Hooooowl! Don’t worry, I’m not a real wolf, that’s just a word. But if you were chilled to your marrow (you were, and it’s okay that you were) then HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN is not the film for you. The third (and my personal favourite) instalment of the Potter franchise was the darkest, scariest and most emotionally involving yet. And it had, like, a werewolf and junk. Oh, and SPOILER ALERT!!
This is where the s**t gets real. Even the pre-Hogwarts buffoonery with the Dursleys takes a more serious approach, with the arrival of Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge. Played by Pam Ferris, who’d covered this ground before as Miss Trunchbull in MATILDA, Marge is the sort of horrid Tory who pronounces dog as ‘dorrrg,’ and is even more ‘Daily Mail’ than her brother. When she starts insulting Harry’s deceased mother, the young wizard starts to get pretty upset. But it’s when she spits the line ‘When there’s something wrong with the bitch, there’s something wrong with the pup,’ that the pubescent rage kicks in. This is notable as it’s the first time we’ve seen Harry, who has remained pretty level-headed for everything he’s gone through, truly ferocious. So much so that he can’t control his abilities, accidentally inflating Marge like a hot air balloon, who then flies out of the conservatory window like a tweed-clad Hindenberg. Oh the humanity! As Harry makes to leave, he gets all up in Uncle Vernon’s grill with his wand, who claims he can’t use magic outside of Hogwarts. ‘Oh yeah?’ replies Harry. ‘Watch me.’ And then he’s gone. This is where we see the boy wizard start to become a man, and it’s the first time he’s physically stood up to the domineering Vernon. The sequence also shows a visual flair from new director Alfonso Cuaron (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN), which was comparatively lacking from Chris Columbus’s previous efforts.
Soon after, we’re introduced to one of the key new characters debuting in this movie. Cornelius Fudge, played with pompous but friendly aplomb by Robert Hardy, greets Harry at the Leaky Cauldron, and with him brings the series’ first real taste of politics. He waves away any wrongdoing Harry maybe have committed for fear of the bigger picture – the wizard Sirius Black, a proper nut-job (that term is not used) who recently escaped from the wizarding Alcatraz, Azkaban. Viewers would remember that very place mentioned briefly in CHAMBER OF SECRETS, as it’s where Hagrid was sent while under suspicion of opening the chamber. Now there’s a guy who didn’t have to worry about dropping the soap in the shower.
We see Black’s face (as opposed to a black face, of which there are about three in Hogwarts) peppered throughout the film, an animated mugshot on Wanted posters and newspapers, laughing and/or screaming maniacally. We constantly hear tell of how ruthless and sadistic he is, even the tagline of the film was ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ – all this building a picture of a guy you definitely wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. Gary Oldman plays Black with a brooding melancholy that is unsettling at first and then deeply sympathetic when the character’s secrets are revealed.
One of the stand-out sequences in the film is during the journey to school. In the previous films, the Hogwarts Express scenes had been merely transitional. It was always safe and cosy, merely some meaningful looks exchanged as well as chocolate frogs. So when the train is stopped and the lights go out, it’s all the more surprising and unnerving, both for the hapless students and for we viewers. The windows frost, our brave heroes are petrified in the dark, then a skeletal hand reaches around the door and a looming, hooded figure appears. It’s a Dementor, probably the most distressing characters to escape the gloomier regions of Rowling’s brilliant mind. They’re the guards of Azkaban, they feed on joy and cause despair and misery to those around them. A bit like David Cameron (Cheap? Totally. True? Absolutely). Rowling has described them as being the embodiments of depression – an “absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad.” This is very grown up stuff and a vision of things to come. Luckily, in this case, they’re rescued by Professor Lupin.
Remus Lupin is my personal favourite character in the series. More so than Snape and even Hermione (just three more years, everyone. We’ll get there, we’ll get there). He’s so charming, clever, vulnerable, good natured, likes to give out chocolate, he’s a werewolf and he is a great teacher. Yeah, f**k you anyone who hasn’t seen this film or the spoiler warning at the top. He gives out chocolate. And he’s a werewolf, but we’ll get to that. Straight off the bat (or bludger… okay not bludger), we see the warm and nurturing nature this man possesses, as he is incredibly kind to his students, but also treats them like the adults they are becoming.
For example, he actually teaches his pupils how to defend themselves against magical beasties, in particular during a charming sequence where they must face a Boggart, a creature that assumes the physical form of their greatest fear. As Ron stands before it, the Boggart becomes a giant spider. Under Lupin’s instruction, Ron casts the correct spell to make it look ridiculous (the spider is suddenly wearing roller skates, causing it to fall on its hairy arse). The children laugh, weakening the creature, and everyone has a gay old time. That is until Harry’s turn where the beast becomes a Dementor and Harry almost faints in fear. Upon Lupin’s intervention, the Boggart becomes the moon, laying some neat little breadcrumbs for his later ‘big reveal’. What makes this scene so good is David Thewlis’ utterly compelling portrayal of Lupin. As a nervous Neville steps up to be the first volunteer, Lupin smiles and gives a little ‘Hello.’ With this tiny action, we are completely disarmed. He’s just ever so friendly, and we collectively wish we had a teacher like him. And, y’know, werewolves are cool.
