The Half-Blood Prince
By Alvaro André Zeini Cruz
The Harry Potter series is today an atypical specimen: although it is mainstream cinema, we expect a minimum of originality from it. In The Half-Blood Prince, the director David Yates seems to apply more effectively the formula proposed by Mike Newell in The Goblet of Fire; a balance between the puerile magic found in the first episodes, directed by Chris Columbus (which was so excessive it became detrimental to the film) and the dark tone established by Alfonso Cuarón in The Prisoner of Azkaban, so far the best of the series. Thus, the Hogwarts routine and the relationship between the students come to coexist with a lurking menace, suggested by Yates in the previous film through a feeling of urgency triggered by the imminent war.
This threat, for the time being, is now interspersed with the school routine, and the surplus magic of some time ago is filtered by the realism of the characters’ moral relationships. The evolution is visible: if in the last episode, The Order of the Phoenix, the supporting characters were sacrificed for the sake of this unleashed urgency, here their three-dimensionality is taken back up, and increases thanks to Harry’s acceptance of his role as a hero. This maturation contributes not only to the character, but also to the interpreter, and Daniel Radcliffe, a possible mistake in the series’ past, resurfaces more at ease as Harry approaches adulthood, aware that he has no choice but to assume that he is the hero.
The scene in which Potter finds himself in a Muggle cafe is a kind of synthesis of the atmosphere created in The Half-Blood Prince, especially in the shot in which he is sitting at the table with a window behind him: the warm, cosy colours inside the place contrast with the cold colours seen outside. The idea of a world losing to the darkness, whilst maintaining a few safe places is present in the film, but disappears gradually until the moment that the movie surrenders itself to the shadowy universe which dominates the third act.
Giving the good characters, like Snape (Alan Rickman) and Dumbledore (Michael Gambon), the opportunity to come to the fore, The Half-Blood Prince, for the first time, explores the character Draco Malfoy, who earns a tragic aspect equivalent to that of Harry. The trio Harry, Ronny and Hermione, in turn, reassume the unity lost in the previous film and return to the centre of the action. But this is, above all, a film of transition, where the last remnants of an enchanted world’s innocence are extinguished, to be replaced by a dark and dangerous journey that awaits the protagonists in the final double episode The Deathly Hallows.
Contact: alvinho_azc at yahoo dot com dot br
