In the second last novel in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter cycle, the young wizard has begun his sixth year at Hogwarts and is feeling the sap of teenage in his limbs. There is turnover in the faculty and Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, is back for another term. Meanwhile, Lord Voldemort and his minions grow bolder by the day, striking against muggles and magicians alike, determined to plunge the world into a new dark age.
David Yates, who directed the previous title in the series, returns for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The books assumed a darker hue as the saga continued and the films have followed suit. Some of the special effects magic seems almost Disney, especially the family photos that move like home movies trapped inside frames and the dizzying quidditch matches, but the betrayal and face-stomping bullying come from an altogether different perspective on storytelling for adolescents. There is no Hollywood happy ending. One of the most beloved characters dies.
Among the strengths of Rowling’s vision is a refusal to avert her gaze from reality. Harry Potter’s world is our world magnified and colored through the lens of fantasy. The gothic environs of Hogwarts are a coed version of Eton or Groton, with the characteristics of an exclusive prep school multiplied to the seventh power. The emotional uncertainty and hormonal urges of high school aren’t sugared or denied. Aside from its insights into adolescent boys and girls, the Harry Potter cycle is a study in good and evil and the moral choices confronting everyone. To be sure, there is black and white in Half-Blood Prince, but also the gray of unintended consequences and even shades of black. One character cannot bring himself to do the worst, another coldly assumes the burden of evil and others revel with berserker glee in causing harm.
In Half-Blood Prince’s flashbacks, we meet a Hogwarts’ student from years before, Tom Riddle, the boy who became Lord Voldemort after willfully embracing the dark side. Turns out he was a damaged child from the get-go, who nurtured the poisonous flowers of resentment. Implicitly, Hogwarts failed to recognize that Riddle had started down the left hand path of magic. As a result, the academy itself is under assault from darkness from the outside and within.
Part of the fun for anyone who has followed the film series from its inception has been watching the children’s characters (and their actors) grow. Increasingly sharp and clever as Harry, Daniel Radcliffe should have a long career ahead of him in many roles—if he escapes the danger of being forever labeled as the wizard boy with the lightning flash on his forehead. Likewise Harry’s friends, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), are growing into young adulthood. But not Draco (Tom Felton), a character confined by his sniveling arrogance, compounded from an unstable mix of insecurity and superiority. Like earlier Potter films, Half-Blood Prince is a choice opportunity for some of Britain’s great adult actors, including Michael Gambon as the Gandalf-like Professor Dumbledore, Alan Rickman as the sinister Professor Snape, Jim Broadbent as bungling Professor Slughorn and Robbie Coltrane as the burly groundskeeper Hagrid.
Yates’ adaptation respects the tone of Rowling’s book and doesn’t homogenize the British essence of the characters. But even in running past two hours, he was forced to abbreviate many scenes. Little wonder that Rowling’s seventh book has been split into two movies to retain all essential plot turns leading to the saga’s final destination.
