Harry Potter and the War on Terror

Now that Harry Potter is getting older, his author is finally free to explore more deeply the mature themes and political overtones the wizards’ war acts out. But Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is packing more than just politics: it’s hilarious, deeply sad, visually arresting, scary as hell, and sexy, too.

In their sixth year at Hogwarts, the war between Voldemort and the wizarding world is finally out in the open. The movie begins with a sequence of terrorist attacks on the Muggles in London by Voldemort’s henchmen, the Death Eaters, his supporters who escaped from the wizard prison, Azkaban, in the previous installment.

Once the students arrive at Hogwarts, Potions class, always a source of pain for Harry and Ron, sets the stage for all of the action of Half-Blood Prince, and an ancient copy of the Advanced Potions text book Harry inherits lends the film its title: it had previously belonged to the mysterious “Half-Blood Prince” who filled it to the brim with notes, tips, and homemade spells that make Harry the dubious star student. This is a first for Harry considering Severus Snape, Harry’s loathed faculty nemesis, has finally vacated his position as Potions Master and has gotten the job teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, a position he’s coveted since long before Sorcerer’s Stone. The fact that Dumbledore condoned this career move is our first indication things are coming to a head in the series.

Potions class fans the hormonal flames sweeping the castle by introducing powerful “substances” the students are clamoring to get their hands on. Harry, Ron, Hermione and company are essentially in their junior year of high school, and while no one would approve of sex and drugs in Harry Potter, the film flaunts the raging hormones and restless antics of 16-year-olds by ceaselessly integrating innuendos and the pursuit of mind-altering potions. Ron is juggling the affections of two witches when the time of the first Quidditch match rolls around. As the girls watch from the rafters, Ron becomes the big hero of the game, beating Quaffles into oblivion. The girls look on, flushed and trembling, as he clutches the giant wooden staff protruding from his crotch in the most blatantly sexual shot ever known to Harry Potter. Then, just to drive the point home, it cuts to a shot of a spread-legged Ron whose crotch shares Harry and Hermione’s eyeline. Yes folks, little Ron Weasley is a man. But soon he is accidentally dosed with a love potion intended for Harry, and after watching Ron totter around with a goofy grin on his face, swooning at the sight of the moon and clutching a stuffed animal to his breast, love potion seems more like MDMA than anything concocted by a wizard. Later, Harry takes his turn at psychedelics when he downs a dram of Liquid Luck, a potion that makes all of ones endeavors succeed, and he roams the castle grounds like a lunatic, following the whims of the potions straight to answers he is seeking.

Half-Blood Prince is brimming with adventures, twists, and turns, but to a degree the film is essentially plotless, or at least, it rests heavily on the same plot it’s always played on: Voldemort is out there. This idea is palpable even if He Who Must Not Be Named doesn’t make a single appearance throughout the film, except in memory. Nevertheless, his absence only amplifies the suspense of meeting him again in the final showdown Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows promises. This circuitous plotless-ness, the continuing struggle against the Death Eaters, and the accumulation of knowledge of this richly detailed world feels a bit like watching the latest episode of the best, most expensive show on television. People take comfort in Harry Potter for that reason, but part of HP’s wide appeal is that unlike James Bond, Star Trek, (or any other long-running movie franchise), Harry Potter is growing up. Like Seven Up for wizards, every year at Hogwarts the stories mature along with the characters. We get to watch these characters and actors alike getting older, grappling with successively more mature themes, even watching the imagery become more refined as the production budgets swell and computer imaging technology advances with the years.

Half-Blood Prince exemplifies how far CGI has come since the Sorcerer’s Stone. Compounded by the exquisite production design, the look of Harry Potter has finally caught up with the dense visual wonderland the books demand. With the inflated budget (an estimated $250 million) and an extra six months to tinker around before the movie’s delayed release, the animation was so polished that Quidditch finally looks cool. When the Death Eaters travel by broomstick they take the form of streaks of black ink dissolving in water, and this same motif permeates the memories dropped into Dumbledore’s penseive as well as every living thing within the memories. These beguiling images are perfectly suited to the dark subject matter, and the set decorators did a comprehensive job of building a background rife with allusions to storylines that were exclusive to the books, seemingly to reward the avid HP readers. This kind of intuition and dedication to the source material are the skills that are so lacking in other book adaptations, (which is perhaps the reason Disney pulled the plug partway through the Chronicles of Narnia series.)

It’s racially-suggestive title brings the film’s political undercurrents to the forefront of our consciousness, even if the guts of the racial implications are suppressed in the movie. Sadly, the film glossed over the fact that the Death Eaters are planning an ethnic cleansing of sorts in the wizarding world. The Death Eaters’ elite are the “purebloods,” or, witches and wizards who were born into families of non-Muggles (non-magical people) who would like nothing more than to purge the “mudbloods” from the earth. Rowling intermingles the ideas of ethnic cleansing and terrorism with a staunch distrust of the government (in this case, the Ministry of Magic), and even hints at violence in schools, all through the unlikely guise of magic. But she ultimately places our trust in Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter, teacher and student, thus sharing her belief that institutions of learning are the most sacred places on earth, and knowledge the most powerful weapon against terror. But even more importantly, with each new installment of the saga, she finds a new and meaningful way to declare her resounding message that love is the strongest power a wizard can possess.