Authorized newspaper of Fort Lewis, Washington
If the Harry Potter series gets any darker, theaters will have to start handing out miner’s helmets with lights to help moviegoers penetrate the gloom.
Harry has always been haunted, by memories of his murdered parents and by the threat posed by their murderer, the evil Lord Voldemort, who views Harry’s continued existence as an affront and a matter to be murderously rectified. But in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard, again played by Daniel Radcliffe, is embroiled in a world of conspiracies and power struggles that play out in settings that go from dark to darker to darkest in uninterrupted succession.
Remember those zippy Quidditch matches of the earlier movies, with kids cheering happily for their broom-borne hero? Hang onto those recollections. With a few fleeting exceptions, joy has been banished from Harry’s life in “Order of the Phoenix.” This time around he’s feeling besieged on all sides as he struggles to survive against a looming deadly threat.
British director David Yates, whose background is mostly in television, and writer Michael Goldenberg, taking over screenplay chores from Steve Kloves, who penned the first four Potter pictures, have created a densely plotted tale with a grandly epic feel. The sets are vast and the look is bleak. “Phoenix” opens in a swirling gray mist, and its climatic battle takes place in a huge black indoor battleground.
The picture feels a tad overstuffed, as Yates and Goldenberg fill it to bursting with characters from preceding movies and with new faces as well. As a result, old friends like professors McGonagall (Maggie Smith) and Trelawney (Emma Thompson) barely get any screen time. Even Harry’s best buddies, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), are reduced to the roles of secondary characters this time around.
In this, the fifth Potter movie, Harry is also beset by raging hormones – he’s paying increasing attention to girls, and one in particular – and just plain rage. “I just feel so angry all the time,” he confides to his godfather, the fugitive wizard Sirius Black (Gary Oldman).
He’s acutely haunted by the memory of the killing of his classmate Cedric Diggory by Voldemort at the end of the previous movie, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” And he’s enraged that the officious officials of the Ministry of Magic refuse to believe that the dark lord has returned from a long supernatural exile. He’s being libeled in the press, expelled from Hogwarts and hauled up before a panel of stern robed inquisitors on charges of illegally using his magic. And he’s viewed with profound suspicion by most of the other kids at Hogwarts.
And then there are the nightmares, starring the hissably vile Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), so real that they seem like more than dreams but rather previews of frightful events just around the corner.
And that’s just in the picture’s opening section. That’s before Harry’s life is made truly miserable by the devious and domineering Professor Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton). She’s newly appointed to teach the Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but her bright pink outfits and wide smug smile can’t conceal her authoritarian nature and her desire to dethrone Harry’s benefactor and protector, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), from his position as Hogwarts’ headmaster. She’s a major-league dictator-in-waiting with a minor in torture, the latter skill which she uses against Harry and his friends.
Oppressed by Umbridge and dismayed when Dumbledore suddenly disappears, which opens the way for Umbridge to take over Hogwarts, Harry finds himself pressed into the role of leader of a student rebellion. Teen angst and self-doubt give way to newfound confidence in Harry, a confidence that motivates him to conduct a clandestine class in forbidden magic to train his friends for the coming battle with Voldemort. That confidence also gives him the nerve to pucker up for his first-ever kiss with a demure girl named Cho Chang (Katie Leung). He’s truly coming of age.
As Harry has matured, Radcliffe’s development as an actor has kept pace. He gives his most authoritative performance yet in “Phoenix,” finding new dimensions in Harry’s anguish and showing us ever more forcefully his strength of character. His Harry is becoming a formidable young man, mastering his fears, fighting to control his rage, readying himself for the final confrontation with Voldemort that everyone knows lies in the not too distant future.
* * * *
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Director: David Yates
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Imelda Staunton
Running Time: 2:18
Rating: PG-13; violence, scary images
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