Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Film) *** 3/4

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book) *****

Right on the heels of the monumental and incredibly awaited release of the conclusion to the Harry Potter saga Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes the fifth film installment of the popular series. The last book being released, really, just in time for them to be able to have enough time to make a film out of it with no delay. There has always been talk, since the third film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that Warner Brothers always intended to replace Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione), and Rupert Grint (Ron) with younger actors. If they did, (they won’t as all three actors will officially return for the last two films) it would likely be all but the ruin of the movie adaptions of the series. Maybe not commercially, but probably quality wise.

In the most simple terms, those three actors and a host of other teachers and students are what continue to make the films worthwhile. While with every installment J.K. Rowling improves greatly, writing novels that cease to be children’s literature at all, but instead works that inspire and move people of all ages to line up to wait for it. Teenagers, parents, and grandparents often seem to enjoy it and get more out of it on a higher level than the children who it was originally intended for. (Which is exactly what Narnia did on a smaller level.)

With each film installment the book-reading audience of the film finds more and more crucial and precious plot points missing, or haphazardly pasted as a mere shadow of an afterthought. In other words, a eight hundred page epic masterpiece should not be made into a two hour and twenty minute film any more than Bleak House, a near thousand page masterpiece also, should be made into anything other than a long miniseries (Bleak House clocks in at a little under eight hours.) Give each of the last four books an approximately five or six hour miniseries and you’d be doing the work it’s only real justice.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the first directed by David Yates who will return for the sixth film, has its moments which are sometimes interestingly unique from the vision of the book. A story which mirrors such political events as the French revolution is the stuff Yates is interested in and it’s during these moments where Order of Phoenix is most at home. Take the first scene within the Ministry of Magic which Yates turns into a bustling stock broker kind of place, with goblins (who in Harry Potter are not the standard equivalent of Tolkien’s, but little stern eyed kind of creatures who look down upon you even though you may be a full three and half feet higher than them) hurriedly talking business with the men who tower over them. Then we come to the looming, Hitler type, black and white moving poster (all the pictures in this world are like little video screens) of Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic.

The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Triwizard Tournament ended with Harry’s bold witness to Voldemort being back, in a sort of slitted, subhuman form, as the whole school watched him appear before them with Cedric Diggory’s body in his arms. Phoenix picks up, more or less, there where we learn that the Ministry of Magic has denied Voldemort’s return, and is painting Harry Potter and Dumbeldore as liars who want the people to feed on fear so that they may obtain power. Cornelius suspects Dumbeldore of wanting his position, forgetting, of course, the fact that he denied it many times preferring to stay away from politics, and remain headmaster of Hogwarts.

The parallels, I suppose, are in the book but the film makes them come alive. After narrowly avoiding being expelled on the grounds that Harry unnecessarily performed magic in front of a Muggle (non magic folk) and nearly half of the court not believing his claim that he only performed magic to save himself and his cousin from the attack of a Dementor, a ghastly, evil creature which sucks the life and happiness out of everything. The ministry has control of the Dementors (who guard the wizard prison Azkaban) and points out that either Dumbeldore is suggesting the ministry sent the Dementors to attack Harry, or that they are under the control of some other force, are in the trust and service of someone else than the Ministry of Magic.
Arriving at Hogwarts the students learn that the ministry has appointed Dolores Umbridge as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and that the ministry supports a strictly theoretical, hands off approach to otherwise practical learning. Fudge fears that there will be a rebellion lead by Dumbeldore, and with the ever present looming threat of the worsening conditions and mysterious disappearances (which are blamed on Harry’s innocent godfather Sirius Black) Harry is convinced to lead a sort of secret society, which they humorously title Dumbeldore’s Army - confirming, I suppose in a way, the minister’s greatest fear.

The film generally jolts the audience around from one key even to another, with no time in between for character or charm, or anything. The only progression of time we get is the scenes in the classroom lead by Harry, where in the space of about five minutes, we see the whole class improving greatly. These moments are well intentioned and neat, but the meat of the book is missing. Where’s the Quidditch? (Ron made the team), where’s the friendship and classrooms and teachers?, where’s the looming stress of the Ordinary Wizarding Levels Tests? (O.W.L’S), and very simply where’s the very thing that Rowling has a genius for: progression.

