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LEAVESDEN Studios in Hertfordshire, England, looks very
much like any other sprawling business park, albeit one
with a disused runway at the back. But pass through the
gates of this former Rolls-Royce factory and
aircraft-manufacturing plant and you’ll soon be
transported to another world entirely, one of magic,
wizardry and wonder. Leavesden is home to the Harry
Potter series of films, adapted by the beloved
novels by J.K. Rowling, and a quick stroll around the
studio complex reveals many sights familiar to fans of
Rowling’s bespectacled young wizard.
On one
soundstage there’s Hogwarts’ Great Hall, Dumbledore’s
book-lined study with its mezzanine level and
beautifully ornate telescope, and the Gryffindor common
room with stairs leading up to Harry and Ron’s
dormitory. On another lies an expanded Court of Justice,
which was glimpsed at in the last film, Harry Potter
and the Goblet of Fire, but plays a bigger part in
proceedings for this July’s latest installment, Harry
Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix.
Step
outside of the studio itself, and onto the backlot, and
one can see Privet Drive, complete with the Dursley’s
house, Harry Potter’s home away from Hogwarts, as well
as the Knight Bus seen in Prisoner of Azkaban and
the flying Ford Anglia in which Ron rescued Harry in
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Nothing, it
seems, is thrown away, lest later stories require its
use. The Great Hall, with its four enormous house
tables, one each for Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff
and Slytherin, has been here since Day One.
Darker story, more thrills.
Radcliffe with costar Gary Oldman as Sirius Black in a
climactic scene in the latest installment of the mega
Harry Potter franchise.
Today,
however, the Great Hall is empty. Filming is taking
place on a neighboring soundstage where Oscar-winning
production designer Stuart Craig and his talented team
have created the interior of the Ministry of Magic.
Cavernous and cathedral-like, this vast atrium some 250
feet long, 120 feet wide, which, in story terms, lies
deep below the streets of London’s Whitehall, looks very
much like a Victorian Underground station. Only cleaner.
More elaborate. And bigger. Much, much bigger. With a
huge fountain, featuring gold statues of a centaur, a
goblin and a witch in the middle of it. A series of
fireplaces, meanwhile, lines the shiny green and black
faux ceramic-tiled walls on two sides, fireplaces that,
come the magical rush hour, will be a hive of activity
with witches and wizards arriving or leaving work.
For now,
though, this central concourse is still and deathly
quiet as Ralph Fiennes’s malevolent Lord Voldemort
stands, wand in raised hand, eyes cold and predatory,
face partially covered by a prosthetic that, come the
finished film, will be digitally enhanced to give him a
more snake-like appearance. Across the atrium waits
Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore, wand poised, ready to
protect Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), who’s slumped
on the floor just behind him, his face fearful, his back
pressed against a wall.
On
instruction, several wind machines fire up at once,
tugging and tearing at their wizard robes, before
“action” is called and these two great magicians fire
(for now, invisible) spells at each other. Onscreen
their fiery spells will crackle, spark and crash
together, producing a flaming dragon and a series of
tributary spells that pepper the walls above and around
the cowering Harry, raining chunks of plaster and dust
down on him.
The
noise is incredible. The scene, even devoid of all the
special effects, is tense and threatening. “It’s quite
exciting,” laughs Gambon during a break in filming. “And
what really helps is having those wind machines blowing
in your face. Makes you feel as though you were in
trouble.”
Part of
the extended climax to Harry Potter and the Order of
the
Phoenix,
this particular scene comes just after someone very
close to Harry has been murdered. “You hear stories
about people in wars who are spurred on just by the hope
that they’ll get out the other side,” explains the
17-year-old Radcliffe of his character’s distraught
state. “It’s gotten to the point where Harry doesn’t
care whether he gets out the other side. He wants it to
be over one way or the other. He’s been brutally beaten
and [is] cut and bleeding.”
Before
shooting another take, David Yates, the film’s director,
a soft-spoken Englishman and newcomer to the Harry
Potter series, walks over to Fiennes and makes a minute
correction to the way that Voldemort holds his wand
(prior to production, Yates drafted a choreographer to
train the actors in using their wands and to bring a
consistency to their deployment). “Ralph is the
sweetest, gentlest, most thoughtful actor you’d want to
meet,” he notes later. “He’s a very, very gentle soul
but he’s a great actor and he finds darkness and puts it
in front of you. So when he inhabits Voldemort, he
brings something into the room that’s kind of scary.”
Having
survived his close-up with the recently resurrected Dark
Lord at the end of the last film—and seen one of his
Hogwarts schoolmates, Cedric Diggory, die at Voldemort’s
hand—Harry begins this fifth film under a cloud of
bereavement and fear. As Harry grows up, so the themes
of the books are getting progressively darker and more
mature. “It’ll be edgier. It will be a little bit more
complicated, emotionally. It will be a little darker,”
explains Yates of what audiences should expect from the
fifth movie. “It’s a great time in terms of the
evolution of these films because the children are
getting older, so they’re getting a bit more complicated
and complex and Jo’s [Rowling] stories are getting
darker and starting to explore all sorts of interesting
themes. You’ve got all the things in this part of the
series that audiences have already come to love, the
playfulness and the humor and the characters are already
well established, but now you’re starting to weave in
some very interesting themes. So it’s a very heady
combination of great big playful stories but with some
very interesting potential thematic stuff underneath.”
