Film #052 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Viewed February 21, 2006
Perhaps it is because it is the first “Harry Potter” film that is saw after having experienced the book, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the first film that I felt really missed essential elements of the story.
Mostly it was subtlety that went out the window. Director Mike Newell, best known for more genteel fare like Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and the wonderful Enchanted April (1992), seems well out of his element in the fantasy realm. The closest he has come previously is directing episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. In fact, most of his work has been in television and without the period setting of April or the snappy dialogue of Four Weddings, he still comes off as a television director, with no sense of the grandeaur necessary for a blockbuster theatrical film.
I am quite certain that viewers without a working knowledge of the book to support them would be confused by Steven Kloves’ scattershot adaptation. Even if they can grasp everything that’s going on, they still miss out on most of the subtlety that has been written out of the film in favor of over-extending things like the dragon sequence. I realize that there is a danger with a book like Goblet of Fire that a film would get bogged down with the political and personal aspects, but practically eliminating them puts the series in danger of missing the emotional thread that runs through the books. The next book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix goes even further down the path of less adventure, more intrigue (some say too far) and I can’t imagine how they will adapt that if they think Goblet of Fire works.
The cast is mostly just fine, as one would expect given that many of them have had years to settle into their roles. That being said, Michael Gambon seems all over the place as Dumbledore. In his first outing in Prisoner of Azkaban, Gambon brought a lot of Dumbledore’s playfulness to the role that Richard Harris (who portrayed Dumbledore in the first two films) did not. But in Goblet, Gambon shows very little of Dumbledore’s grace and dignity, which were the hallmarks of Harris’ turn. In some scenes Gambon’s Dumbledore seems absolutely frantic, wide-eyed and utterly unsure of himself; a far cry from any Dumbledore seen in the books.
Another big problem for the cast is that the story has been pared down so much, there is little for many characters to do. Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) has barely half a dozen lines to say, his entire subplot reduced to a single “whoops!” revelation scene more at home in a farce than a dramatic fantasy film. The highly dramatic and significant backstory of Barty Crouch Sr. & Jr. is stripped of all its Greek tragic trappings, with David Tennant’s Barty Jr. nothing but a snarling, toungue-lashing characature.
And there are two performances that are actually quite inappropriate. First, there is Shirley Henderson, reprising her role as the ghost Moaning Myrtle, first seen in Chamber of Secrets. Now, despite the fact that Myrtle was supposed to have died while a student, Henderson was 37 when she first played the role. (For those of you keeping score, that’s 24 years older than Daniel Radcliffe.) In Goblet, Henderson is now 40 years old (and looks it) and flirts shamelessly with a now 16-year-old Radcliffe. What bothers me is not just the fact that the flirtation is uncomfortable, but that it, like the dragon scene, goes on far longer than in the book, just because it seems to have amused the director. All the depth was taken out of The Goblet of Fire so we could get this?
The second (and more important) unfortunate performance is Ralph Fiennes as the main villain, Lord Voldemort. I am hoping that the makeup that he wears in the climactic scenes are only temporary, because I can’t see people taking him seriously as a leader with no nose. (I’m sorry, he just looks too silly.) And for some reason, Fiennes takes to walking arouns with his arms outstretched, like he is poerformaing some kind of dance. Voldemort needs to be much more straightforward and direct in his evil. Fiennes is too clearly performing, not coming off the least bit realistically.
But the thing that I find most confounding about the making of The Goblet of Fire is that Warner Bros. actually approached Newell about making the film in two parts, but he was convinced by Alfonso Cuarón, director of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), to make it as one. What baffles me about this decision is that splitting the film in two would have allowed Newell the ample screentime necessary to really flesh out the first of the really dense “Harry Potter” stories without the kind of compromises he ultimately had to settle for. Plus, can there be any doubt that both films would have made north of $200M? Why would someone intentionally castrate their own creation, just so they could say they had done it? J.K. Rowling wrote a story that took much more space to tell than its predecessors. Newell should have recognized that and given it the space it needed for the big screen as well.
Ultimately, I still liked Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This was mainly down to the skills of the actors and a familiarity with them that allowed me to accept them for who they have been, since so little time is actually given to who they are. I have never been a big fan of “Director’s Cuts”, “Unrated Versions”, “Extended Editions” or other excuses for releasing a different version of a movie than appeared on screen, but I certainly hope there’s a longer version of The Goblet of Fire on the way. More than any film in recent memory, it needs one.