Facing the Storm

 
Buy Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (Dvd) from Amazon.co.uk or from Amazon.com
Buy Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (Book) from Amazon.co.uk or from Amazon.com

‘There’s a storm coming, Harry. And we’d all best be ready when she does.’

The fifth Harry Potter film sees Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) in a darker situation than ever before. Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) is back and gathering his armies for war, but the Ministry of Magic refuses to accept the truth. With his reliability and even his sanity questioned by a vicious media campaign, Harry is left with only a small number of allies, and even they seem to be hiding things from him. As well as facing important exams and attempting to understand the feelings of romantic interest Cho Chang (Katie Leung), Harry must also deal with a seemingly distant and indifferent Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) and sweetly sinister Ministry official Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton) who is slowly taking over the school. Nothing is safe, and Harry will be forced to doubt everything he thought he knew. But is he strong enough to face the coming storm alone?

Ranking as the sixth-highest grossing film of all time on its release,[1] Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been judged by J.K. Rowling as the best adaptation of her work so far.[2] With a new writer (Michael Goldenberg) and director (David Yates), the film feels more grown-up than its predecessors. Gone are the thrilling Quidditch matches and light-hearted classroom banter. In their place are political intrigue and deadly danger as Harry finds some very valid reasons for expressing a bit of teenage angst.

The film begins with an almost palpable ambience of fear. While Harry is fighting off a dementor attack in Surrey, the Minister of Magic is devoting his energies to convincing himself and the rest of the wizarding world that nothing out of the ordinary is going on. Those who seek to oppose Voldemort, the Order of the Phoenix, are forced to meet in secret, and anyone who speaks out is quickly discredited by the Ministry-controlled press. Dumbledore asserts that, ‘the evidence that the Dark Lord has returned is incontrovertible,’ and yet the Minister of Magic refuses to listen. His mind is ‘twisted and warped by fear’ so that he is caught in denial and increasing paranoia. Other wizards seem unsure of what to believe and even many of Harry’s friends at Hogwarts doubt his version of events. Ron and Hermione, however, never waver in their support of Harry. The three friends are also consistently loyal to their headmaster, naming their secret rebellion Dumbledore’s Army. While fear blinds the Ministry to reality so that it suppresses and manipulates the truth, Harry and his allies refuse to be intimidated. They have identified the truth as something valuable, and are prepared to suffer to uphold that ideal.

Defending the truth, however, is not the only battle Harry faces. It becomes clear that there is a connection between Voldemort and Harry which appears to be growing in strength. First Harry’s dreams, and then his emotions start to be invaded by this evil presence. Not only does his have to confront the considerable dangers posed by Dolores Umbridge and Voldemort’s forces, but now Harry also finds an equally deadly battle raging inside himself. Fearing that he is becoming like Voldemort, , Harry confesses his anxieties to his godfather, Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), asking ‘What if I’m becoming bad?’ Sirius has some profound advice: ‘The world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are’.

His words highlight one of the central themes of Rowling’s work: the idea of choice. Just as he chose Gryffindor over Slytherin at the start of his adventures in Hogwarts, and has consistently chosen good over evil, now Harry must choose once again to act on the goodness inside him rather than surrendering to the dark. Despite feelings of isolation and inadequacy, Harry accepts responsibility for combating Professor Umbridge’s tyrannical regime. He forms Dumbledore’s Army and trains his fellow students to defend themselves and stand up for what’s right. When it comes to his final battle against Voldemort’s power, the goodness in Harry enables him to resist the Dark Lord and foil his schemes.

‘It isn’t how you are alike,’ Dumbledore reminds Harry as he struggles against Voldemort, ‘it’s how you are not.’ While Harry is clearly not in Voldemort’s league in terms of magical powers, it is the ways in which he is different from the Dark Lord that allow him to prevail. Voldemort is essentially alone in that he is concerned only with his own ambitions and believes that relying on, or relating to, anyone else is a weakness. Harry, however, has loyal friends, and the protecting power of love has been a constant theme throughout his life. When Harry is burdened by his responsibilities and the forces opposing him, he tends to feel like he is alone. Rejecting the help of his friends, he is in the habit of trying to save the world by himself. However, as the eccentric but insightful Luna Lovegood (Evanna Lynch) points out: ‘If it’s just you alone, you’re not as much of a threat.’ Fortunately for Harry, his friends will not let him push them away. ‘We’re in this together,’ Hermione assures him. Voldemort believes that this dependence makes Harry weak, and even Harry at times feels this to be true. He reflects that, ‘the more you care, the more you have to lose.’ However, J.K. Rowling shows that the love Harry feels for his family and friends is his greatest strength. Consistently loved and supported by his friends, Harry eventually comes to understand that this is a more powerful kind of magic than Voldemort can ever know: ‘you’re the weak one, and you’ll never know love or friendship, and I feel sorry for you.’

C.S. Lewis writes that: ‘To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one’.[3] If Harry wants to avoid pain then it would be best for him to follow Voldemort’s advice and live without friendships or love. However, Lewis goes on to point out that locking away the heart has other consequences: ‘But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.’ In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix we see clearly that love may make us vulnerable, but it is absolutely necessary if we are to defeat evil in the world or within ourselves. The Bible tells us that God, too, chooses to love and feel the pain that comes with that choice. ‘God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us’ (Romans 5:8, NLT). Even if we don’t have loyal friends like Ron and Hermione, if we choose to trust God then we don’t have to face anything alone. One follower of Jesus writes that:

Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below – indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NLT).

The greatest strength comes from choosing to live in the power of God’s love, rather than trying to work alone. His love gives us the power to uphold truth and goodness in the world, and offers, as Harry would say, ‘something worth fighting for’.

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