Outside of class, Harry and Lupin strike up a quiet friendship, and share a number of scenes that flesh out both their backstories. The tenderness with which Lupin describes his relationship with Harry’s parents contrasts with the epic scale of the events forming around them – but it’s the quieter, contemplative moments like this which have the most resonance and greatest emotional impact.
It was also in scenes like this that got me to thinking, ‘is Lupin gay?’ I was not alone in my assumption, as Cuaron had the same idea. Thewlis has said that Cuaron saw Lupin as ‘a gay junkie,’ and I think Thewlis infused his performance with this mentality. This brings up an interesting analogy at the end as Lupin prepares to leave Hogwarts. Harry asks why he must go and his answer is that ‘parents wouldn’t want their children being taught by someone like me.’ This denotes a prejudice against werewolves but the connotations are much wider. Harry learns that it’s not just ‘good’ wizards and Voldemort, the magical world is beset by similar fears and prejudice as own. For all the whizz-bangs and Chocolate Frogs, it’s not a utopia. Through no fault of his own, Lupin is ostracised by the majority of his community – something which Harry will also have to get used to later on. Many viewers who consider themselves outsiders, for whatever reason, could relate to Lupin more than any other character. That’s why he’s my favourite, not because I necessarily consider myself an outsider, but because Thewlis’ Lupin represents something bigger than the Potter-verse, and he does it with grace.
Also, the scene where he transforms into a werewolf is freakin’ badass. This takes place during the two, that’s TWO finales, and you know what, it’s the same finale from two different angles. HPATPOA turns out to be a time travel story, which I’ve always loved. Throughout the film, Hermione has been able to attend two classes at once, which we discover is due to a Time Turner, or tiny time machine. It’s through this narrative device that we get some very, very clever action. Despite my SPOILERS warning, I shan’t go into detail, because when I first saw it, I was so excited to see one of the best put together time travelling sequences I can remember, dealing with causality and paradoxes in an accessible manner. It’s testament to the imagination and execution of Rowling and Steve Kloves (screenwriter), and I’ll be damned if I’m going to ruin that for anyone. Needless to say, we get to see the same finale from two perspectives, it’s like RASHOMON and BACK TO THE FUTURE combined, and frankly it’s brilliant.
The double denouement in question involves Sirius Black’s big reveal (SPOIIIIIIIIIIIILERS) namely that he isn’t the murdering turncoat who sold out Harry’s parents at all, but their best friend betrayed by the real culprit, another trusted friend of his and Harry’s parents – the devious Peter Pettigrew, also known as Wormtail. It turns out that he’s been disguised as Ron’s pet rat Scabbers for the previous thirteen years, a rat we’ve seen in previous films no less. These revelations all take place in a terrifically acted scene where our young leads square up against heavyweights Oldman, Thewlis, Rickman (a deliciously contemptuous, lip-curling Snape) and the fantastic Timothy Spall, who has one of the best entrances in the series. As Scabbers flees the area, he leaps at the camera, is struck by a curse and turns back into human form, causing Spall’s rodent-like face to almost smack the lens. Through make up and the brilliantly creepy snivelling, Spall’s Wormtail is by far the most repulsive character yet to appear. A traitorous killer who has adopted the look and mannerisms of his rodent form, Spall does an exquisite job of setting up his character for possibly the darkest moment in the entire series in the next film.
After this confrontation we finally get the werewolf transformation we’ve been waiting for. Of course it’s computer generated, so it’s no AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, but that doesn’t matter when it’s done so well. As Lupin’s teeth lengthen and his eyes dilate, Black grabs him and tries to stop the lycanthropic change by appealing to the humanity within. This makes the scene all the more horrific because this is happening to someone we deeply care about. It’s nothing like Benicio Del Toro in THE WOLFMAN where, frankly, we don’t give a toss about his character changing in such a painful fashion. With Lupin, the physical and psychological distress he endures as he becomes a monster combined with the emotional aspect of his dear friend trying in vain to stop it, is desperately sad, as well as frightening. And it really is scary stuff. How this got to be a PG is beyond me, I’ve seen films with higher certificates that are far less frightening (American remakes of RING I’m looking at you! From inside your telly!). Add this to the decent amount of drama and we have something very grown up.
So there we have THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN. If per chance you’re wondering why Gambon’s ascension to Dumbledore was not discussed, well, he doesn’t really do much in this one (I’ll go into that during the next piece). No, the most notable facet of the third instalment is that it’s the beginning of a more mature series of films. We’ve had the enjoyable japes of Chris Columbus’s first two outings, but now it’s time to get down to business. The characters are becoming more well rounded, the paths are getting darker and the audience is growing up with our heroes (slightly quicker, in fact). I mentioned in the first piece that the scary scenes in THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE were an inoculation against what was to come. The spider chase in CHAMBER OF SECRETS was the first real test and if kids could stomach seeing the nicest man in the world turn into a wolf, then hopefully they will be ready for the GOBLET OF FIRE, and the return of the Dark Lord. ie. Robert Pattinson *shudders*.
ed. Vicky Joyce
