Harry Potter and the Narrative Ellipses

Normally with posts like this Atrios annoys the hell out of me with his casual contempt for the idea that parents of teenagers might have real reasons to worry when their children experiment with sex, drugs, and alcohol and his studied indifference to the fact that most people classified as teenagers are under the age of eighteen, minors, and therefore our responsibilities.   This time, though, I don't think he was casually contemptuous enough of this  New York Times article about the drinking that goes on in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which fusses and frets thusly:

Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem?

As Harry Potter fans crowd movie theaters to catch the latest installment in the blockbuster series, parents may be surprised by the starring role given to alcohol. In scene after scene, the young wizards and their adult professors are seen sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows.

The movie, based on J. K. Rowling’s sixth book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” is as much about coming of age as it is about the wizarding world. Love potions and adolescent yearnings are central to the evolving story line, and Harry, Ron and Hermione enjoy new freedoms as 16-year-old students at the mythical boarding school Hogwarts, including unchaperoned trips to a pub in the nearby town of Hogsmeade.

But recreated on the big screen, the images of teenage drinking are jarring. Previous Harry Potter movies have shown drinking, but this one takes it to a new level.

As you know, I can concern parent-troll with the best of them, but this is pure Durselyism. 

I didn't notice the drinking in Half Blood Prince or, more to the point, I didn't think anything about it.  It didn't register that Slughorn might be serving wine at his dinner parties and when Hermione got "tipsy" on her butter beer it just struck me as cute.  I never wondered if butter beer was alcoholic.  It's more of a joke if it isn't, if Hermione gets "drunk" on nothing but her own mixed-up feelings about Ron.  But it doesn't matter because the scene's cut off by our three heroes coming upon Katie Bell in the throes of the curse of the necklace meant for Dumbledore and that got me thinking.

And what it got me thinking is, "Oh yeah, this movie has a plot in it somewhere."

The scenes of underage tippling and teenage inebriation, which really include Ron blissed out on love potion and Harry well-oiled with the Felix Felicis , and the one scene of Hagrid and Slughorn drowning Hargrid's sorrow over the death of the giant spider Aragog, are funny, charming, silly enough to be nothing for parents to worry about, and completely irrelevant.  They're added distractions in a movie that's mostly distractions.

Half-Blood Prince is now rivaling Goblet of Fire for my vote for the worst of the movies so far.  Goblet of Fire had the excuse of being based on one of the weakest of the novels.  Half-Blood Prince is based on one of the best.  But rather than taking advantage of that, director David Yates seems to have been demoralized by it.  The movie is full of holes left open where Yates apparently decided, Oh why bother going on with this scene, everybody's read the book.  Plot points that are the most important in the book---Voldemort's attacks on the Muggle World, the murders and disappearances at the Ministry of Magic, Dumbledore and Harry's dips into the Pensieve in order Harry to learn Voldemort's history so he'll be able to use it against him when the time comes,  Draco Malfoy's tortured attempts to follow the Dark Lord's instructions to murder Dumbledore, the terrible secret of the horcruxes, and the whole mystery of the Half-Blood Prince---are treated perfunctorily when they're not simply glossed over.  Draco's story is dealt with in a series of broodingly artistic shots of Draco looking haunted, which Tom Felton does well but handsome photography is not the same as brilliant cinematography which is not the same as good storytelling anyway.  The scene of Dumbledore and Harry's visit to the cave becomes about Michael Gambon uncharacteristically striking false notes as Harry forces him to drink the poisoned basin dry, and the scene ends just when its real import ought to be being made clear.  And the Half-Blood Prince reveals his secret in a throwaway line during the final confrontation which itself is treated as a throwaway scene.

So much is left out, left unfinished, left unexplained, and left to lie there flat doing nothing on the screen, that I began to wonder if the drive-in's print had been cut up by a madman or that they'd been sent a heavily-edited screener or that there's a three hour director's cut that'll be on the DVD.

The book is mostly exposition and set-up, but both are presented  actively, through the dives into the Pensieve and Harry's detective work as he tries to figure out what Draco is up to, and it has its own story to tell:  The story of Dumbledore's failure to prevent the rise of Voldemort and his formation of a plan for making up for his mistakes.

