Bruno Delbonnel's cinematography turns Hogwarts into something close to a painting, and David Yates uses that beauty with purpose. The 2009 entry is not the franchise's most dramatically ambitious film, but it is its most atmospherically accomplished, a work of emotional intelligence that gives the series its most intimate treatment of the central characters' relationships while building toward the loss the final chapters require.
At a Glance
Director: David Yates
Runtime: 153 minutes
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Michael Gambon, Jim Broadbent, Tom Felton
Release: 2009
Critics Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5 stars, visually beautiful and emotionally complex)
Audience Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, deeply affecting)
Plot
Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts is dominated by his private lessons with Dumbledore, in which they explore Voldemort's past through a series of memories, and by the growing threat of Death Eater activity both inside and outside the school. The plot is intimate and emotionally layered, a narrative that uses the Horcrux mythology as a vehicle for exploring Voldemort's origins with a depth and specificity that gives the series' central conflict its most complete backstory. Dumbledore's death is the film's most significant dramatic event, a loss of such weight and finality that it gives the franchise's final chapters their most powerful foundation.
Characters
Harry is given his most emotionally exposed material to this point, a character whose growing maturity and eventual grief give the film real weight and interiority. Radcliffe plays the character's vulnerability and sorrow with a depth that represents the clearest evidence yet of his development across the series. Jim Broadbent's Horace Slughorn is a richly drawn new character, a man of intelligence and moral cowardice whose eventual courage is the film's most satisfying character development and one of the franchise's most fully realised supporting performances. Tom Felton's Draco Malfoy is given demanding material in this entry, a character whose impossible task and fear give him a humanity the more straightforwardly antagonistic earlier versions could not sustain. Michael Gambon's Dumbledore is given a devastating final arc, and his death is handled with a grief and restraint that makes it the series' most affecting single moment.
Meaning / Themes
At its core, the film is about love and obsession, about the connections that give the franchise's heroes their strength and the inability to love that is Voldemort's most fundamental limitation. The treatment of Dumbledore's death as the loss of the series' most important source of wisdom gives the final chapters their emotional stakes and the central characters their most exposed position yet. The film is also, quietly, about the cost of knowledge: the more Harry learns about Voldemort's past, the heavier the burden of what he will eventually have to do, and Yates lets that weight accumulate without ever making it explicit.
Direction
Yates's direction is atmospherically accomplished, with a command of the film's visual register and a sensitivity to the emotional weight of the material. The cave sequence is the film's directorial highlight: Yates's staging gives it physical horror, using the Inferi-filled lake to make the sequence feel genuinely threatening rather than merely spectacular. Yates pitches the film at a register of atmospheric beauty and emotional complexity, and the approach is entirely successful. Half-Blood Prince has a visual register and tonal intelligence the franchise had not previously achieved in quite this way. Yates handles the teenage romantic subplots with a lightness and feeling that gives the picture a warmth and humanity the more purely dramatic later entries would not always maintain. Delbonnel's cinematography is the film's most distinctive technical achievement, giving the franchise a visual register it had not previously reached. Nicholas Hooper's score is emotionally precise, giving the film a sonic texture as distinctive as its visual one. Half-Blood Prince received the strongest critical notices of any Yates entry on its release, with most reviewers praising Delbonnel's cinematography, Broadbent's performance, and the film's atmospheric intelligence. It is now consistently regarded as one of the franchise's finest entries and its most visually accomplished film.
Final Verdict: The franchise's most visually beautiful entry and one of its most dramatically satisfying. Broadbent's Slughorn is a character study the series rarely attempts, Delbonnel's cinematography gives the franchise a visual register it had not previously reached, and Yates's handling of Dumbledore's death is the quietest and most devastating thing the series ever does.