Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1: Half a Movie, Half Satisfying
You’re serious? She’s going to write more of these books? But, I got other stuff to do, like, umm…food shopping!
Rating: 6 out of 10
Let’s hit this head on, since a ten year run on any film franchise deserves the respect of not beating around the bush.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 begins the final chapter of our lightning-branded fated friend and his cadre of dedicated compatriots. His arch-enemy, Voldemort, is out in the open and gathering his armies and weapons together, while the Potter team is trying to ready themselves for the inevitable battle to come. The stress of staring death directly in the face threatens to break our heroic trio apart at the very time where their bond needs to be the strongest.
Sure, the description above is a decent hook to get you interested, but it’s a terrible summary of a film because it doesn’t relate a complete story, which of course is because this movie is not a complete story either. After shuffling shoulder-to-shoulder out of the theater on opening weekend my first impression was that of resentment and anger against Warner Brothers splitting this final book into two films. I am a huge fan of the original books and I understand how much material there is in the final book (757 pages worth, to be exact), but in their effort to cover every little detail from the source material, they failed to take into account that some of the book might not be worth filming. It feels like the decision to split into two movies was made more about profits for WB and not for the enhancement of the overall experience for the fans. Honestly, I wish they would have ended this series with a much bigger bang, going out with a Lawrence of Arabia-styled epic 3 1/2 – 4 hour marathon movie (intermission included). Sure, they would sell less tickets because you could only screen it a few times a day, but it would go down in history as one of the most successful epics in film history and that should’ve been enough to make the studios proud. Alas, pride in the finished product is mostly less important than profits.
*Mild Spoilers ahead – but if you haven’t already read the book, do yourself a favor and do it now, I’ll wait right here… *
Friends of mine can corroborate this: when I finished reading this book seventeen hours after buying it on day one of release, I said, “When they make this movie, please let them drop the damn tent section!” Yes, in the book it is more needed to show the strains in our famous trio of young heroes, but even in those hallowed pages the section read very slowly and drawn out, which I knew would only be exacerbated by filming it. The little light-hearted moment of Harry and Hermione dancing in the tent felt incredibly forced and only there because they needed to break up the morose, moody whining that had already gone on too long. It was a weak attempt at solving a much bigger problem.
As for the overall structure of this offering, it suffers much more than the previous filmed chapters because it literally holds onto the ‘Part One of Two’ description to a fault. Even if you are making a film that is a piece of a bigger whole, each piece must be able to encapsulate an enjoyable movie experience on its own, which this film fails to do. I knew it would end in a cliffhanger, setting up the final battle in Part Two, but I at least hoped we would feel something had happened in the first part to whet the appetite. This turned out to feel more like a 2 1/2 hour trailer, teasing us for the end of the Potter road.
Now, after taking a breath and calming down, let me recount some of the quality points on display here. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, all grown up and matured, felt oddly stagnant in their roles, but Rupert Grint got to stretch his acting chops a little here and prove that he was more than just a comedic foil for tension-breaking asides. There is a sad lacking of Alan Rickman, as the supremely calm Professor Snape, but again, we can expect a lot more of him in the final piece. Rhys Ifans makes a nice addition to the cast as Xenophilius Lovegood (loopy Luna’s father), but he also gets a disappointingly small two scenes to play in. Although I was disappointed in his small number of scenes, it was during one of those scenes we were treated to a really interesting animated mini-movie while Hermione recounted the story of the Three Brothers, which finally announced what the Deathly Hallows were (nearly two hours into the movie).
The artistic tone and visuals continue to hold up the world and don’t fail to make you feel like you could walk out and lift cars in the parking lot by pointing at them and waving your hand around. With all the jumping tent sequences, there were many incredibly picturesque locations, which assisted in really blending the real world together with the fantastical wizard palaces and ornate decorating of the Ministry of Magic. Yet, trying to think forward into the final piece of this decade-plus-more puzzle, I imagine we will get less pretty locations and much more crazy spell-casting visuals and magical monsters, mostly centered around the much-loved Hogwarts School of Wizardry (C’mon, who wouldn’t want to go there?)
The End of the Page Recommendation: If you haven’t read the books or at least seen all the previous movies, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part One will do nothing for you. Yet for those devoted fans who know every inch of the back story, this is mainly a teaser for a finale that I hope will live up to expectations.
DandyID
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