Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Growing order
Review by Vives Anunciacion
Inquirer Libre July 13, 2007

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Directed by David Yates
Based on the book by JK Rowling
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint
GP / 138 minutes
Warner Brothers Pictures
*** (3 stars)

It’s been four movies since Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001: Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) is now binata. How time flies. Or in this case, like a Phoenix: time stops in the middle and resurrects towards the end of the fifth and most information-laden Harry Potter movie. Order of the Phoenix represents a crucial point in our pop-cultural lives: the beginning of the end of Harry Potter.

In the movie, the Ministry of Magic flatly denies the return of the Dark Lord (Voldemort, played by Ralph Fiennes) while Harry and Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) desperately try to convince it otherwise. Harry returns to Hogwart’s for the fifth time, and finds Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) interfering with Hogwart’s affairs under the ministry’s authority.

Harry and his gang of followers secretly form their own Defense against the Dark Arts class, calling themselves Dumbledore’s Army, in response to Umbridge’s tyrannical methods. But they get exposed, and Dumbledore is charged with treason and is replaced by Umbridge as Hogwart’s headmaster.

Meanwhile, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) recruits Harry into the Order of the Phoenix, a group devoted to fight Voldemort’s Death Eaters who are in search of a mystical object containing a particular prophecy. A climactic confrontation by Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix against the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters ends with terrible consequences. And the skies grow even darker.

To say that the series is becoming darker in story, look and tone with these final episodes is to repeat what the previous movie (Goblet of Fire) already meant. Also I think the publicists expect every reviewer to say so, so there: Order of the Phoenix is the darkest, most condensed Potter movie yet.

Relying heavily on the audience’s familiarity with its plot and characters, the movie lays the groundwork for the series’ inevitable conclusion. It is a plot-laden tale whose character development highlight involves a kiss with a fellow Hogwart’s student. Key word: series.

Visual effects still are great as money can buy, the music is atrocious, the river Thames is used as a background, and the staggering roster of acclaimed actors are practically underutilized – no thanks to the 800-page novel that had to be condensed into a 2-hour-plus movie that has to include as much information it can so the succeeding installments can still make sense.

Emma Watson has one great performance in the scene where Hermione and Ron (Rupert Grint) ask Harry about his first kiss. Newcomer Evanna Lynch makes an impression as Luna Lovegood, but it is Staunton who stands out as the bedimpled tyrant Umbridge. Children will no longer look at pink the same way as before.

Order of the Phoenix represents a new paradigm for the remaining Harry Potter films – that the sixth and seventh movies are now critic-proof. Whatever happens, audiences who have grown with Daniel Radcliffe will necessarily see Half-Blood Prince and the finale, Deathly Hallows. Stop calling it a kid’s movie, the star is no longer one.

Whether directors Alfonso Cuaron (Azkaban) or Mike Newell (Goblet) made the best of the series or whether another director could have made the difference with the fifth no longer matters. At this point, several years after the first movie, the sum of the series’ parts is becoming the order of the day.

For the moment, Order of the Phoenix is a competent addition to the previous installments, neither greater nor weaker; it’s a necessary supplement to a long and familiar story that’s now drawing to a close.

But for the love of God, finish this series on the seventh outing, and let the actors – as well as the audience – take on new lives. I can’t imagine Radcliffe holding his own kid in his arms.