A look back at Harry Potter part IV: The Goblet of Fire hits the most of the major story points, but lacks the fiery emotion of the best book in the series.

This will be a six-part retrospective on the Harry Potter film series, covering films 1-6 (I think most Potter fans can remember the one that came out eight months ago...).  This essay will be covering Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is easily my favorite book in the series.  It is not my favorite movie in the series.  It is also a very long and complicated book, one that was nearly split up into two films.  That director Mike Newell decided to stick to one long movie is I suppose commendable.  But as a result, the fourth Harry Potter film is the only entry that truly feels like a Cliff Notes version of the original text.   It hits most of the major plot points, but feels understandably rushed and somewhat compromised.  Taken outside of its worth as an adaptation, it still remains one of the better films in the series.  It is easily the most action packed film in the franchise (until the finale, I presume), and there is plenty of solid character interaction between our young heroes.  The adults again get the shaft, although Michael Gambon finally comes into his own as Dumbledore (I love the moment where he basically attacks Harry while asking him if he indeed sneaked his name into the Tri-Wizards tournament cup).  It is, objectively, an exciting and entertaining fantasy action picture, but one that feels curiously remote considering the emotional stakes and epic narrative.  As the first entry actually directed by a Brit (Mike Newell), it perhaps maintains too much of that stiff upper lip.


What the film does have is a wealth of truly exciting material.  This is an almost entirely plot-based film, as the film immediately establishes the two main threads: Voldemort is nearing rebirth as the Death Eaters are becoming more ambitious, and Harry's school year at Hogwarts will be dominated by the Tri-Wizards tournament, a once-every-four years tournament of wizarding skill that the school is hosting this time around.  That Harry Potter's name is inexplicably selected as a contestant is not a surprise, and the characters generally treat it as an eye-rolling inevitability.  The remainder of the film is focused almost entirely on this three-part tournament.  The only distraction is a thirty minute subplot, plopped in between the first and second challenges, involving just who Harry, Ron, and Hermione will take to the school dance.  It's fortunately handled with a light touch, as the film doesn't pretend that it's a bigger concern than the whole 'Are there dark workings behind Harry's inclusion into the big game?' plot.  I do take annoyance at having to see Hermione all broken up to the point of tears because Ron didn't ask her to the dance and then mocked her date, but that's a source material qualm.  The actual dance itself is amusing, and it also shows up Bonnie Wright (Ginny) and Matthew Lewis (Neville) in their post-puberty glory (IE - they both aged very well).  

Also a bit annoying is the treatment of Fleur Delacour (Clémence Poésy), the 'token female' contestant.  The film hilariously reinforce gender stereotypes when the two non-Hogwarts teams enter the great hall.  The Beauxbatons Acadamy is introduced with chirping birds, flowers, Disney princess music, and a cascade of young women dressed like well... Disney princesses.  The 'guy's team', Durmstrang, is introduced with heavy drums and a bunch of ripped muscle men doing a very masculine dance.  Moreover, despite Mad-Eye Moody (or rather, Barty Crouch Jr in disguise) telling Harry that Fleur was 'as much of a fairy tale princess as I', she is the first to be (easily) defeated in both of the games we see her participate in, she is the only one to fail at the second contest, and she generally proves herself to be 'a girl' in the most stereotypical sense of the word.  Coupling the lame behavior of Fleur with Newell and Cloves focus on Hermoine's boy troubles instead of her attempts to fight for house elf rights, and The Goblet of Fire is not exactly the most feminist entry in the series.

Gender politics aside, the film works well as a straight-ahead action mystery, as the film has three terrific set pieces.  The best is the first, where Harry uses his flying skills to outwit a giant dragon.  It's a fine bit of action, which pays off with the conclusion of the brief 'Ron is resentful of Harry' subplot (arguably the only major subplot in the book that was retained in the Harry-focused feature).  The second contest, an underwater search for 'kidnapped' friends, is amusing and creative, but the movie never makes it clear that the would-be hostages were never in any actual peril (I liked the bit in the book where Harry realizes what an idiot he was to save Fleur's sister instead of winning the contest).  It is in preparation for this game where we have the film's most overtly sexual moment.  I'm speaking of course of Harry's near-rape in the bathroom by Moaning Myrtle, which flirts with sexual impropriety while still delivering valuable exposition.  In a very plotty film, it's a quirky little character moment that stands out.  

