7/16 Viewing Journal (review of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2")

As someone who has been keeping up with the Harry Potter film series without the benefit of having read author J.K. Rowling's mega-best-selling Potter books, I can pinpoint the exact moment at which I became more emotionally invested in the bespectacled boy wizard. It was in the very first scene of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, as Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), touchingly isolated, sat in a swing in an otherwise deserted playground as bullies taunted him over his parents' deaths. Understandably, Harry starts crying.

It's an opening of shocking emotional directness, especially coming after four films that primarily concerned themselves with Harry, redheaded pal Ron (Rupert Grint), and shrewd-beyond-her-years Hermione (Emma Watson) walking along the Hogwarts hallways and dispensing with exposition. (To be fair, the third film, Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, proved a vivid exception, although only on a post-Order of the Phoenix second viewing did its merits become clear to me.) It's no coincidence that this was the first scene in the series directed by British TV veteran David Yates (whose crackling BBC mini-series State of Play is, ironically, much more cinematic in style than the tepid theatrically released Hollywood remake helmed by Kevin MacDonald), and the Potter producers were smart in entrusting Yates with the three remaining post-Phoenix films in the series. His flair for immaculately composed fantasy spectacle and his foregrounding of performance nuance from both the young and seasoned members of the vast Potter cast have converted at least this muggle into a true-blue series fan.

So leave it to Yates, with his combination of visual magic and alertness to human feeling, to make a thoroughly rewarding film out of what is essentially a series of narrative payoffs in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates). Going into the film, I had no idea of the difficulties Yates and writer Steve Kloves faced in making this installment work as a stand-alone film, and that's not only because of my lack of familiarity with the original books. The thing is, critics raved about this series finale to a degree previously unprecedented in the series (its score on the review-compilation site Metacritic is an 87, which, if memory serves, is behind only two wide releases from all of 2010: The Social Network and Toy Story 3), and many reviews hyped it as being an extremely emotional cinematic experience, which didn't adequately prepare me for what Deathly Hallows: Part 2 really is on a narrative and character level. The movie is essentially a series of major narrative incidents and spectacular battles, with intermittent pauses for exposition, drawing upon our memories of moving scenes from all the previous films. There are way too many plot threads to tie up here for there to be any room for the kind of truly emotional grace notes like that aforementioned swing scene in Phoenix, or Harry's attempt to cheer up Hermione as she weeps in a quiet stairwell after seeing her crush Ron with another girl in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, or Harry's playful dance with Hermione to a Leonard Cohen song in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. And while it's spoiling nothing to say that characters we like die in Deathly Hallows: Part 2, only one of those is rooted in the emotional context of this film and this film only (in non-spoiler fashion, I'll just say the person whose deathbed tears provide a window into his/her past).

While airing out my reasons for why this is only my fifth favorite in the eight-film series, I might as well add that I'm still undecided as to whether Kloves has been an asset or a liability to the series overall. This is the first Potter film since the so-so fourth entry, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, to have a handful of dramatically inert exposition-driven scenes (also: not a good idea to put one of those scenes in the first ten minutes, even if John Hurt is involved), and it's telling that the only film in the series that works entirely on its own as a stand-alone, meaning that it has a beginning, middle, and end that work on a thematic, emotional, narrative, and fantasy-genre level, is Phoenix, the only one not written by Kloves (Michael Goldenberg did the more film-narrative-friendly adapting there). At the same time, though, the two films preceding Deathly Hallows: Part 2 have really strong character work in them, and they were written by Kloves. And the guy wrote Wonder Boys, which definitely counts for something.

At any rate, I don't intend for my nitpicks to make it sound like Deathly Hallows: Part 2 is a disappointment. The narrative stakes are raised to an epic level entirely appropriate for the series' ending, and Yates makes the action set pieces spectacularly inventive. His classical visual approach prevents the visual effects from ever becoming too overwhelming or wearying, and he instead lets the biggest scenes play out as a series of small, wondrous surprises (my favorite may be the first-act Gringott's Bank sequence, in which a trip to get into the evil Bellatrix Lastrange's vault leads to a tense bit of undercover work, then to a pleasantly dizzying roller-coaster ride into the bank's subterranean depths, then to a treasure trove of multiplying jewels and goblets, and only then does a dragon come into play; my description is hardly doing it justice).

Since this movie asks less of the central trio of Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson than the three Potter films immediately preceding it (though it must be said again that they've grown into very solid young actors, Radcliffe especially), Deathly Hallows: Part 2 allows some of those great supporting Brits to really step up and strut their stuff. Helena Bonham Carter is stealthily funny in that bank sequence wherein Bellatrix has essentially become Hermione's puppet, and Ralph Fiennes intelligently modulates master villain Voldemort's chilling line readings (notice that his voice is much less trembly after Voldemort believes he has gained the upper hand over Harry). But a badass Maggie Smith and Alan Rickman really dominate here. Rickman's skill at making Dark Arts professor Snape a compelling enigma has been evident even in the disposable early films, and the payoff Kloves delivers in revealing who Snape really is makes for the strongest character work in this notably light-on-character-nuance series entry (Yates and editor Mark Day also deserve credit for making a pivotal Snape-centered sequence so beautiful and collage-like for a blockbuster of this size).

So obviously, the high accomplishment of filmmaking and acting here cannot be denied. And if Deathly Hallows: Part 2 feels a bit more like a magnificently mounted and entirely absorbing ending to what has come before than something that stands on its own two legs, it's worth mentioning that most franchises are entirely inept when it comes to conclusions. Remember that third Matrix? Or that final Austin Powers where it felt like Mike Meyers played everyone but Beyonce's character? Or the insanely convoluted third Pirates, which was meant to finish the series before Jerry Bruckheimer remembered he liked money? Point taken, right? So there's no reason for me to be too hard on ol' Harry. I'll miss him. And chances are, I'll be catching up with those goshdarn books. Grade: B+

For Potter-philes, here's my personal best-to-worst rankings of the movies, which I realize is a pretty idiosyncratic one:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007, David Yates): A
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron): A-
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010, David Yates): A-
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009, David Yates): A-
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates): B+
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2004, Mike Newell): B-
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002, Chris Columbus): C+
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001, Chris Columbus): C