Flak Magazine: Review of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 06.11.04

Of the four blockbuster movie franchises that have dominated the past half-decade, Harry Potter carries a distinct advantage. Unlike Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, we don't know where the caverns of J.K. Rowling's mind will ultimately carry Harry and his cohorts — just that it will lean heavily on such infinitely marketable virtues as family and friends, two tenets the Matrix trilogy (another Chosen One paradigm) vacated entirely. Harry Potter has inspired a sprawling book club whose members repeatedly re-read existing texts to sharpen their hypotheses about the fates to be revealed in the final two volumes. Everyone feels at home with the series because beyond the zeitgeist trappings of it all, this is a tale of a boy understanding his family and growing close with his friends. Who among us can't relate to such qualities?

Rather than rotely beat this drum, Rowling expertly provides a melody with her invaluable imagination — postal owls, reincarnated sorcerers, wizard boarding schools, invisibility cloaks, care of magical creatures class and more. While these terms are arcane, Harry's overwhelming influence means none of them are at all unfamiliar, either. Rowling has a fortune greater than the queen's, "muggle" has made it into the dictionary and writers compared the midnight "Order of the Phoenix" release parties to Bostonians lining Chesapeake Bay in anticipation of the latest Dickens dispatch.

"Prisoner of Azkaban" was likely the story that elevated Harry Potter to required reading for the masses. The first two installments, "Sorcerer's Stone" and "Chamber of Secrets," were enjoyable but linear, with the grudge-bearing archvillain Voldemort waiting for Harry with open arms at the end of each wacky school year. "Prisoner's" throughline is a manhunt, not just the terms of the school year, and Rowling is deliberate and precise in her controlled dispersal of facts and findings. It is a work of suspense, and its antagonist is a living, breathing convicted murderer, not a possessed diary or rogue faculty member.

Concomitant with this, the film Prisoner of Azkaban, which is the first without Chris Columbus in the director's chair, is also the first adaptation that feels less like a movie and more like a film. Since we are all Potterheads, we've done the research to to know director Alfonso Cuarón's lineage (A Little Princess, Great Expectations) and have seen the trailers so frequently that the technique (experimentation with exposure, follow-the-protagonist handicam footage) is as familiar as next week's grocery list. Even still, no one may have comprehended what this all meant before their first viewing. Columbus made two movies that, like the books at their cores, were clean, direct and easy to follow — movies for the masses. Through wizardry of his own, Cuarón created a movie that's far more of a task for the viewer, but still irrepressibly interesting and an undeniable improvement. Prisoner might be the most daring and experimental mega-marketed blockbuster yet, and thankfully, it retains the flavors of both the auteur and the author.

The deepening of Rowling's narrative and the fresh breath offered by Cuarón's cunning camerawork are the two forces at work in separating Prisoner from its predecessors. The fact that Voldemort has no role in Prisoner shows the widening of the Potterverse and a willingness to take risks by expanding the good-versus-evil model. To Cuarón's credit, even with Columbus staying on as producer, Steve Kloves again penning the script, John Williams begrudgingly returning to re-reprise his Schindler's List riff and all the familiar faces of the cast, this still manages to be a different movie. Cuarón used all of Columbus' resources to create a work decidedly un-Columbus-like.

Should we expect any less gall from the man whose most acclaimed movie is called And Your Mother, Too? Cuarón is bold enough to kick off the film with Harry privately playing with his wand in bed, as most teenagers do. He also sets up overdue shots that portend romance among the big three. Prisoner elicits hoots from the crowd whenever Harry stumbles onto Hermione, Hermione and Ron trudge off to nearby Hogsmeade or the three somehow become delectably intertwined.

The expectation of upcoming romance and physical affection, though not supported by Rowling's text thus far, is just one element demonstrating the students' growth. Some of the kids have grown more rapidly than could have ever been imagined. Suddenly, it doesn't seem spoiled bully Malfoy needs his henchmen Crabbe and Goyle; onscreen, he's shot past them in height. The mischievous Weasley twins now stand as spot-on Ewan McGregor doubles, and young Hermione is fast developing into … well, fast developing, period.

All that alone would be evidence of a more mature, more informed film, but the movie goes further with veteran thespians Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, the prisoner of the title, and David Thewlis as new professor Lupin. Oldman's active screen time checks in at about 10 minutes, but he dominates every scene he's in — even when it's as an animated wanted poster. Thewlis expertly plays Lupin, whose biggest fear is a full moon and who disappears every few weeks. The implications are veiled as thinly as tagging a presumed baddie "Sirius Black," but Lupin serves as a worthy mentor for Harry — his first, apart from Headmaster Dumbledore's near-cameos.

Cuarón succeeds because he allows Thewlis to develop a touching character, someone who demonstrates his investment in Harry's training and actually tells the golden boy to dig deeper. Whereas Columbus reserved real estate for needless exposition (just look toward the villain's rant at the end of Stone or Hagrid's blatant "rogue bludger" pickup shot in Chamber), Cuarón spares the hand-holding and instead avails opportunities for his characters to connect. With Lupin, it's a scene on a suspended castle corridor, astonishing for mise en scène as well as character work, where Harry at last has a frank discussion about his parents with someone who knew them. With other struggling teens, it's a dorm room scene of the young men letting off steam with enchanted candy. Harry himself finally taps into his changing world through a non-narrative flying session upon Buckbeak, a bird-horse hybrid, and the scene is an absolute revelation.

Buckbeak exemplifies another benefit of switching directors; because Cuarón works in more muted colors and more even lighting, the special effects blend in wonderfully. The Nazgul-inspired Dementors, for example, don't require a heavy fill light; because the standard state is a mistier gray, the magic tricks and CGI transformations play like a natural part of the story space. The film's lone Quidditch match, set in the middle of a monsoon, is the standard by which other human-scale CGI flying sequences should be judged.

Not only is Prisoner the culmination of many exciting new components, but it's also an improvement upon known quantities as well. Prisoner was a crucial movie to make interesting; apart from Rowling stepping up her game, it's also the one book in the series that drew Steven Spielberg's interest. Strange, then, that Spielberg protégé Columbus handed it to a Mexican filmmaker who hadn't previously seen a second or read a word of Potter. Perhaps he recognized that a new wand needed to wave over the series. The story, much like its principals, is no longer simple or straightforward; rather than fearing what's in front of them, the three teen leads fear the shadows beside them, behind them or, worse, inside them. If the Harry Potter franchise is going to grow in the ways Cuarón prescribes, with a focus on those moments that detail our person rather than deliberate about our progress, Mr. Potter should grow up to be quite the enterprising young man.

— Andy Stilp (andy.stilp at gmail dot com)