"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"

July 10, 2007 | The worst thing you can do when facing the latest installment in the Harry Potter movie franchise is to yearn for the same kind of sturdy poetry J.K. Rowling has given us in the books they're based on. Which isn't to say that we haven't sometimes gotten it: Alfonso Cuarón's dreamily naturalistic 2004 "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and Mike Newell's moody pastoral 2005 "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" were better movies than we could have hoped for, pictures that easily captured the spirit of the books they were based on. They made the first two pictures in the series, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," both of which were occasionally earnest but mostly dizzy and garish -- and both directed by Chris Columbus -- seem like distant, easily erased memories.

The fifth movie, David Yates' "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," may present the trickiest case of all: This is a gangly, confusing sprawl, and yet there are enough patches of beauty scattered throughout that it's impossible to reject it wholesale. Watching the thing, I couldn't help feeling a pang of sympathy for Yates and his screenwriter, Michael Goldenberg: "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," at nearly 900 pages, is the longest of Rowling's books, and streamlining its pleasurably meandering, Dickensian quality couldn't have been easy. Structurally, the picture is jerky and episodic, a jumble of events connected by tenuous threads; after seeing it, those who haven't read the book might be inspired to do so, just so they can be sure of what really happened.

But whatever the overarching problems with "The Order of the Phoenix" may be, many of its scenes are beautifully directed. Yates may be one of those directors who -- for now, at least -- is better suited to working on a small scale rather than undertaking a massive fantasy epic, especially one with such high expectations attached to it. His previous credits include the 2005 HBO movie "The Girl in the Café," a quiet, thoughtful little picture starring Bill Nighy and Kelly Macdonald, and Yates brings a similarly delicate touch to this picture as well. Even the movie's grand climax -- an operatic, unnerving sequence -- includes some lovely special effects that could be viewed as a visual meditation on the nature of glass, and of the universe.

As "The Order of the Phoenix" begins, Harry has endured yet another dreadful summer at the home of his guardians, the Dursleys (once again played by Fiona Shaw and Richard Griffiths). As always, he's counting the days until he can return to Hogwarts -- this will be his fifth year. But this summer has been particularly difficult: He hasn't heard from his closest friends, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson), and the sting of that is intensified by the fact that at the end of the previous school year, he'd survived a horrifying confrontation with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), which resulted in the death of a fellow student. Harry is sullen and dejected; he feels he deserves more sympathy than he's getting.

Worse yet, just before the school year is to begin, Harry is hauled into court for practicing magic in the Muggle world: As a defensive measure, he'd summoned his patronus (a powerful and protective spirit creature, particular to each witch or wizard) to dispatch a pack of Dementors who'd threatened to suck the spirit from his fat, lazy cousin Dudley (Harry Melling). The Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge (Robert Hardy), wants to see Harry expelled; he also refuses to believe that the long-exiled Voldemort is really set to return. Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) comes to Harry's defense but is also strangely distant with him, which further increases Harry's feelings of confusion and isolation.

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