And with
Voldemort on the loose, gaining strength and recruiting
his loyal Death Eaters to his evil side, Harry finds
himself once again a target, his plight not helped by
the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge (Timothy West),
who refuses to acknowledge Voldemort’s return, branding
Harry a liar and a troublemaker. “He’s basically lulled
the wizarding world into a false sense of security,”
says Radcliffe of the in-denial Fudge, who, rather than
deal with the real threat posed by Voldemort, sends his
pink-clad, cat-loving, bureaucratic minion Dolores
Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) to Hogwarts to take over as
the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher. But Umbridge has
her eyes on a bigger prize—unseating Dumbledore and
taking charge of Hogwarts herself.
“Sometimes with characters who seem quite benign and
supportive, there’s something deeply damaged about
them,” notes Yates. “Like Lupin, the werewolf in the
third film, benign and lovely, but he’s got this
terrible secret. And in this case, Dolores Umbridge has
these lovely fluffy cats and is ever so sweet. [But]
underneath is actually a very damaged person.”
At
Hogwarts, Umbridge bans the use of magic, as well as
Quidditch, and begins issuing countless proclamations
and generally making herself massively unpopular with
both pupils and teachers alike. “She’s following
orders,” insists Staunton, “but then I think she
realizes that what the Ministry of Magic is suggesting
just isn’t going to do the job. So she has to take
things into her own hands and sort Hogwarts out. And
particularly Harry.”
And yet
it’s Umbridge’s purge against magic and her autocratic
tendencies that spurs Harry and his friends Ron (Rupert
Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), and a group of other
likeminded Hogwarts pupils to band together and form the
DA, or Dumbledore’s Army, an underground movement that
Radcliffe likens to the French Resistance. Meanwhile,
Harry also comes under the protection of the eponymous
Order, a secret organization, founded by Dumbledore to
counter Voldemort and his followers, whose members
include his godfather Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) and his
former Dark Arts teacher Remus Lupin (David Thewlis).
Even so, Harry feels more alone than ever. “There is a
fundamental theme which runs through this [story], a
fundamental idea about Harry being an outsider, feeling
removed and isolated from people and from Dumbledore,
from Umbridge, from his friends in some way,” says Harry
Potter producer David Heyman. “It’s an emotional film. I
think it is most emotional film. There is pain but there
is also great excitement and joy. You really get inside
Harry’s head, feel for him, sense his alienation, and
really enjoy his being brought back into the fold and
then fighting for what he believes in.
“This is
the most political of the films,” continues Heyman,
“political not with a capital ‘P’ but with a small ‘p.’
It’s a nation, a world on the precipice of war. What
we’re dealing with is the forces of evil increasing in
strength and the oppressive measures taken by the
ministry that are preventing the kids from finding means
to defend themselves. There’s a lot of conflict and
politics that are text and subtext within the story. I
thought David would handle that brilliantly. He’s dealt
with it in the past, and he seemed like the perfect
choice in relation to that.”
For his
part, Yates admits to being very surprised when the call
came through. “Because my body of work has all been
quite mature, emotional, grown-up drama and I didn’t
really associate Harry Potter with that kind of vibe,”
he recalls. “So I caught up with the books and I loved
them. I thought [they were] incredibly rich in both
characters and story, and the world itself was
brilliantly realized. What I liked about the material
was the fact that, fundamentally, what you had were
these very truthful experiences of growing up. I think
what Jo’s brilliant at doing is a) creating characters
that you can relate to, and b) she’s capturing slices of
childhood, slices of what it’s like to be at school,
slices of what it’s like to be bullied, slices of what
it’s like to have your first kiss. It was full of all
these things that felt very real and truthful to me. And
yet it was happening in this extraordinary world.”
Indeed,
Harry, in this film, needs all the help he can get,
especially since in addition to having to deal with
assorted attempts on his life, he also has to traverse
the very dangerous ground that is his first kiss, with
fellow pupil Cho Chang, played by Katie Leung. “I was
very nervous at first, as was Katie,” recalls Radcliffe
of the big day, “but it was great. It was like doing
another scene really, because it was so clinical that
there’s nothing sexy or romantic or arousing about it,
kissing becomes like walking up a flight of
stairs—‘Could you move to the right a bit because you’re
in the shadow’ or ‘One of you is blocking the other
one’—it’s like doing any other technical shot.”
Not that
this was Radcliffe’s first onscreen kiss. “I’ve kissed
onscreen before, in December Boys, but this was a
big deal because it’s Harry,” he reflects. “Whereas I
don’t view it as a central point in the film, I would
say that if there was one reason a large amount of
people were going to see this film, a lot of people will
go wanting to see the kiss. So there was pressure on
from that, but I hope people don’t build it up too much,
because it is a very sweet, very little moment.”
“I think
Dan is going to be a major player within our filmmaking
community,” continues Yates of his teenage star. “He’s
very smart, very strategic and very empathetic. What I
noticed working with him over a period of a year is the
rapidity of his growth. Not physically, but in terms of
his skills as an actor, in terms of his eagerness to
learn and to push himself and be pushed. I think his
performance is terrific. It’s very different to the
other films in the sense that some of it’s quite intense
and emotional, but he was really up for being
challenged.”
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a Heyday Films
production, Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix.
The film stars Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma
Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Warwick
Davis, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Brendan Gleeson,
Richard Griffiths, Jason Isaacs, Gary Oldman, Alan
Rickman, Fiona Shaw, Maggie Smith, Imelda Staunton,
David Thewlis, Emma Thompson and Julie Walters. Directed
by David Yates from a screenplay by Michael Goldenberg,
based on the novel by J.K. Rowling, it opens in
Philippine theaters on July 11. |
