One had the impression that Harry Potter movies would never be any more than competent. Perhaps the books were simply too long, too intricate and too layered for a proper treatment. The director, Columbus, seemed to approach the world of Harry Potter like a stageplay with some blue screen work. His direction had been slow, workmanlike, reducing everything to actors standing around talking to each other. And then came Alfonso Cuaron for Prisoner of Azkaban.
Alfonso Cuaron doesn't do standing around and talking; people tend to move and be working and engaged as they converse with each other. Cuaron doesn't do extended exposition, preferring to give enough just enough information to let the scene play and the movie carry forward. Cuaron also doesn't do endlessly congratulatory denouement, preferring to sign off with a quick visual tag-scene. And all of this was precisely what a Harry Potter film needed.
One feels securely out of Columbus' taped stageplay approach with the very first scene, where Vernon Dursley keeps popping into Harry's room, alarmed by the strange bursts of light that keep emerging from it. Harry illuminates his room with his wand, and the light seems to sear into the screen before the title logo pops up. This scene also establishes that Harry's practice of magic is disliked by his relatives and performed covertly. The information is presented visually as opposed to making the actors explain it to the camera.
The scene with Harry inflating Aunt Marge into a giant helium balloon is probably the best gauge of how the individual viewer will respond to the film. If one watches the scene with the Prisoner of Azkaban novel in hand, noting every difference and alteration, then one will find the sequence choppy, far too fast, overly truncated, and shamefully depriving Dudley of his moments. Watching the sequence as a cinematic experience, however, shows Harry labouring away at menial chores while this visitor insults his parents when she knows nothing of them, calls Harry the offspring of scum, treats Harry like a slave -- and Harry and his magic hit a boiling point. Aunt Marge becomes a miniature airship, floating away into the air, and a seething Harry storms out of the Dursley homestead. Cuaron's mischevous approach to visual detail shows Aunt Marge still bobbing about in the sky as Harry walks down the street.
If one looks for every detail from the book to be present in the film, they can only be disappointed. But in mere minutes, Cuaron has made the viewer *feel* what it's like to be Harry Potter; to be degraded, demeaned, disparaged by strangers who know nothing of him, while possessing the power to wreak a hilarious vengeance upon those who hurt him. And doing so forces him to leave the mundane world. Harry departs from the Dursleys, and in boarding the Knight Bus, enters an existence that seems mad. Triple-decker buses wheel about London and squeeze themselves between narrow avenues and shrunken heads jabber suggestions and a mad psychotic face shrieks from within a photograph in a newspaper.
And then Cuaron renders the wizarding world in a more benign light, as the sedate and peaceful atmosphere of the Leaky Cauldron shows a man piling chairs atop a table with a wave of a hand, floating kettles dispensing tea and brooms that sweep without being held by a human hand. And tavern is run by an alarming hunchback with a mad-eyed smile who is nevertheless the epitome of hospitality, offering Harry almonds, toast and pea soup.
Where Columbus felt the need to rest the camera on a pan being scrubbed by a levitating brush and knitting needles that didn't seem to need hands, Cuaron shows this stuff filling the background, with the inhabitants of the wizarding world regarding it as entirely normal. I love it.
In a mere ten minutes, Alfonso Cuaron has immersed the audience in the world of Harry Potter as opposed to drowning viewers in plot details and expository dialogue. Also benefitting tremendously from Cuaron's skilled hand is the relationship between Harry, Hermione and Ron. Instead of staging the scenes as three actors reading lines to each other, Cuaron provides a sense of three children relating, bickering, chattering and talking. The scene of the trio on the train talking about Sirius Black is the first time in the film series where the main cast seem genuinely conversational.
Admittedly, the film simplifies matters from the novel. Ron's moments of defending Hermione have been removed from the story, as have the animosity and breakdown of friendship that was originally present. However, the cameraderie between the three characters is so warm and endearing that having Harry and Ron turn on Hermione for half the film would have diluted the friendship. Hermione's caring, concern and sexless but passionate intimacy with Harry is touching and sweet. While Ron has few standout moments in the film, he gets some good one-liners and his presence is a source of warmth. The scene where Buckbeak's execution seems to take place and a despondent Hermione embraces Ron and Harry touches Hermione's shoulder really demonstrates the ease and comfort between these children. There aren't any grand developments between the trio, but rather a pleasing familiarity that enhances the film's forward motion.
The relationship between Professor Lupin and Harry Potter is another high point, matching the chemistry between the main trio of characters. For the first time in the Harry Potter film series, there's a genuine sense of Harry actually learning lessons at the school. The class in how to fight a Boggart is a visual delight, but there's also a lesson here, as Lupin teaches his students how to face their deepest fears, a lesson for which Harry requires special coaching due to unique circumstances. The later sequences of Harry and Lupin wandering the forest and the outskirts of the Hogwarts grounds have a melancholy beauty as Lupin shares his recollections of Harry's parents. And with that, Lupin is also sharing the belief that Harry's magic will be at its most powerful when it is fueled by his heart. There is truly a sense of Lupin imparting not just exposition and facts the way Dumbledore and McGonagall did in the first two films. Lupin is providing Harry with something more.
The depiction of magic in the third film is also distinct from the first film and far more memorable. A wave of a wand causes windows to open, papers to fold, boxes to close. Magic is someone being able to control and alter environment around them through their will and direction. The Patronus lesson with Harry and Lupin achieves a golden, celestial glory as Harry's happiness is given shape and form. But the film also shows the darkness of magical power thorugh the Dementors.
