When you have a film series that’s seven installments long, eventually you are going to get to the placeholder chapter, and that’s where the Harry Potter series has ended up with its fifth big-screen outing, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Longtime Potter fans will probably be eager to forgive Phoenix’s flaws, and even casual viewers will still find plenty to like, but the feeling of marking time, of nothing especially momentous going on in the latest incremental step toward Harry’s final showdown with evil wizard Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), is fairly hard to shake.
The movie does plenty to distract you from that feeling, though, and there are at least a few significant things going on in Phoenix, which once again finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, facing the imminent threat of Voldemort (who was revealed in the fourth film to be once again at large). Harry’s steadfast companions Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) are back, as are all manner of major and minor supporting characters, many of whom get barely a line or two of dialogue and no identification whatsoever. (Woe to anyone who comes to this film without having seen the first four installments, though why someone would do that is a mystery.)
While the previous films each had some self-contained mystery that was resolved by the time the credits rolled, Phoenix feels less autonomous, with the threat of Voldemort at more or less the same level as the film ends as when it begins, although there is a spectacular climactic battle that’s more satisfying than the one in the last movie. The main conflict, really, is not with Voldemort; in Phoenix, Harry’s greatest enemy is bureaucracy. Specifically, the Ministry of Magic, which refuses to believe in the return of Voldemort, accuses Harry of spreading lies and sees Hogwarts as a hotbed of sedition. Thus kindly headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is pushed aside in favor of the sadistically cheerful Dolores Umbridge (a wonderful Imelda Staunton), who institutes draconian regulations and takes special pleasure in tormenting poor Harry.
Poor Harry is plenty tormented already, and the relatively egalitarian character development of the last two films is pushed aside in favor of an exploration of Harry’s angst. Ron and Hermione do little more than stand around and cheer their friend on, while the army of great British actors (Maggie Smith, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Walters, etc.) just seem pleased that they’ve been asked to show up again. Gary Oldman does get a few nice moments as Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black, but he’s just about the only one.
British TV veteran David Yates takes over directorial duties, and he and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg (also new to the franchise) do manage to corral author J.K. Rowling’s doorstop of a book into a coherent narrative. But it seems as though all of the quieter, character-building moments have been sacrificed to the mountain of plot, much of which simply amounts to: Voldemort is out there, and he’s coming to get you. More interesting are the strains of social commentary that creep in thanks to the presence of Dolores Umbridge, whose obsession with rules, uniforms and standardized tests makes one wonder if she might institute a “No Wizard Left Behind” policy.
The main thing that Phoenix has going for it is that after four movies, the Potter world is rich and well-defined, and we want to know more about the background elements because they’re so perfectly realized. Yates proves himself an able caretaker of the universe that Rowling and the previous directors have built up, and he’s already set to direct the next film. Maybe with that one, he’ll have the chance to do more than just keep things in working order.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
***
Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson
Directed by David Yates
Rated PG-13
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