Noseless
+ another review by Todd R. Ramlow
Of the several strange and thrilling sights in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a noseless Ralph Fiennes may be the strangest and most thrilling. It's the payoff for Harry's (Daniel Radcliffe) intermittent haunting throughout the film, his dreams that Lord Voldemort is scheming to return to embodiment. When at last Harry confronts him, as you know he must, the dreaded specter rises up as a dark, robed shadow, with clawlike hands and black hollow eyes turning ever more humanish. And yet his nose remains reptilian -- grim and quite nasty.
Of course it's only right that the evilest evil of all takes such a grotesque shape. It underlines his difference from other schemers and troublemakers. It makes Lord Voldemort very visibly the worst. And that makes everyone else feel better, because they believe they can recognize where danger lies. Indeed, the fourth Harry Potter movie makes this a primary theme, the display of difference in order to assert a sort of order.
This even as the film appears to be trying out a different narrative order for its now adolescent protagonists. It opens at Hogwarts, rather than yet again re-establishing that Harry spends his summers with his rude and clueless Muggles relatives. At school, Harry, Hermione (Emma Watson), and Ron (Rupert Grint) find themselves face to face with what is, aside from Lord Voldemort, the most frightening hurdle they've yet encountered: sex. Like other kids their age -- 14 -- they're both excited and afraid of what this burgeoning interest holds for them.
One model of valiant behavior and focus of desire is offered in the Quidditch champion, Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski). When the students attend a match (rather than Harry competing yet again), they witness the full-on effects of sports celebrity: fans cheer and stomp their feet, magical images of the star shimmer over the crowd. The fact that the tournament site is destroyed by a visit from the Death Eaters (Lord Voldemort's henchmen, still and ever hunting for Harry) hardly brings pause, as the film (much like the others before it) tends to galumph along from plot point to plot point, ensuring that each beloved character from the novel gets at least a brief moment on screen. (Even though much is omitted from the 734-page book.)
The event that overshadows the Death Eaters' attack and extends the thematic interest in celebrity as a simultaneously familiar and strange state of being is the Triwizard Tournament. This year, Hogwarts hosts stars from two other schools, Beauxbatons Academy (all girls in blue dresses, all French, arriving via flying carriage) and Durmstrang Institute (Viktor and other robust Eastern European boys, who travel by a submersible ship). This odd linking of gender to nationality to wizardy-skill identity doesn't hold for Hogwarts, which is peculiarly English but also houses male and female students of multiple races (though it is the white ones still who have the speaking parts, save for Harry's new, briefly noted object of affection, Cho Chang [Katie Leung]).
For the most part, the national/gender cathexis serves as shorthand to mark Harry's opponents, as the newcomers have little to do except behave in predictable ways. Fleur Delacour (Clemence Poesy) screams a bit and dotes on her younger sister, and when he's not performing athletically, Viktor develops a severe crush on Hermione (at least he has excellent taste), flattering but not precisely satisfying ("Victor is more of a physical being," she tells Harry. "Mostly he watches me study. It's a bit annoying").
While the heterosexual dating process provides for some daunting moments (as when the boys must ask girls to the Yule Ball), the movie's primary scares have to do with monsters and terrible places. The contestants for the Tournament are selected by the magical Goblet of Fire, which spits out Harry's name along with the expected three (Hogwarts' rep is the diligent and dull Cedric [Robert Pattinson]), even though the cutoff age is 17. When Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) decides to abide by the Goblet, he puts Harry at risk, by dint of three very physical and "extremely dangerous" tasks. The competitors face down dragons, sirens in the Black Lake, and a menacing final maze where the huge hedgy walls will consume those wizards who don't move fast enough. While the first task calls for grabbing an egg from a chained-up, fire-breathing, angry CGI-ed dragon, Harry's breaks loose and chases him all over the skies, so he can show off his flying ability and provide the usual broomstick set piece.
It also leaves him with an egg, a clue whose deciphering involves a visit to the baths, where Moaning Myrtle (Shirley Henderson) provides Harry with another kind of scare. While Harry's nakedness in the soapy tub and discomfort alongside flirty Myrtle provide some regular-seeming, almost sitcom-ish comedy, his situation resonates for the rest of the film: holding the precious egg between himself and the much-too-desirous ghosty girl, he's more anxious and perplexed than in any other scene in the film.
But such cute, childish sexuality isn't the only reason for the movie's PG-13 rating. More overtly, Mike Newell's fourth installment of the franchise showcases violence. And it's not just dark-artsy brand of violence, though certainly this is a factor, as always, enjoined here by this year's Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Alastor Moody (Brendan Gleeson), called "Mad-Eye" because he has one. More insidiously -- and alas, in tune with the kids' aging -- the violence this time is less prankish (though Draco Malfoy [Tom Felton] is turned into a ferret), more deliberate, brutal, and lastingly hurtful.
It's in his encounters with such violence that Harry learns his most difficult lessons in Goblet of Fire. For the most part, this action is rambunctious, as in the case of the dragon chase -- it crawls over a rooftop and spits fire, trying mightily to knock dear Harry out of the sky. But the film includes as well some plainly malicious mischief, as when reporter Rita Skeeter (Miranda Richardson) reports that Harry is a "teenage tragedy," a judgment ordained by the wizards-powers-that-be in order to undermine his Lord Voldemort dream-sightings. (As it's bad for business to reveal that their lifetime banishment spells don't hold up.)
Worse, the tasks, though supposedly rated R (judging by that age 17 cut-off), are undertaken by the child Harry, who is in due course exposed to cheating (by adult coaches who mean for their charges to win) and not a little bit of emotional and physical abuse (he's a wizard and quite ingenious, so perhaps the awful stuff is not so awful to him). When at last he confronts Lord Voldemort, however, the film cuts loose with images that, not surprisingly, given the villain's immoral bent, tend toward torture. Not that anyone would call it that, and yes, for the most part, their star-warsy-light-sabery contest does seem a measure of the boy Harry's manhood in some unfair way. But the rituals that denote his growing up are fundamentally disturbing (including Moody's extended torture of a spider).
That such disturbance makes sense is almost as vexing as the violence per se: whether 14 or 17, the kids are expected to be warriors and survivors, able to undergo pain and work through fear, and especially, to fight back, to inflict pain. A difficult transition on screen or off, it makes the whole growing up thing look pretty unpleasant. It's an old story, of course, this fall from grace and childhood, this realization that not all villains are plainly visible. But it's still sad.
— 18 November 2005