Dumbledore recognized the evil growing in young Tom Riddle too late and he shared in the Hogwarts' faculty's collective to failure to instill a heart or a conscience in the boy.  In the movie we can see the symbol of his failure, his burnt and withered hand, but only if we know to look for it, and nothing is made of it dramatically.  It's another plot point let to be filled in by our memories of the book.  His useless hand is also the symbol of his ultimate weakness.  He, the great Dumbledore, isn't up to dealing with Voldemort on his own.  He needs Harry.  Harry is literally his right hand man.  But we've always known that.  Half-Blood Prince just makes that need explicit.  What we didn't know until now is that he also needs the Half-Blood Prince.  The point of Harry's getting the Prince's old potions textbook is to establish an intimate connection between Harry and the Half-Blood Prince, who as you probably know is not someone Harry would be happy to have any kind of connection with.  Dumbledore, however, has other ideas, and he has in effect made them partners.

In the book, Harry and the Half-Blood Prince become allies and secret sharers.  They are each other's shadow.  Harry, of course, is less than thrilled when he learns who his secret sharer is.  It's one more connection between them he does not want, another point of sympathy between them he resents.  Previously he has had to deal with the fact that sympathizing with the Prince in one way, having to do with the bullying they both suffered at Hogwarts at the hands of the "popular" crowd requires him to acknowledge his otherwise noble father's less noble qualities.  In Deathly Hallows he will learn of another point of sympathy between him and the Prince, which is that as agents of Dumbledore's plans they are both expendable---Dumbledore doesn't necessarily care what happens to either of them if what happens serves the greater good.  But in this book he learns the point of sympathy that most enrages him---that he and the Half-Blood Prince are alike.

In order to make use of the notes Harry needs to be what he is, resourceful, clever, self-reliant, and rebellious.  He has to be able trust his own instincts over the officially sanctioned methods.  In short, he has to be a hero.  But in order to have come up with those notes, in order to have seen that the official methods were lacking, inefficient, and out and out wrong, and in order to have written the notes down knowing that future students would inherit that book, the Half-Blood Prince had to be even more resourceful, more clever, more self-assured, and more rebellious.  In short, more of a hero.  And he becomes a hero to Harry.

It's through the notes that Harry learns to admire and respect someone he has always despised, and it is not easy to have to switch feelings like that.

All along Harry has been afraid that he is like Tom Riddle.  One of Dumbledore's reasons for the trips to Pensieve is to show Harry the important ways he and Riddle are not alike.  But before that lesson has time to sink in, Harry learns that he and someone he believes is one of Voldemort's top henchwizards are very much alike.

This likeness is as appalling to Harry as the fact that Vader is his father is appalling to Luke.  But, as we'll discover in The Deathly Hallows, it turns out to be a good thing for Harry and for the forces of Light.

That's half the point of the book and the reason for its title.  It's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in the way it's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

In the book, then, the Prince's old textbook is a key to the ultimate defeat of Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

But in the movie Harry's use of the Prince's potions notes is treated as a joke at Hermione's expense and as a part of the Ron and Hermione subplot.

Harry's success thanks to the Prince's notes robs Hermione's as the main source of her self-confidence, her knowledge that she is the smartest student at Hogwarts.  She has also come to see her brains as being her main asset in any competition for attention from boys.  One boy, in particular, who spends most of his time these days snogging with Lavender Brown.  Harry's besting her in potions class adds to her insecurity and frustration and in that the text book is like all the smudges that keep showing up on her face, another way in which she's made to look ridiculous in her own eyes and, she thinks, Ron's eyes too.

In the book, Harry's success with the Prince's notes has more than comic importance.  It's one more example of what makes Harry "special," his willingness to ignore the rules when they get in the way of doing what works.  Harry is the only one of our heroes clever enough and free-spirited enough to make use of the Prince's notes.

Ron would have been flummoxed by the contradictions between the notes and the text's instructions.  Hermione would have assumed, and in fact does assume, that the text's instructions must be the right way to do things and the notes are therefore wrong, recipees for disaster.  She persists in thinking so after it's proven that the notes' instructions work better.  She's so convinced that the notes are wrong, so convinced that the official way is the only correct way to do things that she chooses to think of what Harry's doing as cheating.  The notes and her A-student's wounded vanity bring out the toady in her.  She would never rat out Harry, but she does take it upon herself to act for officialdom, for Harry's own good, of course.  She becomes the enforcer of orthodoxy, putting herself in the position of a functionary for the Ministry of Magic, which we know is weak where it is not corrupt.  And since Harry is already in quiet, half-secret rebellion against the Ministry---if the bureaucrats there aren't his out and out enemies, they are far from being his friends---this reinforces the alliance between Harry and the Half-Blood Prince.

None of this is the movie.  Neither is the point about the differences between Harry and Tom Riddle nor the point about Dumbledore's failure.  Not in any dramatic way, at any rate.

