I’ve said it before and I will say it again, there was once a time when I was dramatically against the idea of transforming J.K. Rowling’s beautiful and brilliant Harry Potter series into big budget Hollywood feature films. Having had the front row seat to the then unprecedented excitement of young people venturing out to bookstores at midnight to be the first to consume a literary tome as entertaining and demanding as Rowling’s, I just didn’t want that experience diluted and dumbed down by Hollywood’s lowest common denominator tendencies. Nine years and six films later, I could not be any more enthralled as the “Harry Potter” film series has exuded nothing less than the highest of class. From the very start, these films have been handsomely elegant and faithfully rendered productions that have enhanced Rowling’s original vision while gradually becoming strong motion pictures that can stand confidently on their own.
When I first read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows years ago, I poured through the novel with an addictive and emotional feverishness. For me, the novel was Rowling’s masterstroke as she completed her seven book saga with the grandest of empathy, conviction and supreme storytelling heft. I ended the book wanting for absolutely nothing more and it was as complete a conclusion as possible. While reading I also though to myself, “There’s NO WAY they can fit this into one movie!” Due to the amount of details and plot threads that are essential to the story as a whole, I thought it to be impossible that the people behind the film series could truncate the material into two or three hours. When it was officially announced that the book would be halved into two final films, I was overjoyed as I thought it would allow the proper breathing room for the story to tell its tale most effectively.
When we previously saw our teenage heroes in the superlative “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009), their lives had been forever transformed. After witnessing the infiltration of their beloved Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as well as the tragic murder of a beloved figure, the trio decide to leave school to pursue the remaining Horcruxes-objects that contain pieces of Lord Voldemort’s (chillingly played by Ralph Finnes) splintered soul-with the hopes of vanquishing the Dark Lord and ending the escalating Wizard War.
Although the threesome have aligned themselves with the heroic Order of the Phoenix, Harry, Ron and Hermione are soon forced to live their live in exile and on the run from Voldemort’s minions. Their journeys take them from bleak and barren wintry landscapes to the snow swept location of Harry’s birth to the Orwellian Ministry of Magic to deep within the nefarious bowels of the sinister Malfoy Mansion among other locations. As their individual and combined resolves are tested to the point of failure, Harry, Ron and Hermione learn, so painfully, that their only means to success and survival is the love and trust they have placed within each other.
For those who felt slighted or even cheated with the deep cuts made from the original novel in Yates’s previous adaptation, I would say that “Deathly Hallows Part 1” is supremely faithful. But, as I have said before, books are books and movies are movies and it is Yates’ primary job to make the written material work cinematically and not blindly adhere to the source material. Who cares how faithful it is if the visual presentation doesn’t sing? In the case of David Yates and series Screenwriter Steve Kloves, they definitely make this material sing beautifully. Yates presides over this material like the greatest of wizards. It is a Master Class of pacing, tone and mood that wisely and unapologetically makes absolutely no concessions to the uninitiated. If you have not read the novels or have seen any of the previous six films, you will indeed be lost.
Since the school year structure of the story has been irrevocably altered, with no Hogwarts, educational antics and lessons or Quidditch matches on display whatsoever, Yates is freed to create a more free form film experience. Utilizing Rowling’s novel as his set of boundaries, Yates and Kloves have crafted an artfully episodic journey filled with vignettes more aching, thrilling and grim than the one before.
An early scene, reminiscent of Director Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” (1987), depicts a meeting of the film’s core villains, led by Lord Voldemort, and featuring the suspended body of a Hogwarts victim and an extremely hungry serpent is easily the most chilling sequences of the entire series thus far. An alternately funny and intense episode set at the Ministry of Magic brings Rowling’s persistent themes of racism, fascism and totalitarianism to disturbingly vibrant life while it also places a clever nod to Director Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” (1985), his untouchable bureaucratic nightmare odyssey. Yates also leaves ample space for elegantly visual surprises, most notably a splendidly foreboding animated sequence depicting the origin of the Deathly Hallows.
Yates also consistently presents us with canvases of gorgeous panoramic vistas that seem to nearly engulf the three small figures as they wander alone in a cold, dark world. Those sections, including the stirring sequence of Harry, Ron and Hermione walking silently through a barren landscape listening to the names of the dead on an transistor radio, are quietly sorrowful and add to the sadness of children forced to become adults much sooner than they may be ready. In fact, it is those very sequences of the threesome in hiding that may frustrate some viewers—especially those who have not read the novel. Those scenes are lengthy and in a film that contains much more tension than release, I would not be surprised if the sequences of our heroes becoming disillusioned and growing darker while under the influence of the Voldemort cursed Horcrux in their possession (like Tolkein’s Ring) may make some audience members shift in their theater seats. But, if you do happen to be one of those people, not only will I tell you that there is a final payoff of grand proportions (to be seen mostly in Part 2), I feel those sequences serve the heart of this film tremendously.
“Deathly Hallows Part 1” is a triumph for Radcliffe, Grint and Watson as they have grown, right before our eyes, into a newfound maturity with their respective acting skills. For the entire series thus far, we have watched them grow while being supported by their young cast mates as well as the British acting elite who have surrounded them. For this film, it is very interesting to see how their path as actors have so successfully mirrored the paths of their respective characters.
Just as Harry, Ron and Hermione are forced to shoulder the weight of their journey solely between the three of them, Radcliffe, Grint and Watson also have to shoulder much of this film on their own as their cast mates receive scant screen time in comparison. We see the bonds of mutual friendship, respect, undying trust and love between them tighten right in front of our eyes, providing the strongly beating heart of this otherwise bleak exercise. A moment where Ron and Hermione sleeping in a tent, obviously succumbing to slumber while holding hands is touching as is a scene not from the novel where harry engages Hermione in a funny and healing dance meant to soothe and strengthen during a particularly painful section. All three handle the hefty responsibility with remarkable skill and tenacity, also like their characters. While Yates deserves mountains of credit to eliciting these performances, I absolutely cannot forget, and have to re-state my appreciation for the groundbreaking efforts of Director Chris Columbus who made the decision to cast these three people in the first place. The series would not be what it is without them.
David Yates’ “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” is the rare big budget film with splendid special effects and dizzying skirmishes of action that also takes the concepts of choices, consequences, life and death seriously. It stands firmly upon its own cinematic feet while simultaneously showing deep reverence for Rowling's original novel. Yet for a film this dour and dismal, and one that opens and concludes with moments of heartbreaking self-sacrifice, it always finds time for magical whimsy as seen through Hermione’s deceptively small and bottomless handbag and the usage of the shape shifting Polyjuice Potion.
What we have presently with this film is a transitional episode. It is a set-up to a grand climax. It is a prelude to war. It is a tale of honor, sacrifice, courage, failure, heroism and redemption. For all of the loss experienced by our heroes, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” is an ode to the bonds of friendship and love just at the point when it seems the world will soon end.
Even though I have read the novel and already know the outcome, July 2011 cannot come soon enough!!
LOL, Scott, like it much? ;-) I enjoyed it too, although I wasn't blown away by it.
ReplyDeleteHi Swissmiss!! These movies are really hitting my sweet spot. I am leaving them wanting for very, very little. I am already anxious to see what David Yates will be able to do outside of this series. Mostly, I want J.K. to put out a new book and show us what else she's got up her sleeve.
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