The End of an Era

Fans of Harry Potter books and films will see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)” no matter what reviewers say, as they should.  Nevertheless, I must grouse a smidgen.  There are good things and bad things about this, the eighth and last of the series of films based on the seven Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling.  One of the delightful things about those novels for the readers was observing the children grow up as they struggled through each year at Hogwarts.  The movies gave us the extra pleasure of watching the child actors playing them grow into adults.  That’s been so much fun that no matter how annoyed I may be at aspects of any of the films — including this one — I cannot say I didn’t have a good time.  I did.

The thing is, “…Deathly Hallows (Part 2)” is not part of a miniseries.  Its previous episode did not air last Monday night on television.  It should be a standalone movie, but it is not.  While understandable — this was an exceedingly difficult task to master — I’m afraid Steve Kloves’ script directed by David Yates just didn’t quite do it.  They dropped us into the middle of the action, picking up where we left off at the end of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1),” which, however seemingly logical, leaves many viewers confounded.  The last of Rowling’s Potter books pulled together elements, themes, and people from the previous six books.  That’s a lot of characters, places, and history that the audience is expected to remember.  The first film devoted to telling the story of the last book was very well done, with a cliffhanger ending leading to anticipation for this year’s finale.  However, no one viewing a movie should be required to re-view the previous film or to reread the book to understand what’s going on in the beginning.  I doubt anyone without a solid grasp of the stories will ever find their way past the confusion of the first fifteen minutes of this final film.  Of course, once the action starts, most will not care.

(c) 2011 Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.

The opening of the film is stark and jumps right into the story, scenes all bleak and gray and shadowed.  John Hurt reflects everyone’s feelings of sadness with a touch of despair as Ollivander, providing some much needed reminders of the story so far.  He looks haunted, perhaps foreshadowing the ghosts to come.  Soon Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) lead us to explosive action at the famous goblin bank, Gringott’s, affording Helena Bonham Carter the fun of playing her mad character Bellatrix as if Hermione were impersonating her.  With magical manipulation, goblins and heroes make their way into the catacombs of the bank, through twisting turning rail rides down to the vaults.  This is all enough fun to make you forget you may not quite recall why you’re here.  (It’s about the Horcruxes.)  And then comes the dragon.  A most fabulous dragon in a rip-roaringly good series of shadowy scenes bursting into light and flame. 

“Deathly Hallows Part 2” brings us to the final battle between the remaining stalwarts at Hogwarts (now under the rule of the deceptively wicked Severus Snape) against evil personified (snakefied?) by Lord Voldemort.  Hogwarts as we’ve known it is defended but destroyed, our beloved Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) gets his due at last, Harry and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) fight it out a couple times, and the long-suffering Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is finally vindicated.  Unfortunately that exposition of Snape’s hidden history — in which Harry, Ron, and Hermione finally see the truth behind Snape’s extraordinarily brave actions while they misjudged his every move — was just plain long.  However valuable the information, you can’t, in one segment of the last movie, go back and retell an entire story that took seven films to tell in the first place.  Well, they did, but it certainly stopped the flow.

Matthew Lewis, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe.

  (c) 2011 Warner Brothers Entertainment, Inc.

The huge cast of well defined characters makes performance analysis beyond the scope of this review, however: Helen McCrory shows us the human face of the wrong side; Jason Isaac is unusually subdued as the broken Lucius Malfoy; and Draco, well Tom Fenton does a fine job of making us feel sorry for the bully we’ve hated all these years.  All three of our usual suspects are as much fun as ever, lovely looney Luna Lovegood is again personified simply and truly by Evanna Lynch, while Maggie Smith’s Professor McGonagal put me in mind of Miss Jean Brodie — another film to see again.  Ciaran Hinds snuck in as testy Albeforth Dumbledore in a heartwarming scene.  Seeing (almost) everybody one last time was bittersweet as they fought for their shattered world.  I could natter on about everybody, but a reasonably complete list to remind you of the actors playing these well-known characters is on IMDB .