Without those points, without the completion of the scenes of the attacks on the Muggle World, the terror in the Ministry, and Draco's reluctant plotting, without the last visit to Pensieve to see the adult Tom Riddle returning to Hogwarts as Voldemort to confront Dumbledore, we're left with the Slughorn scenes, which are wonderful thanks to Jim Broadbent, and scenes emphasizing main characters' coming of age and sexual awakenings that the New York Times writer found to be more about drinking than about love and sex.

These are the scenes in which the movie comes most alive.  But the fun in them, and any eroticism, are somewhat drained by the same thing that Yates relies on to carry us through the other stuff---memories of what we're presumed to have read, although in this case, it's the next book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, specifically its unfortunate epilogue.

The Hermione loves Ron but Ron only has eyes for Lavender scenes are funny and the romantic scenes between Harry and Ginny in which Harry realizes that not only has Ginny always loved him but he has always loved her are touching---until...

Until you remember what boring and conventional married lives J.K. Rowling has doomed her four young lovers to.

Lavender Brown appears to be the type of needy girl who has figured out she can keep a boy on her string by being really good at...um...snogging.  In another type of sex comedy, one intended for a more grown-up audience, Hermione's response would be to show Ron what really a good snogging is.  But if this is what she does in Rowling's world, the epilogue suggests that it worked like this:  She gave Ron one hell of a honeymoon and has kept him in line ever since with the hope that that if he's a really good boy it might, might, be repeated someday.

Harry and Ginny have probably had a happier and more mutually satisfying sex life, but at the cost to Harry of his status as a hero.  Ginny is the Wizarding World's version of Mary Bailey of Bedford Falls.

"George Bailey," Mary whispers into George's deaf ear when they're both children, "I will love you until the day I die."  And she will.  But while George is a hero to her and always will be, her eternal devotion isn't predicated on his having to act the part of hero.  In fact, it helps keep him from becoming the hero he dreams of being.  This doesn't matter so much in It's A Wonderful Life, because the movie wants us to see that the "ordinary" life George Bailey lives is actually heroic.

But in the world of Harry Potter actual heroism of the Romantic variety is Harry's reason for being.  His story is over when he completes his heroic mission.  We don't need to know what happens after that.  But it would have been a whole lot better if Rowling had left it up to us to imagine that whatever happens to him is at least as exciting and heroic as these adventures have been.

But instead of letting her characters live happily ever after in our imaginations, Rowling insisted on making us see them living ordinarily ever after.  And do we want to root for Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione to get together if what we're rooting for is their getting a mortgage and finding a decent babysitter?

But that's what the movie leaves us with, a rooting interest in their future mediocrity.

No wonder the poor kids drink so much.

Ok, I'm about done.  But there's one more thing the movie leaves out that contributes to the sense of its being unfinished.  The big confrontation between the Death Eaters and the Hogwarts faculty at the end.

Maybe Yates was worried it would just be a repeat of the battle in the hall of prophesies in Order of the Phoenix, but that's kind of like worrying that the shoot out at the end of a western is just a repeat of the shoot out at the end of High Noon.  But not only does leaving it out leave out the last chance of giving us any real action, it robs of the opportunity to see McGonagall, Ginny, Ron, Tonks, Lupin, and Hagrid acting heroically.

One of the differences between Harry and Voldemort that the book emphasizes is the fact that Voldemort never had and never needed and never wanted friends.  Harry, however, has always been blessed, and saved, by his friendships.  But at its climax the movie leaves Harry all alone.  It's just him against the Death Eaters and he's no match for them.  He can't even put up a good fight.

I'm not sure if Yates wanted to make that point, but if he did, it's the wrong point, thematically and also dramatically because instead of ending his movie with a good rousing fight scene, he ends it with yet more of---and I can't believe I'm saying this---what we've already had a little too much of, Helena Bonham Carter doing her crazy act as Bellatrix Lestrange.

The lunatic cackling of an actress overacting, no matter how sexy the actress, is just not as much fun as seeing a good jink deflected by Maggie Smith.

___________

Michael Berube didn't have as many problems with the holes in the movie's storytelling as I had, but he missed something else left out of the final confrontation.

Amanda Marcotte notes that the books long ago became too complex and involved to be adapted for the movies with anything close to a satisfying sense of completeness.  She makes the case that the books would have been better served by being made into a television series.

All the Potter novels, recorded books, and the movies available on DVD can be purchased through my aStore.

