Filed under: Fantasy
The world of Harry Potter has become a dark and gloomy existence, and it’s most evident through the deeply textured color palette of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. Gone are the bright colors of magic and wonder. In Half-Blood prince, the sixth installment of the Harry Potter franchise the only colors remaining are grey, orange, brown, and green. There is hardly a trace of the blues that dominated the previous chapter, Order of the Phoenix. Director David Yates helmed both Phoenix and Prince. For every misstep Yates took in that previous effort he gets right here, except for the opening, which is an unforgivable decision to open with a jolt of terror and anarchy. A bridge is destroyed by black wisps. This act of terror is performed by Voldemort’s henchmen not to make a statement to the wizard community, but to remind the casual viewer that these are dark times. This prologue is almost nonsensical. Harry Potter films tend to build toward a grand finale. This opening is not only disorienting, but will further confuse those casual viewers it’s intended to assist. Yates then has to start building suspense and momentum all over again. He does this by employing classic horror techniques. Blinking lights in the subway, blood dripping from the ceiling, a chase scene in a wheat field. These common elements foreshadow a finale that is grand and terrifying, beautiful and heroic. However, the true moments of beauty in the film don’t come at the loud moments in the beginning or the end, but in the day-to-day drollness of the middle.
By this point in the series, right before the final installment, Rowling doesn’t have much for the characters to do, so there is a general aimlessness and lack of plot that translates exquisitely to film. At last, after five years of mishaps and plot contrivances we finally get to see one normal school year at Hogwarts, give or take a few incidents. Naturally we follow Harry Potter, played by Daniel Radcliffe who, with his boxy face and horn-rimmed glasses is a dead ringer for Harold Lloyd. I’m not sure when, but at some point Harry Potter stopped being the “boy who lived” and is now called “the chosen one.” This new title requires Harry to join the union of chosen persons, which includes Frodo Baggins, Neo, Luke Skywalker, and it’s founding member, Freder from Metropolis. When Harry is not busy fulfilling obligations as a savior, which primarily involves attempts at attaining a memory from his potions professor, Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent), he’s trying to get a kiss from his best friend’s sister, Ginny (Bonnie Wright). They don’t have a whole lot of chemistry, but then again, Harry is cheating in his Potions class, using the notes and formulas of the Half-Blood Prince, who has committed his life’s work in the margins of Harry’s textbook.
The class that the film is primarily involved with is Slughorn’s. He teaches a class on potions, which seems to be more of a course on black-market pharmacy than alchemy. They’re making drugs. A love potion turns Harry’s best friend Ron (Rupert Grint) into a loony drunk, while a luck potion seems to have the same effect as a joint. Slughorn seems to be on some sort of uppers. He’s equally excited when he’s doting on a favorite student as when he’s gathering a giant arachnid’s venom in a vial. On the other hand, resident bully Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) appears to be taking downers. He’s often seen furious and stone-faced during public galas, or alone in a secret attic, concealed by one of those unicorn tapestries from The Cloisters, which if nothing else at least explains those tapestries. Meanwhile, headmaster Albus Dumbledore is becoming a bit too inquisitive into Harry’s social life. The lunacy and joy of the school year is so zany and carefree that you don’t want it to end. Everyone seems to have a touch of madness, which complements the wondrousness of the magical environment in ways that havn’t been prevalent in this series since Alfonso Cuaron’s Prisoner of Azkaban. There’s even a fight between Harry and Draco in a bathroom, contributing to yet another major incident that happens in a bathroom, along with the conflict with the troll from the first year and the entrance to the chamber of secrets from the second.
Some critics have expressed dissent toward some of the darker tone and general brooding in these later episodes of the series. Personally, I never felt that the world of witchcraft and wizardry was all that welcoming an environment. After all, Rowling has created a universe with not only a forbidden forest, but also a restricted section in the library.
-Jason Bardin
2 Comments so far
Leave a comment
I just have one question for you Mr. Bardin. I have read the entire book series, and I am going to see this movie. Some of my friends that I was planning to go with have not read the series, and complained about not knowing what was going on in the past 2 movies. Is this a valid concern with this installment?
Comment by Shiela
08.21.09 @ 2:44 pm
Shiela, your friends are going to feel very confused during the first twenty minutes. A lot of the early plot development is hidden in difficult to read issues of the daily prophet. Once they get to Hogwarts everything should settle down. The young romance relationships are the main crux of the film and those are lucid and well developed. The flashbacks to Tom Riddle clearly explain Voldemort’s past and the meaning and purpose of a horcrux, which sets up the finale. They might be confused as to what Draco is doing, sulkng in the corridors, but the ending should answer any questions, except those still left to be answered in the final two films. It’s better to just go with the film moment by moment rather than thinking about it as a whole. The Potter franshise doesn’t work the same way that Lord of the Rings did. That series represented three parts of a whole. Each film was really only a third of the final product. Each Potter film is a seperate film, and since they weren’t designed as a whole, confusion on some level is inevitable. I still feel that the humor, suspense, and action in this particular entry compensate for any plot holes lost in adaptation.
Comment by Jason
08.21.09 @ 3:51 pm
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>