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Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire
directed
by Mike Newell
Warner Brothers
PG-13 rating
Commentary by Torey Lightcap
Of
the many close-ups used by director Mike Newell in Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire, one stands out as being
easily the most frightening in the whole picture. It is a
simple shot of the storied and sneering Lord Voldemort (Ralph
Fiennes), magically returned to health, breathing in the air
around him, mouth closed, in a moment of luscious triumph.
Not
since Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) sucked pure oxygen out of
a mask in Blue Velvet has the sound of air being
drawn into one’s lungs produced such dread. That’s
partly because Voldemort has no nose—or rather, that
he has inch-long, quivering reptilian slits of flesh where
there used to be a nose. We’re told that digital compositors
spent months slaving over the effect, and indeed their work
has yielded dividends here as elsewhere in the film.
But
the real horror comes less from the image and more from the
idea—the notion that somewhere there lurks the purest
evil, and that at this very moment it has returned from the
precipice of death to draw sustenance from the same air we
all share.
That this blighted, fractioned soul has returned to re-gather
his most loyal servants and wage a dark war only adds to the
bargain.
Even
if you have never picked up a Harry Potter book or seen any
of the films, you still probably have some idea of who Harry
is, this plucky Boy-Who-Lived, the one whose parents were
murdered when they stood between Voldemort and their infant
thirteen years before the events of Goblet of Fire. Harry,
of course, famously survived the attack, save for being branded
with a lightning-shaped scar that economically reports his
identity to anyone who can see his forehead. At first it was
all-new fun, this flirtation with fame for a gawky preteen
from the outside world who had fallen into a hidden society
of wizards, only to discover instant celebrity perched just
over his glasses.
But
things change. With each installment of the series, author
J.K. Rowling has increased the spookiness and seriousness
and danger, inching us along a seven-year tale of darkness
and division and looming death-crusades, as we have learned
who Voldemort is, what makes him so, and what he’ll
do to earn his own brand of everlasting life. (Let’s
just say he’s not particularly keen on the Ten Commandments,
especially numbers two, three, five, six, eight, nine, and
ten.)
Harry’s
whole life seems to have been appointed for the purpose of
addressing this rising evil, this present darkness: speaking
truth to its power, and turning moments of breathless despair
into opportunities to make tangible good. Harry’s life
is now slowly twisting itself into the question of whether
it is possible to hold back the tide of Voldemort’s
movement, its iniquity and hubris.
Although
he occupies the screen for only a short while, Voldemort dominates
with a mostly unseen hand. He manipulates virtually every
major plot element on-screen and off-. Like Keyser Soze in
The Usual Suspects, Voldemort is a fundamental and charismatic
force of malevolence and violent air who controls his minions
like marionettes. He
turns life for Harry into a living hell, and he challenges
us not to take for granted the question of basic human goodness.
Why?
The precise answers to that question remain tucked into subsequent
books and movies, but it’s safe to say this much: Voldemort
is afraid of dying (ominous though it sounds, even his name
translates from the French as “flees from death”);
and Harry, he believes, is a stumbling block along his path
to earthly immortality.
That
path, then, must turn to another attempt to see Harry die
at Voldemort’s own hands, at the flick of his wand and
at the utterance of an unforgivable murder-curse. Voldemort
needs to see Harry die for reasons of self-preservation as
much as Harry wants Voldemort dead and gone for the good of
the whole wizarding world. And so Voldemort seizes on the
Triwizard Tournament—a kind of Ironman Triathlon of
spells and courage spread out over the academic year and hosted
by his school, Hogwarts—to find the clearest path to
spilling the blood of our hero.
Which
brings us, in one scene, to the beating heart of the whole
series so far. In a graveyard miles from safety, finding himself
to be the plaything of his reconstituted nemesis while tethered
to the headstone of a murdered father, Harry comes face-to-face
with the Voldemort who has clung all-too desperately to his
human existence with no thought but fear dominating any possibility
of what lies beyond this life. Even in this moment of seeming
victory, it is Voldemort himself who acknowledges to Harry
that love is a stronger force than death. In the utterance
of such primal truth, Voldemort finds himself ever-so-briefly
in the good company of Jesus, Paul, and the whole host of
saints and angels.
Yet
in the great narrative of our faith, even Satan recognizes
the power and agency of God and still goes right on plotting.
Why should it be any different, or any less futile a mission,
for Voldemort? Why plan in such bald vanity when the plain
fact of love—Harry’s love for humanity and friends;
his deceased mother’s love for him—is, by Voldemort’s
own admission, ultimately more powerful than anything else
he might brandish?
Wonder
and poke at this picture, then, for it has everything to do
with moral formation. This Voldemort, this
being who is only now technically human, describes a narrative
of high delusion which suggests that an ethic of sustained
violence can lead to sustained living. I don’t buy that
and I doubt you do either, but look at the paper or turn on
the news. What do you see there? Is it love and charity and
hope on clear display, or is it power gone wrong and serving
itself?
In
the end, perhaps Rowling means Voldemort to be a mere abstraction
of the ideas, people, and institutions doing harm in the here
and now – salient evil in a world of subtlety and sophistication.
Let’s learn from him, then, and know his confidence
to be a hex-sign behind which we will find quaking fear and
self-deception. To these frailties there ever was and only
shall be the response that love shall make us free.
Copyright
@ 2007 Torey Lightcap
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