If you follow the Harry Potter series you know that Harry is a reluctant hero. He’s famous for being the only person to have ever survived the Killing Curse. But he does not wear his fame proudly; he’s tormented by a celebrity that he never asked for, and mourns the loss of parents he never knew.
Harry’s fame has always been one of his biggest challenges. Because he survived Lord Voldemort’s attempt to kill him, he’s supposed to be a great wizard. Yet Harry has often succeeded more because of the talents of others than anything he has done himself. He defeated Lord Voldemort’s attempt to regain a body in The Sorcerer’s Stone largely because of the sacrifice of his mother, which gave him the “ultimate protection”. He survived a young Voldemort in the form of Tom Riddle in The Chamber of Secrets because of the deus ex machina in the form of Fawkes the Phoenix and the Sorting Hat. It wasn’t until The Prisoner of Askaban that Harry finally displayed the sort of powers that had been expected of him, when he saved his godfather from certain death at the hands of the dementors by producing a Patronus Charm, a spell of considerable difficulty for a wizard his age.
It seems fitting then that in The Order of the Phoenix Harry takes the next step toward wizard greatness and begins to earn some of the reputation that has dogged him these many years.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the darkest Harry Potter film thus far. It also possesses some of the best individual moments in any Potter movie (even if it doesn’t satisfy as a whole film as much as the others), mostly because we finally get to see Harry make the transformation from reluctant hero to leader of wizards.
Hogwarts is under siege this year. The Ministry of Magic is doing everything it can to turn a blind eye toward the return of Lord Voldemort. The Minister, Cornelius Fudge, has planted one of his own among the staff: Dolorus Umbridge, brilliantly played by Imelda Staunton, the new Defense Against The Dark Arts instructor. Her mission is to wrestle control of the school away from professor Dumbledore. This she accomplishes through a series of increasingly ridiculous rules and regulations.
Umbridge is a great villain; her allegiance is to the Ministry of Magic, which puts here directly at odds with Harry. Her punishment for Harry (his crime: he doesn’t like being called a “liar”) is so vile it can only be classified as torture. She also refuses to teach the students any real magic, instead attempting to handicap them by relying solely on the text of very basic books for their learning. This infuriates Harry and his classmates, to the point where Harry reluctantly allows himself to be persuaded by his friends to teach a secret Defense Against The Dark Arts class. The students dub themselves Dumledore’s Army.
It is during these sessions that we get to see Harry grow into the sort of teacher and leader we’ve expected. He instructs his fellow students like an old pro, as if he’s been doing this as long as any of his previous Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors, and we see for the first time that Harry is indeed a great wizard. He may have ridden luck, nerve and the help and talents of his friends this far, but when it comes to combat Harry is an exceptional wizard. He begins to accept the mantle of responsibility that has been placed on his shoulders, and it is a wonderful transformation to watch on screen. I saw the movie with full house of Potter fans and it was particularly rewarding to watch them cheer a scene in which the inept Neville Longbottom finally succeeds in disarming a fellow student.
The book that the movie is based on comes in at 870 pages, the longest of the Potter books. The film, however, clocks in at 138 minutes, the shortest film in the series. While the director David Yates and screenwriter Michael Goldenberg wisely trim the film of many of the side stories and sub plots from the book, it could have used another twenty or thirty minutes of development for the main story. Having read the book prior to seeing the movie, I noticed several scenes in the film that were exceptionally brief almost to the point of being unclear. Some viewers are going to feel like they’re missing out on a larger story (and they are).
That said, the core of the book is still there, and the actors do as much as they can with the limited time they are given. Gary Oldman is incredibly effective as Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black. Harry has a great deal of affection for the only person he can truly call ‘family’, and Oldman does great work here conveying their connection. Entire conversations pass between then with a look and a wink. Evanna Lynch is also pitch perfect as Luna Lovegood, so much so that one wonders if they ripped her character straight off the pages of the book. And Jason Isaacs gets more screen time as Lucius Malfoy, the unabashed ally of Lord Voldemort, now openly working for his master without fear from the Ministry of Magic or anyone else.
If there’s a flaw with the film it is in the source material. The Order of the Phoenix is widely believed to be the weakest of the Potter books. This is probably due to the unsatisfying way that Umbridge’s comeuppance is handled, and the overall lack of awe that the ‘prophecy’ inspires. But those are minor issues. The real meat of The Order of the Phoenix is in Harry’s emergence as a mentor and role model for his fellow students. Harry accepts his fate now, and that gives him a resolve that seems befitting of his reputation. The rest of the film is handled incredibly well, taking into accounted the abbreviated nature of the film. The hostile takeover of Hogwarts by Umbridge is perfectly infuriating and the final confrontation at the Ministry of Magic between Dumbledore’s Army, the Death Eaters, The Order of the Phoenix and Lord Voldemort is one of the most rewarding special effects scenes in any of the Potter films.
More than anything, this film perfectly sets up the next two. The world Harry Potter lives in is growing darker and more dangerous and The Order of the Phoenix does just about everything right to prepare us for the final encounters.