The Half-Blood Prince - Solid but not Satisfying
A Review of the Newest Harry Potter Film Directed by David Yates
Jul 22, 2009
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is very much like the Goblet of Fire in its tone and flavor, and for good reason - both books are books of transition. Yates seems to pick up on this and communicates this relationship relatively well, but the most recent film lacks depth and feeling in some of the most important scenes.
Lots of Laughter, Little Substance
Perhaps part of the problem is the heavy reliance on humor in this movie. One gets the feeling that Yates was so afraid the audience might get bored during the long film that he felt forced to stuff the movie with as many little humorous moments as possible.
As a whole the movie lacks the sense of foreboding that the book had and the mystery of the half-blood seems like an afterthought, perhaps due to the complete and utter lack of Snape in this movie. The focus of the movie gets lost in cutsy teenage moments and Yate’s infamous bits of forced laughter and goodwill..
Many scenes do not have the resonance they should have had emotionally - Dumbledore’s death felt overly theatrical in a very Gandalf sort of way and lacked the depth it had in the books. Visually stunning, it failed to communicate the devastation experienced by both Harry and the reader alike in the book. Yates managed Sirus Black’s death in Order of the Phoenix quite well, so it was surprising that Dumbledore's demise was such a fumble for him. The school’s response to Dumbledore’s death is lackluster, trite and dull. However, the scenes of Hogwart’s Great Hall unenchanted and abandoned conjured up just the right sense of loss and devastation. The last scene with the trio set the stage well for the next movie, but felt like a weak ending.
Harry Potter - The Boy Who Loved or Sleazy Sexual Tourist?
The beginning of the movie was also very disappointing. After cutting so many important moments, Yates for whatever reason decided to start the movie with some made-up filler. The director seemed to feel pressured to add people of color to the film, which is a good thing, but the places he chose to add them were unfortunate. Harry’s nameless and anonymous “date” makes him seem momentarily like some kind of sexual tourist, picking up random strangers from train station cafes. It also makes him feel like a sexual tourist in the way that he seems to have meaningless dalliances with women of color repeatedly - from Cho Chang to Parvati Patil to this random girl in train station - and yet secretly is harboring feelings for white-as-snow Ginny Weasley, all under the watchful directoral eye of David Yates. Harry Potter in the books did not seem this sleazy, yet it is difficult to discernt what it is about either Radclife’s performance or Yate’s direction that makes Harry seem so unsavory in this moment.
It is the Little Moments that Make a Movie into a real Film
What does manage to save this movie from being blandly disappointing is the real moments of character development in the friendship scenes between Harry and Hermione. Unlike the majority of happy friendship scenes in Yate’s contributions to the series, these new scenes do not feel forced or trite. Instead, Harry and Hermione really seem to have the type of wonderful, deep and meaningful friendship that is so refreshingly rare to see on the big screen, especially between members of the opposite sex. In these moments we finally get to see a little bit of Harry’s emotional inner world, something we will need more of in the next two movies. Harry as a human being is finally beginning to show through.
These quiet, understated moments are what make Yates's contributions to the Harry Potter canon memorable. Though Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is still the best of the Harry Potter movies by far, Yates's understated style of direction might be the better one for the tone of the last book if he can summon more emotional truth out of his actors and stop shying away from the darker mood of Rowling's later books.
 |
