It is difficult for a fan of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books to assess the films on their own merits. When the novels have been read so many times that the hardcover bindings are broken and pages fall from the spine like turning leaves, plot discrepancies leap to the fore immediately. But books and movies are as different animals as, well, acromantulae and hippogriffs. A 153-minute movie cannot exactly replicate a 652-page book. Nor should it. Even the most die-hard fan would take his popcorn elsewhere.
The sixth installment of the Warner Brothers monolith, Harry Potter and the Half- Blood Prince picks up where Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix left off. Almost exactly where it left off. After an ominous representation of the WB logo—iron grey and shrouded in rumbling clouds—and an eerily muted version of the now-ubiquitous theme which fades to screams, we see Harry, numb with pain, bleeding from the nose, wooden in the popping glare of flashbulbs in the Ministry of Magic. Voldemort has returned, and has escaped. As Dumbledore reaches an arm around Harry’s shoulders and turns him from the cameras, we remember that Harry has just lost another father figure; Sirius Black has fallen beneath the wand of one of Voldemort’s Death Eaters.
While Rowling never fossilized her literary creations in perpetual pre-pubescence, the films have been as much a coming-of-age story as a saga of good vs. evil. With a cast of young actors whom the public has watched age on screen, and who have become synonymous with their fictional counterparts, this emphasis on the process of adolescence was inevitable, and may even add a layer of credibility to the fantastic world of wizardry. In an early scene not found in the book, we see Harry—played with increasing maturity and a beautifully restrained intensity by Daniel Radcliffe—flirting with a Muggle waitress in a dingy subway diner. In defiance of the rules of the wizarding world, Harry is reading a copy of the Daily Prophet, a newspaper in which the subjects of photographs move about as if in life. Harry has progressed from the confused anger of The Order of the Phoenix into outright rebellion.
“You’ve been reckless this summer, Harry.” Dumbledore’s opening line is uttered with one of the few flashes of what I would term real Dumbledore-ness. Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore, while elegantly and powerfully portrayed, tends to demonstrate more of the smugness and less of the humility of Rowling’s venerable headmaster. This deviation from the books is, to me, a serious flaw. Much of the beauty of the novel Half-Blood Prince lies in Dumbledore’s admission of his own failures and in the increasing awareness of his precious and fragile role in Harry’s life. The movie Dumbledore is remote and superior, detracting from the poignancy of the ending.
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