Cuaron's dynamic camerawork and deft use of visual effects wrings every last drop of terror out of the Dementors. Their influence is horrific, as flowers wilt in their wake and their presence causes water to freeze to ice. The unknowable faces hidden within those black cloaks are a terrifying sight to behold. The sight of the ice forming on the window of the Hogwarts Express compartment is a striking and eerie image that sets the stage for the ghastly monstrosity that creeps onto the train.
The Dementors serve to complete the central theme of the film. Unlike Columbus, Cuaron has been able to sift through the material of the novel and find a point of emotional focus; in this case, Harry's memories of his parents. At times, Harry's memories of his lost parents are a weakness; faced with the Dementors, Harry is consumed by memories of his parents being murdered and the trauma is crippling. And yet, there are points when Harry's thoughts of his parents unleash astonishing magical power that can protect and defend him. There's also the revenge Harry craves when thinking of Sirius Black. The film is very much the story of Harry struggling to reconcile the different ways in which he honours his parents and is haunted by them, and Cuaron wisely puts all the film's relationships and action sequences in the context of Harry's troubles. It's in this context that the relationship between Harry and Lupin shines brightest.
Perhaps the one weakness of the relationship between Lupin and Harry is that it makes Dumbledore redundant in the film. That's especially a shame because of the inspired revitalization of the character. Richard Harris' Dumbledore was feeble, weak, dull, devoid of charisma, and in two movies, he made an impression only in his scene with the Mirror of Erised. Under Cuaron's new direction, Dumbledore is reinvented as an eccentric headmaster with a whimsical imagination and a penchant for oblique advice. Gambon conveys a gentle, relaxed presence for his character, and while Dumbledore has few scenes in the film, every single one shines brightly. His casually extinguishing and relighting a candle is a terrific moment. His contemplating the nature of dreams as he watches over a wide awake Harry is charming scene and also serves as his gently ordering Harry to get some sleep while pretending not to know that Harry isn't sleeping. Gambon's Dumbledore is at his cleverest and most mischievous when advising Hermione and Harry on how to save Sirius. He cheerfully strikes Ron's injury, causing Ron to yelp in pain, which subtly advises Harry and Hermione to leave their hurt friend in the hospital wing. Dumbledore drops the lightheartedness only to tell Harry and Hermione where Sirius is being held and how much time they should need to rescue him, before cheerily wishing them well. At last, Dumbledore comes alive onscreen.
The movie does make a sharp mis-step, however, in the confrontation in the Shrieking Shack. Cuaron and Kloves plow ahead with the approach of minmal dialogue and visual storytelling in this scene. There are several points that need to be firmly established; that Sirius did not betray Harry's parents, that Pettigrew was the traitor, that Lupin is a werewolf, and that Harry must allow his thirst for vengeance to leave him. Unfortunately, Cuaron and Kloves speed-demon through each of these character transitions. Harry is convinced far too quickly of Black's innocence, Snape's appearance distracts from Lupin and Sirius, and Sirius knowing what the Marauder's Map is will seem absolutely inexplicable to anyone who hasn't read the book.
This scene needed to be revised significantly for film. It would have been best for Lupin to establish his past friendship with Sirius during a previous scene with Harry. As for Snape, while his presence in the book is needed to see Sirius accused and held for his apparent crimes, Snape is simply a distraction to the story on film and should have been excised. The film should have slowed, showing Lupin rescue Sirius from Harry, and then have Lupin explain that for years, he had thought Sirius a killer until seeing Pettigrew on the map. Harry's disbelief but eventual understanding could have then been allowed to play out naturally. Later, after the Dementors are defeated and wolf-turned Lupin has gone into the forest, Harry could have awakened in the hospital wing. A line or two about the teachers finding Sirius and Harry unconscious could have covered the Snape's absence.
Many have complained that there was no explanation for the Marauder's Map's. My feeling is that the Map did not need to be explained; there are no origins given for Chocolate Frogs or moving photographs, after all. Some have complained that there is no onscreen explanation for Lupin knowing what the Marauder's Map is -- however, there is a time cut between Lupin receiving the Map in the hallway, and Lupin in the classroom chastising Harry. An unschooled viewer would have likely assumed that Harry confessed the Map's nature to Lupin during the walk to the classroom. Admittedly, this is weakened when Sirius declares, The Map never lies!, as there is no onscreen explanation as to how Sirius knows of the map.
The film does, with its later scenes between Sirius and Harry, amend its rushed progression through the Shrieking Shack climax, but it does weaken the progression of the story rather badly.
While this is not a minor flaw, it does not wholly diminish the film. Cuaron's take on Harry Potter is one that fully immerses the viewer in Harry's world and provides a dynamic, captivating adventure while having the story permeated by Harry's longings for his lost parents. The movie, from the moment Scabbers runs off with the great dog in chase to Sirius escaping on Buckbeak's back, manages to create an unbroken sequence of tension and danger that meshes terrifically with Harry's internal conflicts. And the ending is grandly joyful, freezing on Harry's face as he takes to the skies.
Prisoner of Azkaban is the high point of the Harry Potter film series. And after Cuaron's fast-paced, charming take on the Harry Potter mythos, the future had never seemed brighter. What the film series needed next was a film that would continue Cuaron's approach of meshing Harry's emotional troubles with the ongoing plot, and render both the wonder and black comedy of the Wizarding World. Unfortunately, what we got was...
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