As we dipped our chips in the delicious Nu Metro guacamole before we sat down to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, we critics tried to refresh our memories: What happened, we asked each other, in the last Harry Potter?
Nobody was entirely sure, but I do remember something taking place in an underground sort of space with black walls, rather like the toilets of a flashy Italian disco.
Or perhaps that was the film before the previous film, which would have made it HP4 — the new one may be abbreviated to HP6, mostly for Americans who are losing track and haven’t heard of HP Sauce. I imagine this will cause problems with the two HPs to come, because the final novel in the sequence of seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is to be made into two films. Perhaps their titles will be shortened to HP7.1 and HP7.2. Or would that be HP6.5 and HP7?
Numbers are important because the HP films make oodles and oodles of money for their makers. Perhaps not yet as much money as the books have made for author JK Rowling, but they will get there eventually: there will be DVDs, with lots of extras, and extended directors’ cuts and so forth, along with toys, mugs and specially embroidered socks, for decades to come.
The children of the future will look back on the emergence of this magical saga with the same wonder that some, today, look back on the first three Star Wars movies — that is, before their Old Testament arrived, somewhat late in the day, to screw up the sequence… and the quality.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter what happened in HP4 or HP5. The whole series is about the battle of good versus evil, so it’s easy to orient oneself in the plot of any new instalment.
Some detail (such as the doings of the baddie Malfoy family) might be irrecoverable, but the stories follow the same basic outline, which goes like this: Harry starts a new year at Hogwarts school of magic, there’s at least one new teacher, evil is afoot, evil plot emerges, quidditch is played, headmaster Dumbledore takes Harry into his confidence, battle against evil takes place, Harry wins.
He probably feels a little tired and headachey after the battle, but he’ll recover soon enough. Ah, youth. Remember when you could spend all night locked in battle with ultimate evil and barely notice the next day’s hangover?
HP6 opens with a pall of gloom hanging over the world of wizards: there’s some kind of terror campaign on, signalled by big black whooshy things flying around and a scary face that appears in the clouds, yowling and baring its teeth of cumulo-nimbus. That would be the bad guy, then. He’s Voldemort, which means Flight of Death. No jokes about Air France, please.
Around the same time, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) is being picked up by Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) for a little airborne trip. This despite the fact that Harry’s supposed to be on holiday, but then in the battle of good versus evil there’s no downtime. Anyway, before long Harry’s on his way back to school at Hogwarts, with his best friends Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson).
Alongside the battle of good and evil, there are romantic or hormonal issues at play. Harry et al are growing up, and that means new feelings and jealousies and snogging and love potions. All this is touched on rather delicately, with more attention paid to the feelings part than anything else. No actual sex, thanks, we’re British. Oh, and under-age. Snogging only, kids.
The action of HP6 rollicks along entertainingly enough, with a delightful Jim Broadbent on board as the new potions teacher — and naturally he has a secret. Some baddies, such as Bellatrix Lestrange, are around too to cause problems; she’s played by Helena Bonham-Carter doing her patented psychotic-child act. But the most interesting character is turning out to be Professor Severus Snape, despite the fact that he is embodied by Alan Rickman wearing a burqa minus the hood and speaking in a low Valium drawl.
The film looks good, with a busy, Gothic-lite mise en scène and some impressive perspectival shots within the Weasleys’ home and Hogwarts. At the screening I attended the film was soft of focus, so more than that I cannot say about its style. I asked the imposing security personnel to try to get a message through to the people who run the theatre, who seem to vanish, as if under a wizardly cloak of invisibility, as soon as the projectors roll. But I think the Hagrid-like security people were possibly more concerned with preventing any of the critics whipping out a cell phone and pirating two minutes of HP6 for those desperate audiences in Hong Kong.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince also felt terribly long. Still, I’d hesitate to make suggestions about what could be removed from the storyline, though, because it’s hard to tell what’s important or not. Moreover, we’d better get used to length if HP7 is to run at a total time of about five hours, albeit split over two years and two films.
And then, finally, we will know why Baby Harry survived Voldemort’s assassination attempt (compare Jesus and Herod) and whether good or evil will ultimately win this epic battle.
Any predictions? Go on, take a wild guess.