbent, the Potions Master is both the absent-minded professor and the man with a secret which is slowly tearing him apart inside. Which reminds me: as Snape, like Draco, has been mostly ignored in the past couple of films, he once again emerges as a crucial secondary character, and Alan Rickman steals most every scene he’s in; even the brief scenes, with no dialogue in either, as he passes Harry on his way out of the Astronomy Tower before Harry and Dumbledore go in search of the horcrux, and on his way in again as Harry is watching Dumbledore, Draco, and the Death-eaters above, are striking, filled with an intimidating presence which may or may not be on the side of good. And the calm, malice-filled way he simply says “Yes, I’m the Half-Blood Prince” to Harry is pitch-perfect. But the filmmakers did make one horrible mistake. After years of pining after the job, and with Slughorn coming on staff as Potions Master, we never see Snape teach a Defense Against the Dark Arts class. And that’s criminal, really.

As with film 5, there’s too many choices for a best line. Maggie Smith gets some rare and welcome snark when, after telling Harry he can sign up for Advanced Potions now that Slughorn is teaching it, also says “Potter, take Weasley with you. He looks far too happy over there.” I laughed out loud in the theater when, early in the film, Dumbledore brings Harry to Slughorn’s house and says Harry must be wondering why they’ve come, and Harry responds “Actually, sir, after all these years I just sort of go with it.” But my current favorite is when, in the library, Hermione tells Harry that Romilda Vane has a crush on him. Harry stares at Romilda across the desks and Hermione snaps her fingers in front of him: “Hey! She's only interested in you because she thinks you're the Chosen One.” Harry: “But I am the Chosen One.” And Hermione promptly smacks him on the head with a newspaper.

There are of course a few other things I would’ve liked more of. Neville and Luna, after getting more attention in film 5, are mostly ignored here. The scene at the Burrow with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, Lupin and Tonks was good, but left me wanting more from the Order as well. Other things felt just about right: Bellatrix shows up just often enough to be a threat without detracting from the main story, and the opening scene with her, Snape, and Cissy Malfoy is compact and well done. There was just enough Quidditch to have Ron’s needed moments of glory in tryouts and a match; the game itself, after Voldemort’s return, really belongs only in the kids’ movies. I could go on for a long time about how much I like that Voldemort never appears in the present in book or film 6, just in the past, and how the potentiality of the past is scary enough in its own right. This of course would get me into my pet theory of how the Potter books work, mirroring each other, with books 2 and 6 paired for many reasons. I won’t go there; you can find a little more of it in my original review of film 6 earlier on the blog.

I will say, however, that Michael Gambon has to work just as hard as the young actors in this film, carrying much of the exposition and narrative urgency of the movie. He does a great job, primarily because he and the filmmaker’s clearly see Dumbledore as having gone through a bit of evolving on his own. He’s more frank, less obscure in his replies to Harry and how he shares his thoughts. He’s more human than ever before, as we see his burned hand, distended and warped. He makes decisions not having a good sense of their outcomes, and sometimes he makes bad ones. He repeatedly emphasizes that he’s expendable, tending to shock whoever he’s speaking with. Lastly of course, he’s mortal, and dies at Snape’s hands. It’s one of the best changes from the book to the film, in my opinion, that instead of petrifying Harry so he can’t interfere, he asks for Harry’s word that he won’t, and Harry keeps it, though afterwards Harry is devastated by doing so. In this way Harry earns the mission to go find the rest of the horcruxes, setting up the main storyline to book and film 7. He earns the quest too by his reaction to Dumbledore’s death; in stark contrast to Cedric’s, Harry is still caught up in overpowering emotion, but here is silent, tender, putting a hand on Dumbledore’s beard, then chest. Rather than fighting off those who would comfort him, he puts his head on Ginny’s shoulder as he cries. Grief for a friend and father figure is a deep sadness, but Harry chooses to bear it rather than let it sweep him away. In the last scene of the movie, as he tells Ron and Hermione of his plans, he reiterates that he’s going to do it alone, but their wish to share his struggles and sorrows make them choose to go with him, altogether fitting as the themes from film 5 are solidified here in film 6, between those who choose to isolate themselves and those who choose to rely on friendship.


