The Ghost Story
I’ve given the Harry Potter films an easy ride over the years. Flat raves for the Columbus films (stylistically, they hew closest to the spirit of their respective novels). Warm enthusiasm for films 3 and 5, each sharply told by talented directors. This leaves the mishmash Goblet of Fire as the only outright rejection, but coming up on the sixth in what will now be an eight-film series, I found my enthusiasm for the whole affair rather dimmed. I expected a kind of post-coital indifference: Deathly Hallows, the book, released in 2007 shortly after Order of the Phoenix, the film, was the best fuck we’ve ever had. It looked like nothing but mortgage payments and dinner with the in-laws from here on.
I was wrong. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince makes a fair play for the top slot in the movie series thus far, and very nearly gets there. These are well-made films, and this one is the best-made, probably, of all of them. It is a testament to the superb craftsmanship that has developed among all the people who bring these movies to the screen, from director to cast, from script to sets.
Half-Blood Prince is the first Harry Potter movie that feels entirely content to be itself. It is the first one that legitimately uses its own language to tell its story, neither so slavish to its novel that it becomes dry, nor so divorced from its source that it loses the gift of storytelling that J.K. Rowling brought to her books. It is, gladly, not about terribly important things in the Harry Potter universe, most of the time. It’s a step back from the bigger story, a moment caught between moments, and that might make it the best of all of them. Careful, careworn, and sad, it is emotionally effective and of a piece (and peace) with itself.
There are a number of things going on at Hogwarts this year. Romance, most notably, as hormones explode for everyone, and all the couples who woulda, coulda, shoulda been together all along finally notice what they’ve been failing to notice. There are boobs now, and muscles, and athletic championships and stolen kisses in the secret room. Perhaps the largest windfall of carrying the same cast over the past near-decade is the shocking, touching familiarity of seeing everybody all growed up.
There’s also a mystery or two, with nefarious goings-on nearly claiming the lives of several students, and the titular Half-Blood Prince whispering to Harry through an old Potions book. There are clues to the history of Voldemort’s magic via a new professor (Jim Broadbent), who collects trophy students, thinks a bit too much of himself, and is ultimately a lonely, lovely man.
And it’s funny – an unceasing series of sharp jabs of humour throughout the interwoven tales above, a different kind of humour than in the books, but a ruthlessly effective one in this crowd of angsty teenagers. And it’s filthy – so throwaway ribald that your double takes and triple entendres and “how in the hell did they get away with that??” moments will nearly outnumber the laughs. The multitude of ways that director Yates, and screenwriter Kloves, manage to slip truly naughty gags – both visual and verbal – into the superficially chaste romances is a sexy magic trick all on its own.
There is an aged grace to the performances, young and old. Dumbledore (Michael Gambon, less Disappointledoring than usual) asks after Harry’s love life, in the manner of old people. A scene between Harry and a heartbroken Hermione is one of the nicest in the saga. Bonnie Wright has matured wonderfully into her role as quiet keeper of Harry’s heart.
The film is a ghost story. It is ostensibly a ghost story about Voldemort, who only appears in echoes and memories, and yet envelops the whole tale like a threatening shroud. Another ghost is the Half-Blood Prince, who reaches into Harry’s dark ambitions and betrays him. The largest ghost, though, is carefree childhood itself. In every frame, it is leaving, changing, and falling away. Only at the end does Harry realize how beautiful it was.
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