The Saga Grows with Its Character.

Rating: 9/10 (21 May 2011)

Like its two predecessors, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is an out-of-this-world triumph in production design. But it's the first to depict not only the sensation of yearning propelling the characters at the heart of the world constructed by Stuart Craig, but a grasp of the way the supernatural lies beneath the ordinary, rather than merely frolicking whimsically at a frivolous remoteness from it. It's far less self-conscious about how to gratify an audience as immediately as possible and isn't as unquestioningly cooperative with the conventional modern family blockbuster mold. A new director with a diverse point of view can recoat and ventilate a series that could otherwise fall back on tired reiteration, which it previously seemed poised to do, and Alfonso Cuaron, a clever, unique and energetic filmmaker with a highly sensitive eye for quirky nuances, has done what few sequel custodians ever achieve or care to achieve, stimulating the characters and story arcs.
His exceptionally lensed wizard cosmos is coarser and grittier than Chris Columbus's. It seems immediately more hazardous, more utterly captivating and more authentic. While the two first installments were set largely in the passageways and classrooms of Hogwarts, this one stays behind in the eerie forests and soggy pastures outside the school walls, a backdrop that accentuates Cuarón's flair for inducing the poignant, physical influence of natural environments. His work always having crossed all cultural and stylistic barriers, his was a name that was certain to electrify the spirits of critics more than the greater part of die-hard Harry Potter aficionados, who tend not to see many unrated, subtitled films or to be familiar with the names of many foreign filmmakers, were prone to react with a shrug.
Harry, Weasley and Hermione drift on the threshold of teenage years, and whereas they seem nervier and more competent than before, the perils they confront appear far more serious and their own vulnerabilities deeper. At the start, in the compulsory Muggle-baiting scene, Harry's boiling resentment at his orphaned situation and his malicious adoptive keepers finally overpowers him. As the plot follows him---as opposed to normal, in which he's a piece of a clockwork plot---toward a battle with the man who allegedly slayed his parents, a fugitive convict played by the great broad-spectrum villain Gary Oldman, Harry's carefree civility is dimmed by sorrow, anger and moral bewilderment.
If Rowling's success is in not allowing her child characters to languish but thoughtfully delving into their maturation in a way that only some, if any, children's literature have before, then the films' producers' is in electing Cuarón to take charge of the franchise's first physical and mental transitional stage. Not only is Harry getting bristly, but Weasley and Hermione are shedding their juvenile hides in surprising ways, and Cuarón stages everything about their lives in a minor register. The soundtrack buzzes with recognizable themes, only now heard in minimal arrangements on archaic instruments instead of the swanky orchestrations of the first two films. The pubs now look authentically aged and dilapidated. The Hogwarts castle now sits among a much less steady, much more jagged panorama. Colors are subdued. Cuaron's signature use of hand-held verite-style camera-work contributes a further closeness, occasionally a claustrophobia that's precisely truthful. Even the costumes echo the fidgety contradiction of character moods: The Harry's school uniform tie is at all times crooked.
Sinister and visceral, this really is a grim fairy tale, in which Harry confronts bigger doubts and threats than before when he would play Culkin to Voldemort's many Pescis and Sterns. And I don't mean Sirius Black. What great madcap wizard doesn't seemingly target Harry? Before Harry even disembarks for his third year at Hogwarts, it's obvious that threats will come from within. Cuarón and recurring screenwriter Steve Kloves deal with antagonistic, temperamental adolescence like Stephen King: Harry's thick with anger, almost savoring too much the intoxicating occult capability he has. The literal flare-up of infuriated conjuring he directs at Uncle Vernon's thoroughly deserving sister evokes Carrie at the prom. The first scene, right from the start: What happened to our kind, wholesome little Harry?