Harry Potter has enchanted the world because Rowling has created characters we care about and love. Because she’s created a school that is so wonderful and magical, and full of surprise and joy, but when you strip her sense of time and the daily, ordinary, (although it is extraordinary, and magical) things what do you have left? You have only the barest bones of the plot, the background. The genius of Harry Potter is that with every book its world darkens, but even in the darkest of times life must continue in some semblance of "normal." Sports most go on, exams must be held, friendships must be stressed, and all the turmoil outside where they live, maybe in another country, must meet the turmoil and stress and hardships inside.
In the book there’s a constant question of where is Hagrid? But in the film we feel, if not think, that he’s only been gone a half hour because we don’t have any scenes showing the effect of Hagrid missing, and his friends fear and apprehension surrounding him and why he is late. Then, of course when he does return the film misses out on one of the coolest things in the book, the story of his attempts to persuade the giants to be on Dumbeldore and not Voldemort’s side.
Oh, and what about Dumbeldore. In the book he unexplainably won’t look at Harry, won’t talk to him, walks away from him anytime he comes near to him. Harry has questions, Harry wants to know the truth beyond the turmoil and the lies of Fudge and the Daily Prophet, but Dumbeldore won’t see him, and when, as in the second film, he goes missing from Hogwarts we should see Harry more alone than ever, but we don’t. Between Dumbeldore leaving and returning there’s no story to make those emotions or story register with the audience.

The movie rushes through these things with little sense of weight, acting like we’re watching something of no real consequence. A stark contrast to the book and its awareness to Harry and his friends feelings and troubles. When we do ‘see’ these things its in a fragment of a line of dialogue, or cut and pasted moment. Take one of the darkest and saddest moments of the film, Harry and the Weasley’s visit to St. Mungo’s hospital, where we see first hand the effects of torture enacted by Voldemort and his followers. The crucial scene is cut, with only a short, by necessity barely effective scene because instead of seeing something we are instead told briefly about it in passing.

At the end of the novel and near the end of the film a revelation is made about a prophecy concerning Harry Potter and Voldemort. Without spoiling anything (the film takes the liberty of excising some very important details regarding the prophecy) the prophecy basically says this: "And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives." Although neither can truly live with the other survives, the characters, nonetheless, must live. Normal life, normal charm, normal struggles, normal people (you hardly consider them characters) is what Harry Potter is about. The film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix should be more about that struggle. It should be about three friends who are being thrust into a place and a world where there is no shelter, and there will be no rest. And yet, you must wake up in the morning, and go to school, and you have to do something, and you have to learn something, so that there might once again be peace.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is about on par with the last three Potter films (the first two included almost every detail from the book) and there’s moments where it feels truly great, but a lot of the film is clouded by its necessity of mistake. There were few moments were I was fully engrossed, and for a large part of the film there was always a track running in the back of my mind, that said this conversation is rushed, this scene is sliced up to an ultimatum, and this is "so much better in the book." Even the action packed conclusion, which should and could have been better in the film (Rowling has gotten much better at it but one of her weaknesses is action), is cut in half and changes are made that are certainly not for the better.

The real tragedy is that those people who don’t read the book (I really think that we’d be happier if everyone did) are given only a glimpse of the work’s brilliance, and that the are denied the opportunity of a first class film. Even thirty minutes could have greatly improved the film, as it would have given more weight and time for the scenes we see, and some time for others which would simply make us feel more progression, and less like we’re being jolted around as in a roller coaster about to make its descent.

That being said, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix makes you want to do one thing, read the books again, and stand at a bookstore on midnight to read this great and important series conclusion. It’s also funny how, as the day of Hallows release fast approaches, the scariest thing in the world it now bombs or terrorism, but the idea of having the last book spoiled before you’ve had a chance to dwell in it’s every page. That there are people who could do such at thing as reveal, hypothetically, the books ending, and that there are fans desperate and with no self control well -it’s a dark world but we still have to live, a thing the film verso of Phoenix forgets.