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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth film of the
continuing saga of the education of wizard-in-training (and holy seeker in spite of
himself) Harry Potter, cosmic battles between the forces of good and evil, and a loving
portrait of wizardly student life with a heavy, British public school accent. Now Harry
and his friends are about to encounter the challenges, even more wily than black magic, of
puberty.
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) finds himself mysteriously, and illegally,
entered into the prestigious Triwizard Tournament, a fierce competition among Harry’s
own Hogwarts school and two rival wizard schools, the all-female (and unmistakably French)
Beauxbatons Academy and the all-male (menacing in a severely Star Wars-Spartan
military way) Durmstrang Institute. Qualified potential competitors have placed their
names, handwritten on a scrap of paper, into the ceremonial Goblet of Fire, and only one
finalist from each school is chosen to compete. The inclusion of Harry is both peculiar
and scandalous as he is underage and therefore disqualified, forbidden even to submit his
name. Once Harry clears his name of scandal, the real intentions – an elaborate
plot by shadowy forces to destroy him – become only too clear.
The basic plot, the preparation and execution of the Tournament, serves
as a narrative frame upon which author Rowling and director Newell hang the breathtaking
flights of imagination, of subplots, character portraits, the quirks of life at Hogwarts
and Harry Potter’s moral education. Because Harry is a natural-born hero, his
Herculean tasks test not only his mettle and his magical powers, but, more importantly,
his ability to battle and conquer his inner demons. The only thing that could produce more
apprehension for Harry than facing the treachery of the incarnation of absolute evil, Lord
Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), is that universal coming-of-age ordeal, his first Yule Ball
dance.
The first three films chart Harry’s friendship with fellow
Hogwarts students, Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), a gifted, book-smart daughter of
Muggles (non-wizards), and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), son of a large family of eccentric,
rustic wizards. This is contrasted to Harry’s unprovoked rivalry with Draco Malfoy
(Tom Felton), scion of a lineage of morally dubious, pure-blood wizards. In The Goblet
of Fire Harry experiences his first serious rifts with his close and loyal companions
– social rivalries and emergent romantic jealousies lead to misunderstandings and
their first falling out. In comic counterpoint, groundskeeper, go-between and all-around
trusted servant Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Cotrane) finds romantic fulfillment in the similarly
inclined head mistress of the Beauxbatons, Madame Olympe Maxime (Frances de la Tour).
Questions of blood and social class purity take on ever darker tones, as complications by
Malfoy pere and fils ensue for all.
Brendan Gleeson plays Professor "Mad-Eye" Moody, the notable
eccentric of this story (which is saying a lot). Moody is the third replacement (a running
joke in Harry Potter land) for Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, a hard-to-fill
teaching position at the wizard school. (Kenneth Branagh, as Professor Gilderoy Lockhart,
and David Thewlis, as Professor Lupin, have held, and failed at, the post in previous
school terms.) Miranda Richardson makes a guest appearance as Rita Skeeter, an annoyingly
Madonna-like tabloid reporter, and does not steal every scene she shows up in so much as
commits grand larceny.
Rowling’s epic follows in the generically north European pagan and
vaguely Christian mystical traditions of her fantasy novelist predecessors (and models),
J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis (of the Narnia tales,
respectively. Some of Rowling’s appeal derives from her clever, if simplifying,
reworking of archetypes fundamental to Western civilization. Some lies as well in her gift
as a masterful storyteller, ceaselessly and effortlessly tantalizing and satisfying her
audience with what happens next. In this she rises to the level of the legendary Robert A.
Heinlein. All of her appeal translates well into film, where the scope and vision of
magical fantasy and spectacle unfold in full force.
While the mythic dimensions of the Hogwarts universe play out in Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire, it is the sudden (and truly horrifying) death of one
character, and what follows, that wrenches the viewer from the comfort of pure fantasy
into the real-world dimension of unalterable consequences and ramifications. The four
Harry Potter films (thus far) revel and repel in fairy-tale fantasy, but this fourth
installment also achieves the marvelous, a fleeting moment that is truly sublime.
- Les Wright
