February 27, 2010: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It’s a good thing that the lengths of my movie reviews don’t need to correspond with the run times of their subjects. The Harry Potter films all tend to be lengthy, in the 2.5-hour range, but I find less and less to think or write about with each installment. Admittedly that’s largely my fault, since I only read the first Harry Potter book. I found it to be a refreshingly written children’s novel, but not a series I needed to continue with in light of all the other authors I haven’t read at all. Sure, I waste lots of time watching movies, but even there I remain conscious of the dubiousness of having seen Tommy Boy (1995) countless times yet never having seen Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959).
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is based on the sixth book in the seven-book series. The final book will be turned into two movies, which is probably appropriate considering the amount of ground which is covered. I suspect the filmmakers realized that interest in the films would burn out if several of the later ones were split out in such a way, despite there being no shortage of material to put to the screen. With the recent films in particular I have really noticed the impact of my lack of background from not having read the books. The first film struck me as being quite long, and packed full, and just barely covering the material from the fairly thin book. Each later entry has had to dump at least a couple of hundred pages’ worth of the story by the wayside, making for films which seem to barely scratch the surface of character development and plot complexity. This latest film was nominated for an Oscar for Cinematography, which is why I saw it. It didn’t win.
The focus here is on exposing some additional background on how Voldemort came to be, with a good deal of time also devoted to the budding romances among these teenagers. I was struck even more than usual by the sense that so much about their world is more cut and dried than people would like to admit – can’t we just say out loud that Draco Malfoy is bad, and has been bad since his first appearance in the storyline? Harry seems to know but nobody else will just accept that. Yet at the same time, I wonder why other things which shouldn’t be so easily accepted are taken at face value – everyone seems to know of the power and allure of dark magic, yet even the most learned scholars know very little about it so it remains a mystery rather than something which is understood and controlled. Can you tell that fantasy and wizardry aren’t my favourite fictional subjects? Maybe there should be more spies and international intrigue. And car chases.
And that’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Most already know the story if they are seeing the movie. For those who haven’t read the books, there’s (just barely) enough background given to be able to follow along on the surface. And if you haven’t been following the story at all up to this point, there’s plenty that will make no sense at all. That’s fine with me, though, and I’ll probably see the final two films regardless of their awards eligibility. I’ll be interested in seeing whether the final film gets a bump in Oscar attention, the way the third Lord of the Rings installment capitalized on the build-up from earlier episodes and took home the big prizes. I don’t think the Harry Potter films have the same technical pedigree or enough cultural momentum at this point in time, but I may be surprised. Certainly the acting pedigree has been impeccable from the very start, with the series having given regular work to a huge array of the most respected British actors and actresses currently working. The movies don’t disappoint, but at the same time they are hardly essential viewing.
That’s another Harry Potter entry done.
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