7a. the Deathly Hallows part 1, November 2010. Dumbledore gone, and no one left in charge of the Order. Hogwarts unsafe for Harry, even if he wanted to return. A new Minister of Magic opens the film with a brave speech about defending liberty and the ministry remaining strong in these dark times; his words are immediately undercut by the Dursleys, sensing so much danger they abandon Privet Drive and Harry, and Hermione forced to keep her parents safe by wiping herself completely from their lives and memories. This is how the final chapter of our story opens. At the time of its release, many critics only talked about how most of the movie is a set-up for the second film, but didn't go deeper and explore how fundamentally different this film is from every other that came before it. Yates and Kloves alter their directing and writing styles, partly because, yes, this is half of a 5-hour movie, but also because a large part of the underlying power of the story here is the displacement of Harry & his friends out of the magical and into the real world. There was debate over the appropriateness of the Millennium Bridge attack near the start of film 6, but in retrospect it was the teaser, analogous to Rowling starting book 6 at 10 Downing Street, of how eventually this war will spill into Muggle society, with Voldemort in control of the wizarding world, leaving Harry to take refuge on uncertain, foreign ground. Nothing illustrates this better than Bill & Fleur’s wedding reception, first with Harry finding out there's apparently quite a lot he doesn't know about Dumbledore, planting seeds of doubt about his mentor, and immediately followed by the message from Shacklebolt that "the Ministry has fallen." Suddenly the Death-eaters attack the reception. In the chaos, Lupin shoves Harry towards Ron & Hermione and screams for them to go, and Hermione apparates them into the middle of the theater district in London, neon and asphalt everywhere. The crane shot capturing where they are and the swarm of crowds around them is a huge jolt from the humble wedding reception at the Burrow, and from here on the trio is unceremoniously on their own.

Time, for them, stops; Hermione is sad to not be able to celebrate Harry’s birthday, and she and Harry don’t realize it’s Christmas Eve until they hear the church service in Godric’s Hollow. Later in the Forest of Dean, Hermione says the place is just as she remembers it as a child, and half-wishes they could remain there, growing old but never changing, like the forest. Only Ron’s radio connects them to the outside world: a poor, static-filled connection which never tells them much of anything except the lists of newly disappeared or dead wizards killed by the Death-eaters. In the book, frankly, this was a plodding section, not badly written, but just making the same point over and over of how alone the three (and then the two) are. But the filmmaking here marks a tonal shift from what we've seen before: the shots and scenes stretch out; as film 6’s camera work relies on the motif of height and falling, the camera here underscores width, breadth. There are long establishing shots and wide tracking everywhere in this film, especially as Harry and his friends are in the wilderness. Plus, the creation of the short dancing scene between Harry and Hermione is brilliant, adds a depth to their characters and the story, and shows a new way of making Rowling's point she hadn't thought of. On a second viewing, it's my favorite part of the movie.

But if I linger overmuch there, it’s because it makes the danger in the other sections more real for me. The “action” sequences of the film (the escape from Privet Drive to the Burrow, the attack at the diner, infiltrating the Ministry to steal back the locket horcrux, Nagini’s attack at Godric’s Hollow, and the escape from Malfoy Manor) are rather evenly spaced and make the overall slower pacing work, especially with the brief shock scenes of the attacks at the wedding and the Lovegoods’ home, which the trio flee from quickly. It is also crucial – and Rowling has just as much to do with this as the filmmakers – that the latter four sequences all involve Harry and his friends interacting with their enemies only, barring the appearance of the others in the Malfoy dungeon, who (so far) can’t help, and the surprise appearance of Dobby, who does indeed save their lives, but is killed by Bellatrix. It’s as if the Order itself has disappeared and is ineffective: unlike the book, the filmmakers excise the “Potterwatch” resistance radio broadcasts, and after the wedding reception none of the Order is seen again for the rest of the movie.

