A Brave Lad—a review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2
Written by Steve Kloves
Adapted from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsAdapted from J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Directed by David Yates
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and most of England’s acting community
It is always a mistake to think that just because a movie has kids in it, that it is a “kid’s movie”. The Harry Potter movies, like the Harry Potter books, have not been children’s books for a long time, if they ever were. Many children’s movies are trivial. Unlike their earlier counterparts – children’s stories – children’s movies have been sanitized, disinfected of any shred of relevance or drama, and presented with a sort of treacly sweetness that any real child recognizes as phony in ten seconds. The charm of Harry and his friends is that J. K. Rowling put back into “children’s literature” what had been missing for awhile – danger. The early books can fool you, because Harry is young and his friends are young, and the challenges they face are personal and individual. But as the books and movies move through time, growing up with Harry, the characters face increasingly larger problems, where the stakes are higher and the dangers more urgent. By the time we reach the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, we stand with a now adult Harry facing an apocalypse. And as in all great dramas, the end plays out in triumph and tragedy, success and failure. This is not a “kid’s movie”, unless we redefine the genre.
The basic story is simple: good versus evil. Harry, who survived an attack by the evil wizard Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, Coriolanus) as a child, now is hunted by him as he reaches his eighteenth year. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe, Equus) has spent a lifetime hiding from Voldemort, being chased by him, escaping from him. Now a man, he chooses to go on the attack, inspired by his late mentor, Headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon, Luck). Friends Ron (Rupert Grint, Comrade) and Hermione (Emma Watson, My Week with Marilyn) are along to help him hunt for horcruxes, items in which Voldemort has hidden parts of his soul for safekeeping. Supposedly, the destruction of a horcrux weakens the wizard who made it. However, this magical quest all too soon becomes a coupon-hunt, gathering points towards the high score that will allow Harry to become strong enough to defeat Voldemort. The books, and then the movie, began to take on aspects of a video game; while not a bad structure for a story presented to 21st century audiences, it did leave something to be desired in the way of emotional resonance with those audiences. I felt that I was watching Harry walk through a video arcade.
Not that it wasn’t exciting. Millions of fans will thrill to the Battle of Hogwarts, a fiery conflict that brings together all the characters we loved in earlier books: werewolf Remus Lupin (David Thewlis, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas), Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane, Ocean’s Twelve), Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith,Downton Abbey), and Sirius Black (Gary Oldman, Red Riding Hood). Our favorite villains are back; besides He Who Must Not Be Named, there is Severus Snape (Alan Rickman, Alice in Wonderland), Bellatrix LeStrange (Helena Bonham Carter, The King’s Speech), and the oily Malfoys, father Lucius (Jason Isaacs,Green Zone) and son Draco (Tom Felton, Rise of the Planet of the Apes). (One of the more amazing aspects of the Harry Potter movies is that, despite casting almost every living English actor, somehow in the course of eight movies the producers never got around to casting Helen Mirren or Dame Judi Dench.) One of the delights of this movie is seeing secondary characters who have, literally, grown into their roles; chief among them is Matthew Lewis (The Sweet Shop), who gives us a long-awaited moment of triumph for his downtrodden Neville Longbottom. There are animated stone warriors, dragons, and giants. Deatheaters, Dementors and Snatchers lurk everywhere. Best of all, we get a face-off in the rubble of Hogwarts, where Voldemort taunts his defeated victims and demands their surrender. What he gets is totally in character with the books, the characters established by J. K. Rowling, and the demands of drama.
The best part of these movies has been their faithfulness to the characters and structure of the books. The producers have not diluted the characters, they have not heightened their eccentricity beyond the scope of the books. Hogwarts, a character in itself, remains a beloved home and refuge. But it must be said that the flaws of the movie are those of the books: an overcomplicated, messy storyline, a profusion of well-drawn but ultimately unimportant characters, and a denouement that left many readers and viewers puzzled and confused. If anything, the movie explains the relationship between Harry and Voldemort better than J. K. Rowling did, which makes the ending a bit more comprehensible. We still get the book’s pointless wandering in the wilderness for far too long, a puzzling meeting between Harry and Dumbledore in a ghostly train station, and a romance that, to me, felt contrived. But we also get a satisfying wrap-up of ten years of storylines, with nothing left hanging, nothing left unresolved.
If the first part of Deathly Hallows suffered from the tedium of the book, the second part moved briskly and surely, wrapping up all manner of loose ends. Many of the tragic moments, such as the deaths of beloved characters, do not appear onscreen; we only learn of them later. Many have called the ending “anti-climactic”, and I agree, but that is the fault of the book, not the moviemakers. It was not in their mandate to rewrite the ending, and I am glad they left it, warts and all. I believe the flaws of the movie arise out of goodwill: the producers wanted to include as many fan-favorite moments from the book as they could. I applaud their intent, while recognizing that some of those moments bog down the story in the original, and do the movie no favors, either. Still, millions of kids have loved every scene of those books, so I cannot quibble with the filmmakers’ decision to leave them in. After all, I will cheerfully sit through every second of the expanded, directors-cut version of Lord of the Rings. In the final analysis, these books show us how the process of maturation involves acquiring and then shedding illusions: throughout Deathly Hallows, even more so than in earlier books, Harry learns that what he thought was true was not. Dumbledore raised him as a “pig for slaughter”, his father bullied young Severus Snape, and Snape himself was never what Harry thought he was.
I must single out one performance that impressed me enormously. It’s not even a scene in the book, it’s only referred to in passing, but in the movie it is wisely expanded into an iconic scene. I refer to the moment when Severus Snape finds the body of Harry’s mother, Lily, in the ruins of their home, possibly the most affecting moment in the entire movie. Alan Rickman, without uttering a word of dialogue, broke my heart and totally reversed our understanding of Snape’s role in this saga. This kind of turnaround is hard to pull off on the page, let alone the screen, but Rickman achieves it with power and skill. One expects nothing less from this legend of British acting. At the same time, one must not overlook the extraordinary accomplishments of our young leads. Thrust into one of the most important franchises in literary or cinematic history, Radcliffe, Watson and Grint have held their own with poise and composure beyond their years, growing up in front of us and giving us, at the last, an emotional tour de force as innocence gives way to clear-eyed maturity.
So Harry, Hermione and Ron have grown up. They have suffered and they have conquered. They have lost loved ones and found new loves. Like J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling realized she needed a quiet ending, a glimpse of an afterward where our heroes settle into their hard-won future. Peace, though desirable, is always less thrilling than high drama, so it is to her credit, and the credit of the filmmakers, that we get a postscript that shows us our heroes as quietly happy, reaping the rewards of an orderly, civilized life, with children and families. All the great children’s stories end with “happily ever after”. Harry may not become King of All Wizards, but he finds his bliss, his happiness, and his much-desired anonymity. And that may be his greatest magic trick of all.
Note: I do not recommend the 3-D version of this movie. It is dark, muddled and overpriced. See it in 2-D, save your money, and enjoy the brighter colors.
Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Stegall