Like the book, the fourth film marks what I always termed 'the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end'.  With seven books, The Goblet of Fire was always the in between bridge between the earlier kid-friendly adventures and the dark and depressing war stories that followed.  The picture is one of the few (along with the first) thus far that doesn't open on Harry Potter himself, instead showing Voldemort and Wormtail viciously murdering an innocent bystander.  It's a jolting opening for a series that tried to keep death on the outskirts of its narrative, and there are three onscreen murders in the course of the picture.  The one that everybody talks about, of course, is the climactic slaying of Cedric Diggory.  It was indeed the turning point in the series, a moment which also saw Voldemort finally retake his human form in the guise of a nose-less Ralph Fiennes.  Fiennes's villainous turn has honestly grown on me, as I first found his grave-yard monologuing to be a bit over the top.  For some reason, I had always pictured Voldemort as much more low-key and clinical, along the lines of Michael Ansara's Mr. Freeze from Batman: The Animated Series), and I had already read the first six books by the time this fourth movie was released.  But putting aside my own preconceptions, Fiennes does do a viciously malevolent star turn here, as he only grows more compelling in his big scenes in The Order of the Pheonix and The Deathly Hallows part I.

Diggory is set up in the movie (as well as the book) as one of those rare people who seems to have it all without letting it go to his head.  Intelligent, athletic, and well, looking like Robert Pattinson without the nosferatu makeup, Diggory still goes out of his way to be kind, thoughtful and considerate, which of course makes his murder all the more jarring.  When I saw the film on opening night back in November 2005, there was a loud and simultaneous 'sigh' coming from countless females where Mr. Diggory made his entrance.  In basic terms, Diggory was the classic red-shirt (gee, Harry and 'some other guy' end up trapped with Voldemort... wonder which one is going to die?), but Pattinson made Diggory so overtly likable that his death is arguably crueler than it otherwise would have been.  It also sets up two narrative strands that take us to the end.  First, the people Harry trusts and counts on (Diggory, Black, Dumbledore, Mad-Eye Moody, etc) will inevitably die on him.  Second, those deaths are never proud, honorable, or 'for a good cause'.  Diggory does not get a hero's death, but rather he is casually executed purely out of convenience.  With the exception of Dobby in The Deathly Hallows, no one who dies in the Harry Potter world gets any kind of death speech, and every major death is arbitrary, random and cruel.

As you can see, there is quite a bit going on in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I haven't even touched on Brendan Gleeson's deliciously droll turn as MadEye Moody (or rather, as the climax reveals, Barty Couch Jr. disguised as MadEye) or Miranda Richardson as gossip-journalist Rita Skeeter.  There is more incident and more plot in the fourth film than in any of the first seven Harry Potter films.  But the film is so dense and there is so much material to cover in just over 2.5 hours that it feels like a checklist of major moments and plot points to tick off.  Mike Newell's first and only Potter film is a technical marvel and an acting triumph, but it feels oddly remote and workmanlike.  It's going through the motions, succeeding as well as it does only because the source material was so strong.  The big emotional moments are presented in an almost reserved fashion, as if Newell and company were afraid of plunging head-long into melodrama.  But this stuff (the first heartbreak, the rise of a villain and emotional torture of a hero, the inconsolable grief of a father whose son has just died, etc) is melodramatic material.

This film, along with The Half Blood Prince, is the one where my knowledge of both the contents of the original book, and how I felt while reading it, perhaps does me a disservice while discussing the film.  My wife, who has not read the books, considers it her favorite of the series, as she feels it best balances school year shtick and more serious matters.  Taken on its own, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a thrilling adventure story with a couple major plot twists and a token amount of character work sprinkled in.  It is a fine entry into the Harry Potter mythology, and it represents a major turning point for the story and the franchise (it was only after this film nearly equaled the domestic gross of The Sorcerer's Stone did Warner Bros. commit to finishing out the series).  That it is my favorite book but not my favorite movie should not be held against it.  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire may be the best of the books, but it must settle for merely being among the better movies.

Scott Mendelson