Dir. Alfonso Cuaron, 2004, UK, 141 mins
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Robbie Coltrane, Gary Oldman, Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, David Thewlis, Emma Thompson
Review by Mathew Clarke
Now in his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry Potter (Radcliffe) is almost a veteran wizard facing He Who Cannot Be Named, The Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher, Tom Riddle and Draco Malfoy (well, no change there then), and all has worked well, pleasing a worldwide audience of all ages. Kick starting the third motion picture into life, a new Defence Against The Dark Arts teacher has taken its presence as well as the unforgiving, merciless Azkaban guards, the Dementors. Another new character, the escaped Prisoner Of Azkaban Sirius Black (Oldman), is the reason why Hogwarts has come onto full lockdown as the Dementors guard the castle. Something big is going to happen.
Since Harry Potter: The Chamber Of Secrets, many things have changed, including the director, who has gone from Chris Columbus, the man who brought us the insanely bad and sentimental Bicentennial Man, to Alfonso Cuarón, the dark and eerie helmer of Y Tu Mama Tambien. It is to be said that the much needed exchange of the Albus Dumbledore character has worked well too, in fact the likeness of both Gambon and Harris is very clever (albeit the fact Gambon looks a little larger).
If there is one thing that puts the third instalment into an entire league of its own, it is the atmosphere. In the first two, the set is just the backdrop to the action. Here we have an instantly recognisable feel; the film is much darker, just like the book, and this is physically shown through the set. There is no need for wasted minutes of the smiling trio constantly glancing over at each other along with the entire great hall clapping and cheering over a victory, because there is substance. If it is possible to say this, it isn’t cheesy any more. Cuarón cleverly and carefully uses traits for every scene to make it unique. In the opening location, where the family plus Aunt Marge (Ferris) sit down to Sunday lunch, the camerawork is shaky, maybe even amateurish, as if a home video of lunch with your family. This opening also begins in a totally different genre to the rest of the piece, becoming more like an Ealing comedy, rather than having a dark vibe all the way through as Cuarón has tried to extend a truly English portrait to the film. This is projected most profoundly as we glance through the wet, unlit park and the nearby streets as a perfect observation of suburban life in England. The director has also used some of his own techniques to the already popular franchise, including the addition of flamenco music to the fantastic score.
As in the first two films, the supernatural effects are simply sublime, as we go from one shot to another with nothing less than some sort of magical occurrence, in the foreground or the background (if you can, try and notice the knight played by Paul Whitehouse as he clunks around the paintings). However, when you have a bunch of mouldable teens, you need to make them as realistic as possible, so this is where the problem lies. For somebody who was locked in a cupboard all his life, Radcliffe has transformed Potter into an actor, not a teenager, you can see this difference just by looking over at Grint’s Ron Weasley who acts like a teenager and not a pronounced, overdrawn stage actor.
This is not the only glitch with the film. Taking into account that the novel been has heavily edited for the screenplay, it is easy to see that the timeline is messed up. With the first two, we all knew how the time structure went over the three terms, but this one seems like the events happened over a few days rather than months. The director seems to have taken too much guidance from Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy and relied on the audience for straightening out the timeline out for themselves.
Even with this in mind, the film is still brilliant family entertainment, and some of the best direction seen in ages, leaving the can of worms wide open as yet another new director, Mike Newell (Four Weddings And A Funeral) takes the helm in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.
