Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
WHY PLOT DOESN’T MATTER
Directed by David Yates; starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Gint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman…
Critics of books or movies tend to focus on plot; this is what “the story” is about, after all. And yet, the Harry Potter series shows just how unimportant plot really is to narrative works. (The plotting of these incredibly successful books is just awful). The formula, set in the first book, is that each volume starts with Harry in the real world, followed by a magical journey to Hogwarts where we follow him through the school year. Early in the term he discovers some deadly threat to the Wizard world — and then promptly does nothing about it for increasingly lame reasons. There are still months and months to fill with, after all, before graduation and the end of the school year/book.
And yet, the Potter series works because JK Rowling is so skilled at the other elements of narrative, setting and character especially. She creates a marvellously real world of wizards and magic that is full of terrific, incidental detail (right down to the notices on the school bulletin boards). And all the adventures are rooted in a great set of characters. Through seven books, you see Harry wrestling with issues of identity (he’s an orphan whose closest living tie seems to be to the evil Voldemort) as he grows from child to awkward adolescent (as presently) to a fully realized adult. His friendship with the studious Hermione and the gawky Ron is great fun, but also provides a moral counterpoint to the evil characters who are incapable of genuine loyalty and affection.
And the movies — thanks to a terrific cast, a strong focus on the characters, and a budget to do the stories justice — have succeeded beyond expectation. Often the films have improved upon the source material thanks to the discipline required to squeeze that many pages into a couple of hours (or less) running time. A two-hour movie is equivalent to a short novel or novella, after all, not the sprawling monsters the later Harry Potter novels have become. So the movies benefit from some judicious pruning.
That said, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the movie) finally seems to have been overwhelmed by the task of cutting 652 pages into a (still too long) two and a half hours. Skipping too quickly over too many incidents, the movie feels rushed despite its length. Visits to a magic joke shop and the Weasley’s home distract from the main story, which is about Harry helping Dumbledore collect bottled memories of Voldemort’s past as they search for a weakness in their foe. But here the movie cuts too much, omitting many of the memories described in the book. The result, plot-wise, is as sprawling and unfocused as the much lengthier book.
Worse, the setting and characters lack the energy and fun of the previous films. Half-Blood Prince is a sombre story in which the wizard world is preparing for its final showdown with Voldemort, but I wonder if it had to be quite this dark and dreary. The trip to Hogwarts — usually a joyous occasion — is a dreary ride through a brown Autumn countryside. The school itself is in serious need of new lightbulbs. And the only real action sequence has Harry and Dumbledore flying alone to a remote cave to retrieve a Voldemort relic. This leaves the team of Harry, Ron, and Hermione — who provide so much fun and companionship in the previous films — little to do but be angsty teens. Their dialogue consists of strangled utterances and Hermione, for some unfathomable reason, is mooning over Ron (who is basking in the attentions of a Quidditch groupy). Meanwhile, Harry spends his time brooding about being “the chosen one.”
As the penultimate entry in the series, the purpose of Half-Blood Prince is to set up a solid quest for the two-part finale still to come. After this misfire, let’s hope our heroes get the conclusion they deserve.
WOBBLY THUMB