Is this the redemptive culmination?

The first thing that strikes you about Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is how grown-up everyone looks–and how "today." We see Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), cheeks and lips in perpetual blush and now as tall as his teachers, giving up the gown for jeans and T-shirts, and an even taller Malfoy (Tom Felton) sporting bangs. Hermione (Emily Watson) has boobs. In school or at home Harry is less of a doormat, at one point inflating an overbearing aunt like a balloon–proof that adolescents are adolescents, even if they are wizards.

In this installment, Harry runs away from his insufferable "muggle" family only to be pursued by Sirius Black (Gary Oldman), a murderer escaped from Azkaban prison–or so everyone thinks until the truth is revealed. Harry has also to deal with the Dementors, shadowy creatures that suck out the soul of people they kiss. Meanwhile, his education at Hogwarts continues: he learns to ride the hippogriff with now Prof. Rubeus Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), reads tea leaves and palms in Prof. Trelawney’s Divination class, and learns to fight his fears with the new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, the affable Prof. Remus Lupin (David Thewlis), whose name is a clue to his secret.

The summary gives no indication of how convoluted the book Prisoner of Azkaban is. The plot turns as many times as there are characters who walk in (some with little motivation) to make one seemingly interminable dénouement. The revelations and reversals all make for exciting reading, but the difficulty of translating so intricate a plot into a two-hour movie is obvious.

Just for grabbing the broomstick by the handle, as it were, director Alfonso Cuaron must be given credit, but he does more than that. He sweeps the previous Harry Potter films clean into the dustbin.

Visually, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a marked departure from the Chris Columbus films. The atmosphere is less cheery–gone are the Christmas trees and the Halloween décor–matching the tendency of the later books to be dark. We see Hogwarts amid fog, rain, or snow, with the Dementors (who look as though they’ve come in from the set of another movie) hovering above it at night. Even the Quidditch match (thankfully truncated) is played in foul weather, with (as a friend remarked) Mary-Poppins-like umbrellas floating past Harry. Buckbeak’s execution is heralded by a flurry of ravens. There are also noticeable alterations in the overall landscape (the Whomping Willow is farther away from the castle; so is Hagrid’s hut, which rests below a rocky hill). The composition of certain scenes, finally, carries symbolic possibilities.

It is in the plotting, however, that the film is not so felicitous. Cuaron leaves out much and leaves certain things unexplained (including how Sirius escaped from Azkaban prison), which may leave some viewers puzzled and some readers dissatisfied. What Cuaron does, however, is thematically consistent with the book and compensates for what he doesn’t do.

The Harry Potter books come from a long tradition of foundling/apprenticeship stories that goes all the way back to the Bible and includes the novels of Charles Dickens and the comic strip Li’l Orphan Annie. As such, the books are essentially about self-definition. The obstacles that one has to overcome to create that self are suggested by a few key images: the mirror of Erised in the first book (self vs. vain desires), the sorting hat in the second (self vs. inhibiting genes), and now the Grim (self vs. "destiny"). Harry transcends each as he progresses from year to year, ultimately reaching (we infer when we get to the seventh book) self-discovery and self-conquest. The general message seems to be that we are who we make ourselves to be–in Chamber of Secrets, Harry chooses to stay in Gryffindor no matter what the sorting hat says; and in this installment, Harry is saved because (in an ingenious plot twist) he saves himself.

Cuaron finds filmic equivalents for these and other ideas instead of literally reproducing what’s on the page. We see a number of close-ups, for example, of Harry’s face reflected on windowpanes, mirrors, and waters, as to raise the question of identity. Cuaron treats the interplay between choice and circumstance and the notion of time as a palimpsest by emphasizing a few details either not found or only implied in the book. The questions raised in Prisoner of Azkaban are similar to those at the sacrifice of Isaac, though less terrible (e.g., does God predestine or does God merely foresee?), and Cuaron (as does Rowling) leaves it a mystery. (Think Somewhere in Time.)

Cuaron also adds texture by referring to Shakespeare. Our first glimpse of Hogwarts is accompanied by the song of the three witches in Macbeth ("Double, double, toil and trouble; / Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. . . . By the pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes!"), rendered as a Christmas carol. It not only sets the tone, but also sets up the conflict, the tension between "prophecy" and free will, which is also the central conundrum in Macbeth.

By such means and others, Cuaron’s is a faithful adaptation, one that respects the spirit of the original but is not a slave to its minutiae, one that exploits the resources of the image but does not violate the words on the page.

If one must have a bone to pick, it is that, as usual, the adults are not given enough screen time. In the book Prof. Trelawney (Emma Thompson) and Prof. McGonagall (Maggie Smith) cross paths, in more ways than one ("Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic," quips McGonagall). The fireworks between the two witches would have been brilliant–if only because Thompson and Smith are excellent actors–and would have served as a perfect counterpoint to the eerie references to Macbeth’s Weird sisters.

All told, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sets the bar very high for the next installments in the series, or should no more sequels be made, is a proper and redemptive culmination.