There’s fun to be had in this movie, as well as disappointment in two flavors.  One: that the last film does not live up to the expectations of the second to last.  Two (and more importantly): that it’s the last film.  Alas and sigh.  The epilogue of J.K. Rowling’s final book on Harry Potter, his friends, enemies, and their adventures, was a tad tedious, obviously written so it would be clear she wasn’t writing any more of them.  It’s a bit tedious here, too, but it does tie everything up with hope, more than real life can guarantee.  Now I want to go back and read the entire series of books all over again, then watch all eight movies. 

In the future when we have Harry Potter DVD nights and watch Parts 1 and 2 back to back, none of my niggling will matter.  This one’s mighty dark, but it’s still fun.

~ Molly Matera, signing off and moving on.  Sigh.

Time to Re-Read Harry Potter

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” flies by. Its running time is over two hours, but you won’t notice. One minute the old gang was gathering in the empty Dursley house drinking Polyjuice Potion, and the next the movie’s over and the tide has turned the story even darker than it started.

“The Deathly Hallows” needs long shots in silence, quiet moments where you can tick off the seconds during which no character speaks. Many movies need that, but many filmmakers and studios and producers don’t allow for it. “The Deadly Hallows” achieves these moments, and, hard as it may be to believe, these moments show us that it is not only for pure profit that the producers of the Harry Potter series have chosen to split the last book into two movies. This story needs two parts to do justice to the resolution of the 7-book, 8-movie series. The characters deserve this.

I’m not going to write an in-depth review, especially since the film only opened (quite stupendously) five days ago. No spoilers here. Well, I hope not. The film opens with sad relocations and silent separations. Once again, characters we like go and die on us, and everyone, including the audience, must go on without them. Bill and Fleur’s wedding at the Weasley home goes ahead as scheduled despite the sadness. Life and people -- even witches and wizards-- go on.

The growing evil strikes again, and our three heroes are separated from everyone and everything they’ve known. Harry, Hermione and Ron find themselves on their own, without their network of supportive adults and fellow students, and continue on the quest bequeathed to them by Dumbledore – to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes.

There are moments when the Harry Potter book/film series puts me in mind of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series: Although both Harry Potter and Buffy Summers are meant (by fate if nothing else) to be lone warriors, they win friends and influence people, remarkably loyal people. And smart! These are people we want to watch year after year, developing relationships that are deep and complex. We’ve watched these children grow up into a hard cold world, and hope they’re smart enough, strong enough, and good enough to survive.

This Harry Potter film isn’t full of laughs, although it has a few – what film that includes Rupert Grint could not. If Daniel Radcliffe has grown into a pretty young man, Grint has grown into a brawny hunk, Ron’s bad wardrobe notwithstanding. Emma Watson’s Hermione is still a delightful and strong leader, and her feelings for Ron are well played here.

We don’t see much of the adults in this film, but that’s a large part of the point. Harry, Hermione, and Ron must grow up in so many ways, and fend for themselves. They must become the adults.

A favorite of mine, Helen McCrory, is here as Lucius Malfoy’s wife, in seconds going from frightened to vicious. Jason Isaacs is wonderful as ever but more so as a trembling Lucius Malfoy. Tom Felton as the dreaded Draco is even better than usual here – yearning, afraid, and somehow far closer to decent than we or he could have thought. Helena Bonham Carter is just right as the mad Bellatrix. I’ve enjoyed her work more as she left behind normal women and moved to slightly mad to totally insane ones. I wonder what her young Queen Mum will be like in the upcoming “The King’s Speech.”

The film’s palette and light are in shades and shadows of darkest nature. The cinematographer Eduardo Serra gives us the wide open spaces of this small island, more terrifyingly lonely space than our heroes have experienced before.

Cheers to director David Yates, who kept the film moving briskly while taking the time to develop the growing personalities and relationships of Harry, Hermione, and Ron.

And cheers to Steve Kloves for a tight script accomplishing the impossible task of bringing the feeling and flavor of the story so far to the screen, and ending with a cliffhanger just when we needed it.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1,” the seventh of eight films, is vastly superior in my mind to #6 (“Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince”), and makes me impatient for summer when Part 2 will open. But then the series will be done, so never mind. I’ll wait quite patiently.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer, but not the light. I have an urge to read the whole series again.