Friday 22 July 2011

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2



Dir.: David Yates
Plot: If you don't know by now, it's kind of a long story.

I just got in from seeing the last Harry Potter film today, so I thought I'd regale you with my first impressions. For context, I've seen all the films and read all the books except the last one (for reasons explained below). Spoilers tossed around like Stupefy spells, so be warned.

Not the best film by far (Azkaban, as though you had to ask), but much less boring than Part 1, whose main protagonist was apparently a forest, given the ratio of trees to actor screentime, Deathly Hallows Part 2 is meatier, pacier and generally far more engaging than its predecessor. It culminates in an extended battle which, wonderful SFX aside, would certainly be too long if it weren't for the weight of the Potterverse underpinning it, the fight for Hogwarts becoming like a battle to hold onto our own Potter-infused childhoods. I have to admit that seeing the castle reduced to chunks of smouldering rubble gave me a funny feeling in my stomach, like watching a tiny fraction of myself disappear. And that's from someone who was never more than a casual fan. This feeling of slow and sometimes painful detachment from the wizarding world is heightened by the absence of so many things we'd come to identify with the series - no Quidditch, no common room scheming, no warm Butterbeer at the Three Bromsticks, no Gryffindor/Slytherin rivalry over the dinner tables. On one hand, this undeniably contributes to the gloomy, uncertain and even cynical tone of the movie; yet it also means the whole magical sensibility of the movie universe feels a little flat in places.


Fun fact: the combined screentime of all of these people is less than the time it takes to say their names. Probably.

In fact, the chief reason I like the films is for the unbeatable adult cast - so many of my favourites gathered together is basically a dream come true - and although they generally get marginal screentime here, when compared with their more or less total absence in Part 1 the treatment of the supporting cast in Part 2 feels practically generous. Even so, too much is disturbed and too many people die in this explosive finale to be properly covered by what are more or less cameos for most of the adult cast. Justice is only really done to a few of these well-loved characters - Snape gets a few decent scenes and Rickman gobbles them up in a grateful blaze of ham and extended pauses (so much so that it sometimes feels like a school play when a kid keeps forgetting his lines). Similarly, Maggie Smith is so damn badass that I wanted to see more of her, but she is at least given enough to cover the basics, while Julie Walters gets a moment of righteous fury that had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck quicker than any dragon battle ever could. If anything, it is the villains who get more of a chance to shine, with Jason Isaacs and Helena Bonham Carter just fantastic as Voldemort's aides-de-camp, and Ralph Fiennes having a smashing time (listen out for a moment during the extended battle where he makes this 'ugh!' pain noise that is so unmistakeably Fiennes-y that I laughed out loud).

And yet weirdly, given the chioice, I'd still do Ralph

I've said it before (during every film since Azkaban, to be precsie) and I'll say it again: needs more Lupin. This is a personal nitpick, to be honest, because he was my favourite character in the book and Thewlis' portrayal only cemented that. In fact, finding out he died was 75% of the reason I didn't read that last one. Which is kind of embarrassing, given that I was 16 when it came out, not 10. His whole subplot gets hacked out of the narrative, denying us the emotional wrench of his and Tonks' son being left an orphan which might have made up for the fact that their deaths get no attention whatsoever besides a brief shot of their corpses. I know they always struggled to fit as much in as possible, but I can't help but think they occasionally exaggerate the pressure. For instance, not wasting five valuable minutes with Ron and Hermione indecisively persuing Nagini up and down stairs whilst Harry and Voldemort have another redundant red-magic-versus-green-magic non-showdown would have been a start. Also, the whole scene where Harry meets Dumbledore in some sort of glowing white limbo could have been cut. Diehard fans might want to string me up at the very idea, but it serves no real purpose. It seems like it's supposed to shed some light on Harry's purgatorial state and clarify what has happened to him, but it doesn't actually do that. All we get are some of Dumbledore's slighty empty pseudo-philosophical proverbs, of the kind which worked better in the less demanding first films.

Tellingly, I've come this far without mentioning the primary trio at all, even though they swallow up an even larger portion of the screentime than usual. They are nowhere near as terrible as they are often made out to be, considering the script they have to work with is occasionally less than stellar (Here's a tip, makers: if you're not allowed to put swearwords in, just don't have your characters curse at all. Having characters react to the endangerment of loved ones with words like 'numpty' really undermines what you're going for.) Moments of cringey misjudgement aside (the Ron/Hermione kiss had me and my friend physically squirming), the three leads are surprisingly effective - Radcliffe's best moments, strangely, come during the infamous epilogue. He actually kind of sells what was a ridiculous bit of cheese in the book, raising my opinion of him significantly because... well, if you can make that work, what can't you do?

A bittersweet end to the saga, on the whole. David Yates direction is sumptious and intelligent (Snape's death in particular is magnificently framed), the effects are overwhelmingly superb and the supporting cast do marvels with the meagre crusts they are thrown. And yet, one is left with a nagging feeling that it could have done more. My generation has known the inhabitants of the wizarding world longer than we've known most of our friends, it was hard to let some of them go without a real goodbye. But, for better or worse, we have indeed said goodbye to the boy who lived and several of his friends who didn't.


7/10

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