“HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2”
Based upon the novel by J.K. Rowling
Screenplay Written by Steve Kloves
Directed by David Yates
**** (four stars)
It is finished.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” is a supremely grand finale that entertained wonderfully, stirred my soul significantly and as I felt when I first completed reading the original novel, I exited the theater wanting for nothing more…other than the chance to see it all over again. Dear readers, I am honestly stunned that this 10 year film series adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s wonderful seven novels has turned out so extraordinarily well. As I have stated in previous reviews of the “Harry Potter” film series, I originally detested the idea of Hollywood turning Rowling’s terrific books into movies for fear they would just sell it out, dumb it all down and rip the heart and soul from it in the process. Was I happily proven wrong!
Despite some minor quibbles here and there, every time I thought that the filmmakers would botch the entire story, they surprised me again and again as they created films that grew as rich, dark, complex and as heartbreaking as the source material. I cannot congratulate Director Chris Columbus enough for building the film world of this series from the ground up so brilliantly and to Directors Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell for extending the series in endlessly creative and emotionally resonant fashions with the third and fourth installments. Director David Yates has hit my cinematic sweet spot with his adaptations, which have found him fearlessly tackling four films in a row with increasing confidence, strength, heft and unquestionable and powerful emotion. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” definitely packs an enormous wallop and closes the series with grace and solemnity from the first frame all the way to its tender and melancholic epilogue.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” opens at the precise moment the previous installment concluded. A fully empowered Voldemort (Ralph Finnes) has obtained the supposedly mythical Elder Wand, one of the three titular Deathly Hallows. Along with his growing army of minions, including the sadistically unhinged Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter), he is on his way to wage war with the wizards and students of Hogwarts with the hopes of killing Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) once and for all.
Meanwhile, Harry, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) remain in exile as they feverishly seek and hope to destroy the remaining Horcruxes, magical items that each contain a piece of Voldemort’s splintered soul. Our heroic trio’s quest eventually leads them back to now fascistic Hogwarts, in which Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is the new Headmaster, for the ensuing war and final confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, a confrontation which will ultimately determine the fate of the world.
When I first read Rowling’s novel when it was published in 2007, I found myself wondering exactly how were the filmmakers going to pull this off. As I have said time and again and especially concerning the film series, books are books and movies are movies and the filmmakers have to figure out how to render these books into successful visual experiences that are able to stand on their own and not be religiously tied to every moment in Rowling’s novels. Yet, as I read, and while I felt that certain bits here and there could conceivably be truncated, I just had no idea of what they could omit as everything contained significance to the saga as a whole. “If they’re really gonna do this,” I thought. “They’re gonna have to do it ‘Lord Of The Rings’ style!! Make this thing three and a half hours and go for it!!” Essentially, Yates has done just that by making Rowling’s book a four and a half hour film cleaved into two effectively distinct sections.
Certainly, some of the skeptical have definitely made their voices heard that splitting Rowling’s finale into two films was simply and solely a lucrative decision. Of course it was a lucrative decision! But I firmly believe that it was also an artistic decision as this conclusion could not be sifted, cherry picked and stuffed into a two hour running time. The halving was a brilliant move I thought, as it could satisfy those who love the story, allowed the filmmakers to treat and realize it with the proper reverence and yes, it would ensure the Hollywood machine could remain in the “Harry Potter” business a little while longer. It was a “win-win” move for Rowling, the filmmakers, the fans and bean counters all at once.
David Yates’s adaptation of Rowling’s final episode in the story of Harry Potter is appropriately epic yet it is also a somber, funereal experience. I appreciated how he was unafraid to plunge into the deep gravity of Harry’s story and fate while also taking the time to still find moments of humor, wonder, amazement, romance and always upholding the bonds of friendship that have been a central element from the tale’s beginnings. All of the actors have brought everything in their acting powers to this finale and not one false note was struck. I loved Eduardo Serra’s cinematography, which is complete with grim, grey skies and clouds of doom signifying the potential end of the world. The special effects throughout are seamless, the war sequences are simultaneously propulsive, poetic and wrenching.
Most importantly, how satisfying it was that Yates and Screenwriter Steve Kloves (who wrote the scripts for all of the films save the fifth installment) remained true to the emotional core of Rowling’s series. It is a core that is indeed painful and filled with succulent sorrow which in this film was visually presented at its best during a late sequence set in the Forbidden Forest and magnificently in the full, revelatory back story of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman’s shining hour in this entire series).
Yates and Kloves beautifully, and with tremendous care and effort, mine the sweet sorrow contained throughout Rowling’s entire saga. It is the sorrow that is contained within the pains of great loss. The loss of childhood and youth itself. The loss of parents and children. The loss of lives and humanity in times of war and catastrophe. The loss of faith, reason and hope when the obstacles seem insurmountable. The loss of lives consumed by fear, recrimination and vengeance. The loss carried forevermore within people who have never felt or accepted love. And certainly, the loss contained within every farewell…even one as spectacular and satisfying as this one.
This loss and the sorrow of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” is always evident, even in and especially during the most Herculean of battle sequences of which there are many. Yates is a filmmaker desperately needed in our Michael Bay universe because what Bay has never cared about as a filmmaker and what he has never, ever, ever cared to learn is that story and characters are the key and even in the mightiest of big budget blockbuster movies, sometimes, silence is golden.
Yates utilizes silence and pauses to incredible effect, allowing the full weight of this series to resonate within the audience. He knows when bring the lightning and the thunder and he knows fiercely well when to have quiet, which is sometimes even more devastating than being bludgeoned by all manner of audio/visual special effects and a bombastic music score.
The silence contained within pauses in the war at Hogwarts, the moments when characters silently weigh life and death decisions and in one sequence late in the film of transcendent meditativeness speaks volumes and in that movie theater, as the film continued onwards, heartfelt sobs from viewers were easily audible. I wonder if any of my fellow movie theater patrons heard mine.
To think, all of this outpouring emotion over a story about a boy wizard. And why not? Should it matter what the story is if it allows us all to think, to feel, and to dream grandly? “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” is the wondrous culmination of a 10-year cinematic journey that has been consistently at the top of its class and has shown eight times in a row that big budget films need not be brainless, thoughtless, soulless and heartless. It is a celebration of the three young actors, plucked from obscurity, who breathed succulent life into Rowling’s literary characters and allowed us to grow up with them. Furthermore, the film is a testament to the seven book series created by and written so luxuriously by J.K. Rowling, a writer whose dreams took flight and was fortunate and lucky enough to share them with us all.
Goodbye Mr. Potter…once again. Yet, this goodbye is not forever as this series, and film in particular, has vividly earned the right for many return visits. As Rowling wrote in her novel, "All was well."
Indeed it was.
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