As I sat there, an hour and forty-five minutes into the Potter series’ heretofore magnum opus, it was clear to me that director David Yates was crafting a traditional fright show with this next sequence: Harry and Dumbledore have found their way into a place of a clearly diabolical nature, and there hasn’t been a sound in five or six seconds. Suddenly, a skeletal claw grabs Harry’s arm and half the theater jumps out of their seat. Being so completely accustomed to the timing involved in these scenes, I just acknowledged Yates’ command over his audience with a cocky nod and grin, and kept watching intently.
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As I sat there, two hours and ten minutes into the Potter series’ heretofore magnum opus, I watched with bated breath for the moment everyone had known was coming for years. Snape stares Dumbledore in the face and says it, and my lungs falter for the briefest of instants, something that never happens with even the most masterful of simple jump scares. I knew it was coming, I knew what was coming after it, but the scene was handled so perfectly, so fraction-of-a-second meticulously that I just couldn’t help but feel surprised when seeing it. This is why Yates is what the series needed after Goblet of Fire: He saw where the fourth film had blundered in sacrificing character interaction and development for linear, unimportant story progression and fixed it. In his first Potter outing he reinforced the importance of true humanity and masterfully sold it as Harry’s ace-in-the-hole against Voldemort. Not magic, not mystical forces, but the power of the soul. In this way, Yates outdoes himself in Half-Blood Prince; no magical battle is without a real sense of imminent peril and that’s because Yates spends a good hour reconnecting us with the team. Rupert Grint gets his best material of the series to work with and steals the first hour from underneath Radcliffe’s feet. Emma Watson makes you empathize with Hermione in a way she’s never achieved before. It’s all due to Yates’ unrelenting devotion to once again make us believe these magic folk are people. This far down the line, it would be easy to back off on the character portrayals and get right into the meat of the story, but to do so would rob every fight scene and dynamic encounter of its cinematic power. If Goblet of Fire was Attack of the Clones, Half-Blood Prince is The Empire Strikes Back.
Aside from the admiration I have for Yates for his placing character over plot, I can’t get through this review without acknowledging the visual and aural wow-factor Half-Blood Prince maintains for its duration. The effects here aren’t just “top-notch effects,” because I would hesitate to call them that in the first place. The thundering death clouds that loom over Hogwarts in the climax of the film could very easily be likened to similar effects in the Mummy series, but to do so would be to ignore the emotional gut-impact they present. When Imhotep’s visage appears in a sand cloud and Brendan Fraser starts running, it’s about the immediate threat in that sequence. This is a theoretically and cinematically inferior concept to that of the feeling of ever-present doom Voldemort’s Godlike image in the clouds conjures among the audience and the characters onscreen. It doesn’t seem like an effect because it feels completely connected to the world of the people in the film. There is no division between the actors and the digital landscape; they share one and the same frame, one and the same world. With the sole exception of one unfortunate series of effect shots early on in the film, never will you be taken out of the moment even when you’re literally being engulfed by digital manipulation. You don’t see a CGI storm on the horizon – you see a black force of death encroaching upon you and everyone around you. Yates refutes the notion that CGI has to be an in-the-moment illusion and makes it every bit a real and tangible threat as a knife at the ready. It’s less akin to a magic act, and more akin to magic.
I had very high hopes for this film. Having loved Order of the Phoenix for giving the series the punch in the gut it needed after its fourth outing, I could only hope for another set of events of for which I actually cared about the outcome. What I couldn’t have realistically hoped for is the cinematic splendor I received. The only negative effect it has had on me is a worry for the future; a hesitation to believe that Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 could possibly live up to the standard the series has now set for itself. There are faults in Half-Blood Prince, like in any film. And like in any adaptation of a treasured source material, there will be those who’ll feel upset over changes or omissions. But, knowing as I do that it was David Yates himself who suggested Deathly Hallows be split, I am in reasonable affirmation that his decision to make two superb works over one limp finale will be justified. And I thank him for giving me the first Potter entry I can easily see myself revisiting in the cinema. He should be marvelously proud of his Half-Blood Prince.
