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 The
ominous tone is set early on in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
The three young heroes who audiences across the globe have come to know
and adore are alone and suffering in their own worlds. Ron Weasley, the
series’ least intellectually burdened of the trio, stands before his
previously conflagrated family home in deep thought, feeling the chill
of a future he can’t avoid. In the Muggle world, brainiac witch
Hermione Granger makes the heartbreaking choice to magically erase her
existence from the memories of her loving non-magical parents in an
attempt to keep them safe and free from the pain of what might happen to
their child. Harry Potter stares out the window of his uncle’s home
watching as the Dursleys, the only family he’s ever known, flee to
escape the danger their charge has innocuously brought upon them and the
entire human race. Harry takes one last look into the closet under the
stairs where he lived most of his young life until the wizarding world
reclaimed him. He has outgrown it in every way, but would give anything
to go back the simpler time the tiny enclosure represents. The future
is now and the end is near.
Brilliant start. The pairing of nostalgia and foreboding is thick
throughout this seventh film in the wildly successful series and with
good reason; this is it, folks. Author J.K. Rowling held good to her
promise that the adventures of “The Boy Who Lived” would cease at seven
novels. Warner Brothers felt there was so much to include in their
finale they chopped the film into two parts, the second to be released
in summer 2011. Reintroducing characters and storylines not seen for
many chapters; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows tries to pack in as
much as it can for its audience. While the first hour of Deathly
Hallows is a ride one wishes would never end, the staunch refusal to
make edits to Rowling’s opus is also the film’s weak spot and makes its
second hour and a half a different affair, which could easily have ended
far sooner. In its favour, Deathly Hallows features some truly riveting
sequences: Harry and sworn protector Hagrid’s wild CGI-laden escape
from Little Whinging is thrilling. A white knuckle chase from the evil
Lord Voldemort, whose final play after a methodical enslavement of the
UK sparing neither Muggle nor Wizard is the murder of Harry, “The Chosen
One” prophesied to destroy him.
I had
hoped that writer Steve Kloves and director David Yates might actually
correct some of the faults in what I felt was the poorest book in the
series. Deathly Hallows is the first move away from the Hogwarts
wizarding school year template. It also marks the first time we see the
three young witches in the Muggle world for any length of time and the
result displayed some of Rowling’s flaws as a writer as the book was a
mass of minute questions we didn’t really need to wait seven books to
answer. There are silly plot devices, flat-out harebrained choices
regarding the placement of some emotional moments and the worst pacing
in the series. Sadly, as is the source material, so goes the
adaptation. Things are crammed in the film so tight that many of the
opportunities for real emotion go to waste. The death early on of one
of Harry’s first friends receives no better treatment in the film than
it did in the novel. The passing of another character and fan favourite
earns barely more than a sigh from the others. There’s so much
happening in a vacuum here with deaths all over the place and a wealth
of exposition shoved at the moviegoer -- brush up on your Horcrux
knowledge and character lists, people, else you’ll be lost -- the film
doesn’t sustain the real feeling it engenders brilliantly in the opening
scenes. The mood of grim portent reigns throughout, even during a
supposedly joyful -- if absurd -- diversion of a Weasley wedding, about
which Harry opines, “I don’t care about a wedding,” and frankly neither
do we. There are so many flaws in pacing, narrative and the strange
point at which the film ends that this is far from being one of the best
films in the franchise.
The
inclusion of characters long gone by or who appear in a blink is a sop
to the Harry Potter die-hards because precious little exposition is
given to explain who the lady wearing all the pink with the psychotic
giggle is, or the importance of the snowy white owl, and if you can’t
recall which burly character the vicious werewolf Greyback is, you won’t
be alone (- Though his leadership is supplanted by a fella we’ve
never seen before, a strange cross between Adam Ant and Keith Richards.),
and I still don’t understand why Voldemort has no nose. You’ll also
have to scrape the backs of your minds for who exactly John Hurt played
and why his character is important and the same with a bunch of others
in the film. There is such an info dump of minor subplots and red
herrings throughout that it’s a labour to keep track, mostly to find out
after wading through an often incoherent mess that it wasn’t all that
important anyway. There is a startling moment of real talk delivered by
Ron Weasley: After endlessly tramping through a forest with the worst
evils of the wizarding world at his heels, Ron says what the audience is
thinking as Harry blindly rushes out to complete his trusted, deceased
headmaster Dumbledore’s bidding; to find and destroy the last objects
which will weaken Voldemort’s powers. “Dumbledore sends you off after
these Horcruxes, but doesn’t tell you how to destroy them. Doesn’t that
bother you?” This is why Weasley is our king.
