Not kids' stuff anymore...

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2018)

Starting with a frightening gallery of skulls out of which emerges a menacing snake, the first shots of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", directed by Mike Newell, are already tainting the atmosphere with an unusually disturbing darkness. Yes even by Hogwarts' standards, there's something quite unsettling in the opening flashback.
From the perspective of an elderly gardener, we see a young man mentioning the name of Voldemort while leaning his head over a cradle whom occupant needs no hinting. The ugly sight of Peter Pettigrew makes the instant connection with the previous film. Finally, a snake seals the fate of the poor gardener who's zapped from existence in a lightning flash that reveals it was a vision from Harry Potter all along. A grown-up Harry.
And this time he's already in good company as it's Hermione who awakens him with Ron not too far. From the absence of the Dursleys, I felt the saga reached a point of maturity that allowed it to start without the usual preliminaries. And the film does make quite an impression from the start, showing Harry and his friends at the Quidditch World Cup, a part that made me expect an orgy of CGI-loaded acrobatic stunts.
Yet just when I thought the film was going to exhaust itself with special effects, the chapter is abruptly closed with the interference of the Death Eaters, frightening creatures who look like the kind of minions Voldemort would have and whose sense of fashion remind of some triple-lettered Organization. When Harry was knocked over and woke up in a landscape of ashes and desolation, I was confused. Why would the film set us to such exciting game just to cut instantly into it?
Well, technically, the part represented 200 pages in a book four times longer and it wasn't much an adaptation as it was a compression of a story of epic proportions, a story whose length was probably justified by its key significance in Harry Potter's canon. The film could have worked perfectly without the World Cup but it' a memorable moment nonetheless and it ends on the ominous note of a skull and snake forming in the sky, to keep us on guards before the return to Hogwarts.
Then the tone changed so drastically I couldn't see where this was leading to. I guess there's a reason why these films are so long. Now, I don't know exactly if I should go into the Triwizard contest hosted by Hogwarts or that final act directly. I guess both work for the exact same purpose as they highlight the maturity of the main characters from the first crushes that start to titillate their hormones to their studies. The contest offers a perfect backdrop for what constitutes a great blending between the high school movies and Harry Potter's usual formula, adding new layers of complexity... with the same old recipes.
So for one hour and half, we see Harry battling a dragon, trying to decrypt a message, learning new secrets from the new Defense Against Dark Arts Teacher Alastair 'MadEye" Moody, you know... routine stuff. In the meantime, we also see him asking a girl out, getting into a feud with Ron... we see Hermione finally blossoming into the beautiful girl that never fooled us and Neville getting more confident. It's all the more natural that the Hogwarts regulars (Dumbledore, Hagrid...) are relegated to the periphery of the story. Kids are growing up indeed. We finally discover that Hogwarts had its jock all along in Cedric Diggory (a pre-"Twilight" Robert Pattinson) a nice and popular kid who's so perfect I knew he would be involved in some dark twist. How wrong I was while still being right!
So the middle-act while spectacular, exciting and full of intriguing subplots, i rather conventional and not without a few loose ends... but it culminates with a last event taking place in a maze and whose final outcome is Harry and Cedric grabbing the trophy that turns out to be a Portkey and then transports them in a setting we've never seen before and well, what goes after is the kind of "thing" I could not have guessed coming. While processing the ending, it all makes sense, it's all been leading up to that point. I said about "Chamber of Secrets" that it made the first film feel like an appetizer, well that's what "Goblet of Fire" does for the first three movies.
Indeed, it was time for Harry Potter to meet his nemesis Voldemort... and he makes quite an entrance in Ralph Fiennes, whose traits, voice, mannerisms and hideous face truly match the fear he's been inspiring during the previous films. The shock coming from his reveal and the death that goes with it announce us the real path the adventures of Harry Potter are taking as we have to accept the imminence of a confrontation between the forces of Evil and the Good. Yes, the series is taking huge mythical proportions... but are we surprised?
I said that "Azkaban" put the franchise at cruising speed, I should have waited till I saw "Goblet of Fire", it was merely a take-off and while the film just feigns excitement and fun, harboring the usual stuff of action-adventure and youth oriented film with all the usual manufactured special effects, all these elements are instantly disclosed with that final act whose erupting violence totally justifies its PG-13 rating.
Yes, there's quite a gulf between the first and the fourth opus and even the audience is expected to be mature enough to handle the secret that goblet of fire is hiding. "Goblet of Fire" is a departure from the tone of the previous films and can be regarded as both a masterpiece of direction and... misdirection.