Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Michael Gambon, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint

Director: David Yates

Screenplay: Steve Kloves

Running time: 2 hrs 31 mins

Genre: Fantasy/Drama



CRITIQUE:


You have to hand it to the Harry Potter franchise. Currently sitting at the throne as the most bankable series of all-time, bigger than what Star Wars or Bonds can bang their bucks, it preserves its workmanship level and promises to deliver with each cinematic outing. Ever since Alfonso Cúaron stepped up to helm the brilliant Azkaban, things have changed for this saga; a relegated promise to steer this fantasy tale into darker territories. In fact, the promise is mostly driven by the cliché that sequels should be darker and darker – that by the time we get to Part 7, it will all be shades of black and we wouldn’t see anything anymore on the screen.


Which leads us to Half-Blood Prince. If there’s one thing director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves learned for this one, it’s the knowing that books (especially as thick as Harry Potter doorstoppers) can never be made into fully-fledged films. Cinema works differently than literature. You wouldn’t want to see prose on your screen or being told a hefty amount of exposition. The collaboration adroitly took liberties to dispense Rowling’s descriptions down the drain and craft a sinuous storyline that veers between light and dark, humour and foreboding, romance and tragedy, all without sacrificing balance. The result is deliberately measured, unhurried and well-paced compared to the jaggedness of its predecessor. This one does not scuttle just to get to the climax.


From the very start of this chapter, the film opens right after the furore in the Order of the Phoenix, with Harry and Dumbledore slowly moving through the photographic flashes of a press junket. Amidst the crowd, Harry is in solitude. Dumbledore puts his arm around the adolescent wizard like some patriarchal protection, and this sets the scene for this chapter. The relationship between mentor and student become more complex; more in the lines between commander and soldier, wizard and apprentice. This is really Harry and Dumbledore’s film as they uncover Voldemort’s deepest secrets, through a series of revisiting memories courtesy of the Pensive. And it is between the excellent Gambon and Radcliffe that both nail gravitas in their scenes together. Prince establishes this partnership earlier on, right before a stunningly staged Millennium Bridge attack, that when we get to the dazzling cave scene and a finale at the Astronomy Tower – the tragic momentum is felt with emotional force.


Yet there is also a bludgeoning romance to be dealt with, with hormones rampaging providing the film’s lightness. Grint’s Ron has become the centre of so much unfortunate potion episodes and a bothersome Lavender Brown. Whilst occasionally comic, it also finds subtlety in Watson’s beautifully portrayed Hermione, whose yearning for her bestfriend makes for the pangs of adolescent love in this series. That staircase scene is poignant and observed with tactful grace, providing only a few lines that say an awful lot about the characters involved. Even Ginny and Harry’s developing romance is rendered with quiet, intimate moments.


This even manages to draw fine performances from its supporting players from a stellar British cast which one couldn’t really complain about: Rickman, a hissy fit as ever, as Snape drawling with sinister one-liners like death sentences; Bonham-Carter’s deranged witch Bellatrix; but the surprising turns come from Broadbent’s fame-hoarding Professor Slughorn, this episode’s new Potions Master butting out Snape, providing both gentility and remorsefulness beneath the flabby layers of pretence, and Felton’s sneering Malfoy, who saves this character from being a two-dimensional bully and gives him human depth, a pawn pushed by bigger forces, who fears the failure of an assassination.


Longevity aside, the leanness of the script is executed with Amelie and A Very Long Engagement lenser Bruno Delbonnel’s stunning cinematography, with muted colours, sepia-toned scenes for warmth, and washed-out for ominous sequences. Watch the Burrow attack with a dynamic camera running through a field, the terrifying cave scene with the cursed Inferis, Dumbledore pulling off a Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea stunt with flames, and Bellatrix's gleeful, sadistic demolition of the Hogwarts’ Great Hall – three truly standout action sequences with visual vigour. By the time the death of a major character and a moving tribute happen, we all realise the immediacy of the unfolding war, and we step back and look at the bigger picture – this is a film where nothing seems to happen (as Radcliffe’s Harry opines that the pursuit of Horcruxes has all been “a waste”), little do they know that the lines had been drawn in this story, and every single character's choice has a momentous impact of a bigger battle to come, that is in Deathly Hallows, chopped into two parts.


VERDICT:

Call this the film noir of the Potter franchise – perhaps the most human, most character-driven of them all. There is an emotional complexity and a quite dignified power to this technically penultimate outing, largely coming from Yates' beautifully restrained direction. In the tentpole of summer blockbusters, Prince is guaranteed to triumph the crown because things like character motivations, robust storytelling and a heart are nowhere to be found in Michael Bay robots or McG’s machines.



RATING: A-