Comments

[Thomas Coombe]

I think Yates has said that he didn't want to stage a battle at the end of Half Blood Prince because another one is on its way in the final movie. But that's sort of like comparing the fight at the end of "Fellowship of the Ring" to Helm's Deep. No matter what his reason, the end of Half Blood Prince felt like an afterthought.

[Mike Schilling]

I never understood the pre-Deathly Hallows controversy about which side Snape was really on. His duel with Harry at the end of Half-Blood Prince makes that completely clear. Snape does nothing to injure Harry, merely blocking his attacks and immobilizing him, and at the same time tries to teach him what's needed to win a duel with a skilled wizard. That is, in typically brilliant Snape fashion, he acts anti-Harry for his audience of Death Eaters, helps Harry prepare for the final conflict, and still manages to indulge his desire to humiliate James Potter by proxy. It's yet another important scene left out of the film.

[Lance]

Thomas, I like the Fellowship-Helms Deep comparison. Yates' comment doesn't make me hopeful about the ending to the second Deathly Hallows movie. It's as if he doesn't understand there's a difference between a fight scene and a battle scene nor that fights and battles have their own "personalities."

Mike, good points. For that matter, Snape himself is practically left out of this movie.

[Chris G.]

I feel like Snape has been pretty much left out of the movies, generally -- he's in a scene or three, tops, and we're left to fill in the rest with what we remember from the books and our impressions of Alan Rickman.

[Claire]

Lance, I enjoyed the movie a bit more than you did, but I wished I had my copy on hand ahead of time to read through it again quickly. I can never remember the details from the Potter books. I was annoyed with the handling of the Half-Blood Prince. It was brought up and then sort of ignored, save Harry carrying the book around everywhere. And I *hated* the reveal.

I haven't read Marcotte's take that the books would make a better tv show, but I'm willing to sign on to that idea immediately. I wish that would happen.

[the blonde]

I actually liked the Half-Blood Prince better on second viewing this past weekend, but still feel there are gaping holes in it - seems like they're saving up stuff for the finale. That NYT column on teen drinking and Harry Potter was stupid beyond belief.

[Ken Houghton]

Uh, I think you're shooting the wrong horse's arse here.

The difference between Five and Six in books is enormous: worst book to best, imnvho. (Second-best for those who cling to Chamber of Secrets.)

The difference in screenplays, though, is that Steve Kloves has done all of them except Five. And Five (Order of the Phoenix) is the only one that was scripted as if they were making a movie.

(That Prisoner of Azkaban remains the best film is certainly a matter of Best Director--Cuaron looked good after Chris Columbus [almost anyone, possibly even Joel Schumacher or John Boorman, would have] and has only gotten better with age. As Emma Watson said on the extras disc [iirc] "we got to act in this one."

(But the transition of Order of the Phoenix from six zillion pages of whiny drivel to about seven scenes totalling maybe ten minutes of screen time is clearly because Michael Goldenberg did the scripting, and worked to make a movie, not to adapt a book.)

And going back to Kloves even feels leaden.

[merciless]

I agree with your panning of Half-Blood Prince, and especially of the climax (what was with the raising of the wands? I thought someone was going to start shouting "Freebird!"). If I hadn't read the books obsessively I'd have no idea what Harry has to do in the next movie, since we didn't get to understand the horcruxes, and we didn't get the scene at the funeral where our heroes make their choices.

I disagree, however, with your mourning over Harry's oncoming mediocre adulthood. Harry wants, more than anything, a real family, and if it's kind of boring, well, so what? Part of the problem, I think, is Ginny's woeful lack of characterization in the books. Rowling hints that Ginny is powerful, strong, and beautiful (like Lily!) but since we didn't really get to see her grow up as we did the others, we just get handed the super-popular and completely changed Ginny in book six, and we have to take for granted that Harry finally figures it out.

If I were to guess, I'd say that a quiet life filled with family and friends is what Rowling always wanted. It's not so bad.

[Formerly Apostate]

I don't remember a darned thing from any of the Harry Potter books (yes, read them all). They got really complicated.

Now, when I think about them, all I can muster is, Harry is one damned incompetent, annoying not-much-good-at-anything kinda kid. It bugs me that Rowling chose his defining trait to be a kind of nobility of character. Fuck that noise. Give me Hermione's genius over that bumbling conscience-stricken reluctant hero.

[actor212]

What's the acceptable drinking age in England?

It's thirteen, more or less.

Stop being so...American, Lance. If Britain's kids can handle drinking at that young age, then we ought to respect that.

[Lance]

actor212, Why are you picking on me? I didn't write that NYT article.

