Whenever I go to the movies, I always interrupt what I’m doing so I can write a review of the movie I saw. Today was no exception. I am a Potter fan and today was the day that my friends and I finally found to go and see the Half-Blood Prince. I have read all the books, of course, and I’ve seen the movies and own the rest of them, and I’ve read a number of books about the books.
The movie, of course, does differ in some way from the books. (And by the way, if you haven’t seen the movie yet and plan to or you don’t want to know what happens in the book if you plan to read it someday, then don’t read this post yet.) I was hoping it would include the scene where Dumbledore got to meet the Dursleys, but that wasn’t to be this time.
The movie does play out the relationships in the book very well, such as the growing love between Hermoine and Ron and the growing love between Harry and Ginny. It also catches the relationships of the heroes to the death eaters, such as Harry’s reaction to Bellatrix who is still chanting “I killed Sirius Black” and to seeing the death of Dumbledore at the hands of Snape and how Harry chases Snape in a rage.
Also, there’s the relationship between Draco and Harry, ending in a duel in the bathroom where Harry uses the sectumsempra spell on Draco with incredibly painful results. Harry describes to Hermoine that he doesn’t believe that Draco was capable of killing Dumbledore and Snape had to be the one to do that.
Of course, there’s the growing bond between Harry and Dumbledore as well as Dumbledore trusts Harry more than ever in this one asking him to go on a mission for him to retrieve a memory from Horace Slughorn and having Harry be the one to accompany him as he goes to get a horcrux that Voldemort has hidden.
One of my friends as we were leaving the theater is one who hasn’t read the books and noted that he thought that the movie was dark. I told him “Of course it was!” Rowling is dealing with a real subject. She’s dealing with evil and death. She’s a good writer and she doesn’t downplay evil as she writes about it. She shows evil in all of its horror.
Which is something that makes these stories so fascinating. The Potter books are fantasy that are in a way true to life. I’m not saying the magic in them is true, but in the world of Rowling, one knows that there is such a thing as good and such a thing as evil and good is what we ought to desire. The magic is simply an artifice to tell the story.
Now my favorite one is still Prisoner to Azkaban, but I wasn’t disappointed by this one. It is a dark one so you might not want to bring the youngest children to see it yet, but it would give a good chance to discuss good and evil and the notion of self-sacrifice, a thoroughly Christian notion.
Overall, I approve of Half-Blood Prince and I definitely look forward to the two parts of Deathly Hallows.
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