perfidy

I had a 1000-word post all ready to go on how good the new Harry Potter movie is when my browser crashed, taking everything with it. I lack the energy and will to recreate my masterpiece at this time, so I will just say this: 's great. Go see.

[wik]...and here it is.

Last Friday night my wife requested that we go see the new Harry Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." I'm glad she did. Even sitting in an un air-conditioned theater with a busted speaker with a drunken woman in the next row up vomiting loudly into a plastic bag every few minutes, I enjoyed "Azkaban" far more than the other Harry Potter films.

I don't know Alfonso Cuaron's previous work except by reputation. This is partly due to a self-enforced five-year moratorium on arty movies, and partly due to the fact that the only video store within walking distance of my house is totally ghetto. On Saturday I observed that they were carrying two copies of direct-to-video gorefest "Chupacabra," on DVD, the same number of copies as "Shattered Glass," the film we came to rent. Sadder yet, both copies of "Chupacabra" were out, and I was still able to rent "Shattered Glass." So, although I had heard plenty of good things about "Little Princess" and very badly want to see "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (also outnumbered by "Chupacabra," 2-zilch), I didn't know what to expect.

Cuaron reportedly didn't know much about Harry Potter when he agreed to take on the project, and that's probably a good thing. A major weakness of the first two films, directed by "Home Alone" auteur Chris Columbus, was their slavish adherence to the books they drew upon. I felt that they work okay as unified films, but didn't hang together cinematically. They were okay, even pretty good, but not up to the massive potential the source material presented.

It turns out that Cuaron was an inspired choice to direct. Eschewing Columbus' approach Cuaron and screenwriter Steve Kloves cut the material to the bone, relying on the audience already having read the books or seen the first two films. Very little is explained, and newcomers to the series will doubtless end up confused as to who is who and what is going on.

spoilers abound below the fold

On the other hand, dedicated fans of the book might object to some of Cuaron's omissions, such as the scene between Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley in Diagon Alley, just who "Wormtail, Mooney, Padfoot, and Prongs" are, and the long arc of the relationship between Harry and Sirius Black, but these cuts are necessary if J.K. Rowling's overstuffed tale is going to make it as a film at all. Besides, we've all seen plenty of Quidditch by now, thank you very much. Mainly, Cuaron makes Rowling's story into a movie, with a film's attention to character development and pacing, using the book merely as source material, doing for Rowling what Kubrick did for Steven King with "The Shining" and Coppola did for Mario Puzo with "The Godfather."

Curaon, who is blessed with a very Mexican eye for magical realism, has also overhauled the look of the film. His Hogwarts is a warren of half-ruined courtyards and dimly lit passageways clinging to a sheer mountainside, as tortured and dangerous as his suburban London is plain. Magic is a matter of fact thing, part of life, and rather less wondrous than in Columbus' treatment. The sole exception to that is the long opening shot when we discover Harry under the covers late at night playing with his wand. (Did I mention puberty is a main theme of both the book and film?) The evil Dementors are brought to terrifying life, and Curaon employs a sort of smearing, stretching effect to the faces of people upon whom the Dementors are feeding. Cuaron also earns major points for making full use of the animated paintings on the walls of Hogwarts (with the hilarious Dawn French perfectly cast as the Fat Lady), and for making the film in general seem lived-in. Hagrid's shack, in particular, with its muddy pumpkin patch, swarms of raucous crows, and grubby interior, looks great. It's not how I pictured it when I read the book, but it just might be better. "Azkaban" was the best of the Potter books so far, and Cuaron's sets, shots, and lighting choices underscore the main themes of the story: puberty's a confusing, scary bitch of a time; and people aren't always what they seem.

One effect of the relentless trimming is that relationships between the characters unfold somewhat differently than they do in the novel. David Thewlis (last seen in Timeline, and as "renowned video artist Knox Harrington" in The Big Lebowski) plays Professor Lupin as a rumpled, sympathetic British boarding-school instructor, much as in the book, but his rage at Peter Pettigrew and his subsequent enwolfening speaks to more and darker impulses beneath the surface than Rowling suggested. Since the film can devote so little time to the character of Sirius Black and Harry's relationship with him, most of the important bonding must take place in about five minutes. Harry's feelings about his parents, ever-present in the books, fade here to the background. Since Harry's relationship with his dead parents, and their connection to the Big Evil Guy, is a central feature of the story of Harry Potter, I miss the development. But for the purposes of this film, that's just not such a big deal.

Some scenes stand out as especially remarkable. The confrontation in the Shrieking Shack pits top-flight actors against each other (David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, and Timothy Spall as the rattish Peter Pettigrew), and Cuaron just lets them do their thing. The constantly rocking set, which calls to mind the forced-perspective nightmares of "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari," echoes the tumult between the characters. Ditto the showdown by the lake when Harry must stop the Dementors killing himself and Sirius Black. Although the acting isn't much compared to the generous use of CGI, Cuaron's handling of the FX-laden scene is lyrical, beautiful, and scary. Other nice touches were the Marauder's Map, some funny interclary scenes with the Whomping Willow, the Knight Bus (with stops called by shrunken head), and some excellent crowd actions in the Leaky Cauldron.

Emma Thompson hams it up as Divination professor Sibyl Trelawney, and her over-the-top comic turn underlines the creepiness of her one moment of actual prophesy. Michael Gambon plays Dumbledore as an avuncular aging hippie, a treatment I like better than the late Richard Harris'. The aforementioned David Thewlis and Timothy Spall are perfectly cast as Lupin and Pettigrew.

All the child actors have grown up and matured. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are great as Harry and Hermione, and even Rupert Grint has toned down the Keanu-ish mannerisms he employed in the first two films. With the onset of puberty, some characters are barely recognizable-- Matthew Lewis' Neville Longbottom is about a foot taller than before, and Jamie Waylette and Josh Herdman as Crabbe and Goyle look less imposing now that they're the same size as everyone else. Radcliffe in particular is maturing as an actor, and manages to capture Harry's conflicted inner life in glances, reactions, and understated readings. Cuaron allows the actors to hint at their characters' growing maturity, bringing out confused emotions, halting romantic advances (between Ron and Hermione), and underscoring the characters' growing realization that the world is a complicated place and not even friends will always remain who they seem to be.

While it's not easy to make the case that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is outstanding cinema in its own right, since much of Cuaron's interpretation depends on having seen the first two films, but within the bounds of the series, Azkaban is by far the best one so far. Children's movies don't get much respect, but this one stands with The Iron Giant, Princess Mononoke, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as nuanced, completely entrancing tales that don't condescend to the viewer.

The only black mark against the series so far: 3 movies, 0 boobies. Get to work, people!