My Review of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

[Carol]

md wrote:
> Hermione mentioning it in class on Harry's first day at Hogwarts 6 years earlier is not enough to make me think "hey, Harry should remember the beazor from six years ago when Hermione said it, because Harry ALWAYS remembers EVERYTHING Hermione says in class."

Carol responds:
Hermione didn't mention it (though she had her hand up and knew the answer). Snape did, in both the film and the book. It was part of that memorable first Potions lesson. Viewers who've read the books or seen the films should, in theory, remember the bezoar from SS/PS. But the point is emphasized in the book--the HBP's snidely clever "just shove a bezoar in their mouths" causes Harry to remember that first lesson (teenage Snape reinforcing the adult Snape though Harry doesn't know it). Harry's cheating in Potions by handing Slughorn a bezoar (and being rewarded for his cheek) instead of understanding Golpolott's Law and creating the antidote to a mixed poison is the reason is the reason that Book!Slughorn happens to have a bezoar in his bag. So the logic of the scene is evidently missing along with the irony that Snape and the HBP (Snape again) together taught Harry what he needed to save Ron. (And Harry doesn't always remember everything Hermione says in class any more than he remembers what the teachers say (unless it's Trelawney predicting his death). His mind is usually elsewhere.

Carol responds:
I still haven't seen the film so I don't know whether the scene works as written, and it's hard to know what a person who hasn't read the books would think of it--whether it works for those viewers, I mean.
>  
md: 
> Harry doesn't trust Snape, knows he's working with Malfoy and states earlier that even Dumbledore makes mistakes It all adds up to Harry SHOULD NOT trust or listen to Snape.

Carol responds:
I'd put "knows" in quotation marks there as I assume that Snape is protecting Draco and trying to find out what he's doing in the film just as in the book. However, I know from a clip that film!Harry tells Slughorn that he doesn't trust Snape (I guess the filmmakers are trying to partially cover the absence of Harry's heated discussion with DD at the end of OoP), but beyond the overhearing (and misunderstanding) of the conversation with Draco, what reason (other than mutual dislike) does movie!Harry have for *distrusting* as opposed to disliking Snape? (I realize that they omitted his sending the Order to the MoM in OoP, which I think is an unfortunate oversight.)

It looks to me as if movie!Snape removes the curse from the opal necklace and saves Draco, as in the book. If they've also including DD's references to Snape saving DD from the ring curse and Katie Bell from the cursed necklace (both of which show which side he's really on), I suppose they're counting on the Spinner's End scene to make him look evil and treacherous.

At any rate, I haven't yet seen the film, but it seems to me that having Harry hide under the stairs (or whatever) and obeying Snape is a mistake, out of character for Harry, less dramatic than the original, etc. And I disagree with Alla about a weakened Dumbledore being unnecessary to the scene--it showed the potency of that horrible potion and it made the moment more gut-wrenching for Harry and the reader and probably for Snape as well. His revulsion at having to kill Dumbledore should match Harry's in having to feed DD the potion in the first place.

I think part of the problem is that neither Rickman nor Gambon has read the books. If they had, they'd understand how that scene is *supposed* to be played and protest against the rewriting of it.

Carol, glad that she knows about the uncanonical moments before seeing the film because otherwise they might spoil it for her