[susan]

Didn't one of the Weasley twins get killed in the last movie? I seem to remember Mrs. Weasley taking on Lestrange to avenge his death.

If this is correct, then why did I see both twins in the Half Blood Prince?

[Lance]

Susan, Fred and George survived Order of the Phoenix.

Blogger Formerly Known as the Apostate,

I like Herminone but she isn't a genius. She's an A-student. There's a difference. Dumbledore chose her to be Harry's friend because he knew she'd do her best to keep him in line. She thinks very conventionally, follows instructions religiously, reflexively defers to the authoritative line even when she knows she or more usually Harry has a better idea, and generally worries more about her grades than about what she's learning. Harry is the one who thinks like a genius, although he isn't meant to be one. And that's part of what makes him the hero, his streak of independence which includes his habit of independent-thought. His heroism isn't all a matter of his "nobility of character." Which is one of the weaknesses of this movie. Harry's independent streak is almost entirely missing. He's Dumbledore's right hand man all the way through. One of the things Berube objected to is that the movie leaves out Dubledore's immobilizing him for the confrontation with the Death Eaters. Dumbledore knows that it doesn't matter what Harry has promised to do. What matters is what Harry decides on the spur of the moment is the right thing to do. In the book, Harry has to be restrained by powerful magic. In the movie he meekly follows orders and stands by while Dumbledore faces off with his enemies.

[Formerly Apostate]

Well, you're right. About Hermione.

[velvet goldmine]

Harry isn't the hero. The three of them, combined, are the hero. That point is made over and over, in all seven books. Therefore, each of them has something that keeps the other two from toppling into disaster. Hernione's contribtions are crucial. Even Ron's are, which is apparent in Hallows, when the despair while he is gone almost consumes the other two.

[Winnie]

Yeah, Lance. It's interesting...I was always a Harry/Hermione shipper partly because I loved Hermione and wanted her to get the hero instead of sad sack Ron but also because while I felt that Ron was just dragging Hermione down into mediocrity and Ginny did the same for Harry the two of them together tended to bring out the best in each other. Hermione often in the books would urge Harry to do the right thing or smart thing and he inspired her to take more risks and live a little. She stood by him when things got rough in "The deadly Hallows," when Ron bailed; they were truly an awesome team and Ron was a callow jerk while Ginny's just a red-haired Mary Sue turned superwitch so Rawlings could have a fairy tale ending. There were plenty of hints in the series of an attraction or romance between Harry and Hermione but it was almost like Rawlings was afraid to go there for fear of shutting out tiresome old Ron. (Who could of course have been given another convenient love interest.) Or maybe Rawlings was afraid that Harry and Hermione would seem almost *too* extraordinary a couple together...a pair of wizards who would be guaranteed as a married couple to do great things and have adventures that seemed fantastical even in the wizarding world and even while having kids. Also when you think about it in the books, ultimately it was Snape who turned out to be the tragic martyered hero of them all and Harry's best guardian rather than Dumbledore...but Snape of course hated Harry all the more because he loved him. You can't capture that in the movies.

[velvet goldmine]

By the way, from what I read butterbeer would fall into the almost-vanished category of "small beer." There are two ways of making fizzy drinks: the new-fangled carbonization, and the old way of mixing liquid, sugar and yeast. The latter combination creates a soda with a small amount of alcohol (hence the derisive expression "That's small beer.")

The original bottled versions of ginger ale, birch beer and root beer all were made this way. From what I understand, the fictional butterbeer is a butterscotch-like drink that is a kind of cousin to these other small beers. Most parents, I would think, wouldn't have much of an issue with their kids drinking butterbeer. My family celebrated July 4 by making strawberry soda the old-fashioned way, and no one called social services on us.

[actor212]

Damn, sorry, Lance. It seemed like you were half-heartedly taking Atrios' side, and that he was agreeing with the Times. Mea culpa.

[Pinko Punko]

Very much am in lockstop agreement with this, LM.

[PurpleGirl]

I haven't seen the movie yet but a neighbor who is really a Potter fan has (she saw it as soon as it opened) and she was disappointed. She felt that too much had been left out and it really should have been two movies. I asked her what she thought about Potter as a mini-series or a multi-season series arc until the story was fully told and she thought that would work for the last 3 books.

I don't mind spoilers, I like to see the movies anyway to see the action and how the movie was made.

[Ken Houghton]

susan - You're remembering the books, not the movies.

[Ian Welsh]

Slightly off topic - I thought the end of Fellowship was much stronger than the end of either of the other two movies. Boromir's death is truly heroic and tragic.