Though we hear via the radio that Snape has been named Headmaster of Hogwarts and Harry sees him on the Marauder’s Map, his only scene is at the beginning, coming to a meeting at Malfoy Manor and watching coldly as Voldemort kills a fellow Hogwarts teacher. (The visual touch of his Death-eater smoke trail being black at the core and giving off wisps of white smoke at the edges is an ingenious cinematic device.) The additional brief character development we see of the Malfoys is likewise well done, though not for the squeamish: Lucius has broken down mentally and has become a drunk; Draco is even more cowardly (the desperation on Tom Felton’s face as Harry takes away his wand is quite telling); and Bellatrix has become even more deranged and sadistic, sitting on top of Hermione and carving “Mudblood” into her arm, in a truly scary, disgusting quasi-rape. I’ve not happened to read of any reviewer commenting on this scene for what it is actually is, or noting that after, in the remaining few minutes of the film, Hermione just clings to Ron and cries. There's one moment when she brings Dobby’s body to Harry at the grave he’s dug, but then she goes back to Ron and curls up next to him.

It goes almost without saying that Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson have become adept, subtle young actors, turning in performances miles better from even films 4 and 5 when they had started maturing their skills. They shine throughout the movie, especially when they’re playing scenes just themselves together, or riffing off one another in the very few lighter moments. The body language in their performances, as much as the writing, make it very easy to buy that Harry’s and Ron’s relationships with Hermione are completely different from each other, which makes Ron’s refusing Voldemort's temptation and destroying the locket horcrux all the more satisfying. Satisfying also are the inner workings of the Ministry of Magic; it’s evident that the filmmakers loved Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and Michael Radford’s film of Orwell’s 1984, borrowing heavily from both to show the dark bureaucracy the Ministry has become under Voldemort’s control. Whoever the three actors are who played our trio under Polyjuice Potion do quite well, awkward in their bodies yet still displaying little gestures and tics common to Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Coming to the end of all these recaps I’m realizing that what I gravitate towards most in the Harry Potter movies is a highly structured stylization. Having read the books first and enjoyed them all (apart from book 5), the need for highly developed characters isn’t crucial for me, though I certainly appreciate it where I find it, and films 6 and 7a get high marks because of it. The “magic” element isn’t as much of a draw either, and although I’d love an invisibility cloak or the Marauder’s Map or the chance to take a Potions class, that the films show all these things doesn’t specifically endear the films to me. The effects throughout the series are, with few and minor exceptions, excellently done. Maybe it’s because Rowling herself structures her stories so intricately, I like to see an equally intricate care taken with the cinematic style of the movies. The Columbus films don’t offer much here because they tell far more than they show, which is the same problem, in my opinion, with film 4. Film 5 improves on the book dramatically, but its pacing is off and there’s a fair amount of structure, but it just swirls around its one theme, sometimes well and sometimes rather listlessly. Film 3 is by far the most completely stylized, and some would say overstylized, but because it’s a style I’ve loved long before the Potter films came along, I just enjoy it. Film 6 is far more subtle, but once you see the stylization you realize it’s everywhere and as I said earlier, I really like the structure having almost equal weight given to the horcrux and romance storylines. And film 7a we’ll have to call incomplete for the moment, because obviously I haven’t seen 7b yet, though I will at some point and write a review here when I can. But so far, I’d call 7a on its own at least as good as film 6, through structured and stylized in an almost opposite way to that film. I’d imagine after directing two and writing five of these, Yates and Kloves respectively found that radical a change refreshing. That they maintained a continuity of character and tone, albeit an ever-darkening tone, between these changes is an achievement. As the slower pacing of 7a involved a little over 60% of the original book, I’m expecting the same pacing to continue in 7b with the remaining 40%, and I’m looking forward to that.

Oh, and the best line for 7a? There’s a handful (literally, only a handful) of funny moments, most of them visual, not dialogue-driven, but admittedly there was an unexpected one I had to smile at. I almost can’t believe I’m giving Dobby props for anything, but after loosening the chandelier in Malfoy Manor so that it almost crushes Bellatrix, she snaps “You stupid elf! You could have killed me!” It’s both the actual words Dobby responds with, and the indignant tone in which he says them: “Dobby never meant to kill! Dobby only meant to maim, or seriously injure!”