This installment of HP's adventures is a pretty good one, not my favorite but not one I have a lot of complaints about, either. The movie is very well-paced and the scenes bleed into one another so well that I'm hard-pressed to find a lot of stand-alone scenes that are really fantastic, so these are more "chunks" of the film that I particularly enjoy.
Death Eaters are Fucking Scary. Also, fire.
Now don't get me wrong, when I read this scene in the book I pictured it as very, very scary. I mean, Harry is understandably freaked out-- some bad dudes (he doesn't even know yet what they are) are on a rampage at what was supposed to be a fun public event, and to top it off, he can't find his wand, his one means of defending himself. But the film made this scene so remarkably chaotic and frightening that even I was scared in an entirely new way. Those Death Eater masks and Klan hats on top of the whole campground being on fire and everyone panicking, man, I was with Harry, just frozen in fear. Oh, and any scene where someone gets inadvertently kicked in the head always has me torn between worry and laughter.
The Yule Ball is every dance your high school ever had. Plus magic.
Oh my, the teen awkwardness in this movie is just golden. From Harry's botched attempt to ask Cho to the Ball (and his hilarious subsequent brooding), to Ron and Hermione's teen-soap argument over Viktor Krum, to the girls all crying on the staircase after the festivities were over, Mike Newell just got this spot on. I loved having these scenes as a counterbalance to all the terrifying dark things going on later in the film.
Careful Harry, he doesn't have a nose!
So Voldemort comes back in this movie. And despite the weirdness of Ralph Fiennes' CGI lack of nose, this scene is pretty goddamn scary. Fiennes plays Voldemort so well I can hardly stand it, and even Dan Radcliffe is tolerable in this scene (though I think it wouldn't be hard to play someone who is terrified in the face of all the awful things happening). This was another moment in the books where I remember just closing the pages for a moment to breathe and wonder how the hell Harry was going to get out of this one. He does, but we are a long way from the miraculous rescue of Chamber of Secrets. This time, Harry only brings back one friend, one decidedly dead friend. Which leads us to...
SHIT GETS REAL: Cedric, we hardly knew ye
This scene is executed so wonderfully, and I still tear up a bit when I watch it. Having the celebratory brass piece playing as Harry appears in front of the crowd and then abruptly cutting to mournful violins does a wonderful thing for the tone, and throwing in Cedric's father's unrestrained misery is just the icing on the heartbreak cake. All the kids' faces are a mix of complete, bald shock and confusion, even as they let out a few tears, and it is one of the most authentic scenes in any of these films. Great, now I'm sad again.
The other thing I love about this film on a general level is that they kept true to the book in that Goblet of Fire doesn't end on a hopeful note. So much has happened, and so much is going to continue happening, that even the trio can't fully reassure one another. I liked that Newell kept with this, with Harry and Hermione's simple conversation marking the turning point in the series:
"Everything's going to change, isn't it?"
"Yes."
No comments:
Post a Comment