Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
A variety of temperaments have tackled the very popular (and quite good) Harry Potter books, but no one, not Cuaron, not Newell, certainly not Columbus, has been able to wrangle one of Rowling’s books into a smooth, streamlined piece of storytelling. The books, with more room, are able to effectively convey a year in Harry’s life at Hogwarts, but the movies, even at their best (Azkaban, and now Phoenix) are start and stop, like those wind up toy cars that used to be popular, you take the moments of fun as they come, before the little twisty spring runs out and has to be reset again.
Cuaron’s film, the third, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, at least felt like a real movie, and not a book on tape. That film had a bit of the playful eroticism that Cuaron is known for, and crack atomsphere. Azkaban, at its best, caught the glee and melancholy of the classic coming of age adventure film, the scenes between David Thewlis’s Lupin and Harry could draw honest comparisons to the Luke/Obi Wan scenes from the first Star Wars, you know the stuff that made that series good and that Lucas couldn’t discard from the new series fast enough, but I digress.
David Yates, the director of the current Potter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, doesn’t have Cuaron’s technical command, or even his impish sense of play, but he has, after Newell’s middling fourth film, brought conviction back to the series. This is the best acted Potter movie, and the most thrillingly dense and alive, the sense of boring over-fidelity to the books discarded in favor of a paranoid conspiracy invasion fantasy that actually improves upon the book.
Michael Gambon finally feels like Dumbledore (Cuaron seemed to be satirizing him in the third film, and I’m still not even sure Newell remembers directing the fourth) and Gary Oldman, regrettably shortchanged in the fourth, has a wonderful return, and lends the series a pathos that recalls Azkaban’s instances of fleeting splendor. Alan Rickman’s Snape is also finally allowed to cut loose. Snape is Rowling’s greatest creation, her one character with a real sense of complexity, and its nice to report that one of the movies is finally catching up with that.
Much has been understandably written about this series’ cast, but even more impressive is the cast’s total commitment and the complete lack of superiority over the material on display. This series feels like a true world, even at their most uninspired, and its almost unheard for a studio to sustain that for five pictures. Though it must be said that the prophecy at the heart of this film, taken from Rowling’s book, certainly wins the “no shit” award as prophecies go.
