- Official Site
- Embiggen poster
- Metacritic Rating: 71
- My Rating: 9/10
Here begins seven days of Potter madness.
It was always going to be difficult to adapt Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The longest Potter book, it contains a remarkable amount of waffle and prevaricating, and a not inconsiderable heaping of emoting for most of the main characters. There are also some fairly big ideas – state censorship, torture, and, of course, the battle of good versus evil.
And this is director David Yates’ first proper film. He was the chappy responsible for the awesome State of Play BBC mini-series a couple of years ago, and he directed Richard Curtis’ G8 policy directive The Girl in the Café in 2005. So he can certainly do character pieces. But what about this massive, effects laden, $200 million juggernaut?
I’d say he succeeded. Yates and new screenwriter Michael Goldenberg (regular screenwriter Steve Kloves is busy doing The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) seem to have cut most of the cruft from Rowling’s 750-page novel, without really leaving out any of the plot. Sure, certain devices have been amalgamated, changed or reduced in importance, but the essence – and much of the fact – of the book is still present.
There are some fantastic scenes that really do show Yates’ devotion to the characters’ development – the Weasley family has some terribly nice moments together, and the main trio have some charming little encounters. Yates has, apparently, been called an “actor’s director”, in that he plays very much to the strengths of his cast and coaxes performances of a very high standard out of them. This is certainly true of Daniel Radcliffe: his acting reaches a new high, here. He was terrific in Equus in London in the spring, and I daresay that much of his performance there came from his development on this Potter film.
Imelda Staunton joins the franchise as Dolores Umbridge, the thoroughly nasty Under-Minister who becomes Hogwarts High Inquisitor. She perfectly depicts the autocratic evil of the character, and her pink clothes, cat plates and tea add to the strange shift between her exterior English aunt appearance and her interior malignancy.
David Bradley (Filch) gets his most screentime yet, acting, perfectly, almost as a comic foil to Umbridge. Robert Hardy and Jason Isaacs have been criminally underused in the previous films and really do get to show off their talents here. Alan Rickman’s Snape is so on-the-nose that it’s scary (his “Evidently”, in this film, is probably the definitive Snape moment, and comes close to Rickman’s previous best). Michael Gambon seems to draw on all his Pinter experience for his Dumbledore, with much moody silence. And Maggie Smith’s McGonagall is still a magical Miss Jean Brodie, but this time with more anger.
Both Emma Watson and Rupert Grint do fantastic work in their supporting roles. Grint, especially, seems to have made the transition from comedy sidekick to trusted best friend very well.
Yates is, apparently, set to direct film six (the Half-Blood Prince) and he’s added a fair amount to this film to build on next time. Ginny Weasley’s relationship with Harry, for example, is just a few quick looks here, but next film will become much more important.
I do have a few complaints, mainly to do with the way the film was put together. It seemed very, very choppy – some cuts coming almost in the middle of a scene – . Also, whose idea was it to change the dementors? When they appeared in Prisoner of Azkaban, they were damn scary. In this film, they looked too much like reanimated, flying mummies (the Egyptian kind).
This is certainly a fine adaptation of the novel, and also an interesting reinvention of the previous films in the series. We see new elements from the new director, screenwriter and composer (Nicholas Hooper’s score, incidentally, is fantastic. He takes just enough of John Williams and Patrick Doyle’s works, and fleshes them out into his whole new work. Terrific.) added to the world and characters we already know. The result is fairly spectacular.
Now roll on next Saturday morning. I want to know how it all ends…