What
saves the film is its cast. Once again the most famous trio of young
actors the screen has ever seen delivers beautifully, which is harder
this time as there’s not a lot of room to stretch acting chops in
Deathly Hallows. Mostly our team has got to look worried, frightened,
angry, miserable or tormented through the nearly two and a half hour
running time. Rupert Grint might be the one I miss most when it’s all
over; his timing and innate ability to lighten any scene is priceless
here and so is his bluster when some bad witchy mojo sidles up to his
teenage insecurities and threatens to split the three buds. The
precious moments of humour Grint provides to counter the abundance of
relentless glumness is like Gatorade in the Sahara. Helena
Bonham-Carter comes into her own as the murderous nutjob Bellatrix
Lestrange, looking like the high queen of Gothic Lolita fashion and
trying her hand at tattoo arts. We only have a teensy glimpse of Alan
Rickman as former Dumbledore confidante and confirmed Harry-hater
Severus Snape, but what a glimpse it is. Clearly, the producers have
given up any pretense of making this character unattractive and turned
Snape into a Japanese rock star with eyeliner, flippy hair and pricey
looking robes. He looks less like the greasy fellow described in the
books and more like the love child of
Yoshiki and
Sugizo from
X Japan.
I will never decry the inclusion of Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, even
when he’s not nearly so present in the book and it’s an interesting
departure to see the aristocratic character less than his usual
immaculately turned-out self, fallen from grace for having failed his
Dark Lord. Bill Nighy is another one not around nearly long enough as
the leonine Rufus Scrimgeour, the aggressive new Minister of Magic.
Nighy has apparently brought Gary Oldman’s old Sirius Black toupee out
of retirement with a good steaming. The Phelps brothers, James and
Oliver, resume their comic relief roles as Fred and George, the
mischievous Weasley twins, who bravely join the Order of the Phoenix and
come away much holier than thou for their troubles.
The
film’s other grace is the production itself, which is stunning to look
at. Happily, Harry Potter films are never done on the cheap and
sequences like the chase on Hagrid’s motorcycle and a visit to an old
Dumbledore friend for possible clues are brilliantly done, as is the fun
moment early on when the Order of the Phoenix employs Polyjuice
subterfuge to create multiple Harrys. The scenes inside the Ministry of
Magic have a very stark Communist propagandist feel with slanted
literature and anti-Potter posters present. There’s also a little Leni
Riefenstahl inflection in the austere, monolithic filming of towering
statues celebrating the oppression of Wizard over Muggle. While the key
to the mystery of how to conquer Voldemort read like a series of overly
convoluted false trails, director Yates inserts stunning shadow puppet
animation reminiscent of the eastern European artists to make the
revelatory tale of The Three Brothers and the Deathly Hallows far more
captivating than it is in the book. So too was the scene entailing what
was considered one of the bigger deaths in the story; Yates sensitively
captures the moment giving it a far more organic and emotional core than
on the page.
Six of
one, a half dozen of the other. If Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
can be simultaneously praised and faulted for one thing it is for
sticking too close to its source in the one instance where there should
have been more distance. Huge opportunities to improve on a flawed
story are missed: Why, if the trio can Apparate anywhere in the world
do they keep returning to the same woods as opposed to using Tokyo, New
York City or the jungles of South America to hide themselves? At this
point, the kids are war torn wizard combat veterans who can Apparate at
will, so why do they get captured by a ragtag crew of Snatchers? Did we
really need all those journeys back into the forest in the first place?
Had that and the glut of fanservice minutiae been cut, at least a good
twenty minutes of running time might’ve been saved and legitimised the
upcoming second chapter. Luckily for this film, its narrative and
pacing weaknesses are buoyed by its strengths, particularly its
wonderful cast and beautiful production. Still, after the increasing
quality of each Harry Potter film (- Really kicking off and taking
itself seriously with 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.),
it would be a shame if the series ended with a relative whimper like
part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
November 19th, 2010
Click here for our 2007 review (as Mighty Ganesha) of
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Click here for our 2009 review of
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
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