Posts tagged david yates

My Wand is Better Than Yours

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
D: David Yates
S: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman

There’s something not quite right in saying that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth installment in the popular film series based on J. K. Rowling’s ridiculously successful collection of seven children’s books about a mostly hapless boy wizard, is the worst among all eight entries in the Warner Bros.-powered franchise. To say so is to assert that the film is, actually, bad. It is not. A more accurate manner of describing the film relative to its cinematic siblings is to say that it’s the least good of the bunch. If anything, this belief, held both by most viewers and by most critics, betokens the singular richness of the film series’ source material as well as the skill with which the filmmakers, within the span of a decade, adapted it—all six and two halves of it. 

Order of the Phoenix was the series directorial debut of the then virtually unknown David Yates. The film was a modest success (which is still saying something, considering that what is being spoken of is a goddamn Harry Potter film), fraught as it was from the start with the hazards of condensing the longest and arguably least good (not worst) Harry Potter book into two hours, more or less, of celluloid. The result was at best pleasant, a corrugated affair having many a montage sequence, more than what a typical inspirational sports movie holds. Nevertheless, it was indicative of Yates’s nascent flair for character- and plot-driven fantasy, away from his usual forays into social realism. Yates went on to direct the remaining installments, thereby displaying his developing authorial confidence: from his mind’s eye emerged the deliciously somber Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the affectingly wistful Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and, finally, the frantically fleet-footed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. But montage sequences are, three films and four years since the release of Order of the Phoenix, still among the things up Yates’s sleeve. To his credit, though, in Deathly Hallows: Part 2 their use is more compulsory than convenient. 

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 — David Yates

Harry, A History

D: David Yates
S: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes

Ten minutes into the 2001 film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the then soon-to-be-eleven title character is scolded by his unsympathetic uncle for continuously and inexplicably—as though by magic—receiving letters by owl from an unmapped boarding school, letters which his uncle for some reason makes an effort of withholding from him. Feeling deprived of what is rightfully his, he comforts himself by playing with his toy soldiers in his tiny cupboard of a bedroom. A good six years later in the fictional world created by author J. K. Rowling and tapped for blockbuster cinema by Warner Bros., which equates to nearly a decade in the real world cohabited by moviegoing escapists and film marketing strategists, Harry Potter, now prominently stubbled and just shy of seventeen, revisits his old, dusty quarters ten minutes into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, and looks with sentimental longing at his erstwhile playthings. Old and dusty themselves, they are a sad reminder to Harry that playtime has long been over, that comfort has become a rarity, that the lights over his present and immediate future, and certainly over the rest of the world’s as well, have gone deathly dim.

Harry Potter is a wizard, embattled and trapped in “these […] dark times, there is no denying,” as declared by an upright political leader in his impassioned speech at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (hereafter HP7.1), setting a distinctly ominous tone for the film. As it is, HP7.1 is the seventh and penultimate chapter in the most successful film franchise in history, which chronicles the adventures of the eponymous wand-wielding young hero. But as in the last remaining episodes of a popular television series, a sort of recap sequence would have been welcome here—boon to a good many moviegoers who haven’t read the Harry Potter novels, not even a page from one (for such sorry creatures do exist), as well as to viewers who have forgotten who killed who at the end of the previous film. This hypothetical prelude would show a number of scenes and significant bits of dialogue culled from past installments… Uncle Vernon: “There’s no such thing as magic!” Cut to Hagrid, half-giant and groundskeeper at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry: “Yer a wizard, Harry.” Harry: “I’m a what?” Hagrid: “Yer the boy who lived. That’s why yer famous, Harry. That’s why everybody knows yer name.” Harry, pointing to the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead: “He killed my parents, didn’t he? The one who gave me this?” Hagrid: “His name was Voldemort. Well, some say he died. Nope, I reckon he’s still out there…” These lines are from the first film alone, mind, and between Hagrid’s sensible reckoning of the villain’s apparent immortality and the start of HP7.1 Harry learns to use and control his magical powers and meets a motley of characters, including his best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, and Voldemort himself, who is alive (in a way) and more powerful than ever throughout HP7.1.

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