Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt. 1- Bringing out David Yates' best
The Harry Potter saga has had some ups and downs. The first, Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, was sort of nostalgic for me, because I was nineteen and getting out of childhood when I saw it in theatres during the holidays in 2001, but it stood as a reminder of the joy of the first day of school, making new friends, and eating chocolate treats. It looked at wizardry through a lense of innocence, reacting with wonderment as a spell works the first time. Depicting young wizards lent the film an element of escapism, which can't be undermined, given the first film came out mere weeks after September 11th. In hindsight, though, the setpiece of Hogwarts, with its witchcraft and wizardry, ultimately upstaged the character development for me in Sorceror's Stone and Chamber of Secrets.
Prisoner of Azkaban was the first time I read the book, then watched the movie. So the film felt really hurried to me, but at very least it started to show the characters as teens, shirts untucked, hair toustled, voices deep. Daniel Radcliffe as a coming of age Harry started to remind me of Noah Taylor as the adolescent David Helfgott in Shine, a teenager trying to make sense of his enormous abilities.
When Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out, we really started to see characters colored in. Azkaban added color to some of the characters (to make a Pleasantville metaphor), but the fourth installment really showed its subject wizards as vulnerable humans whose magic wouldn't always get them out of a jam. It set the bar high when it came out, and I judged the next two films against that standard.
Now comes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Volume 1. Here, we have Harry, Ron, and Hermoine narrowly escaping Death Eaters with a last-minute apparation charm, and spending much of the film alone in the barren countryside and bleak forests of rural England.
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) will spend what would have been his seventh year at Hogwarts searching for the seven horcruxes that brought Voldemort back to power. I vaguely remembered from the sixth film that Harry and Dumbledore had found one such Horcrux, and were attempting to bring about its destruction when Severus Snape came in and cast a spell that sent Dumbledore over the ledge of a building.
By all accounts, Snape (Alan Rickman) appeared to be deceptive (his gesture to Potter to remain quiet suggested that everything was going to be alright, that he was going to do the right thing finally....and then Snape kills him). And as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows opened with him passing through a gate to enter Voldemoort's lair and sit down with the Death Eaters for a council meeting concerning the extermination of one of his fellow Hogwarts professors, I remember thinking to myself..."You filth, Snape...You dirty scum... I let you have the benefit of a doubt all these years, I told myself you had a troubled childhood, but there's no excuse for this!"
I think of all the bad teachers who have deceived me in my experience with education, and none of them are as appalling in their betrayal as Snape. Everyone who read the seventh book tells me there's more to it than him being a henchman for Voldemort....yeah, that may be so, but the evidence I have so far is that Dumbledore, one of the most powerful good wizards, lies dead in his grave because of Snape, his wand waiting with him in his grave to be stolen by Voldemoort.
As practically every critic in the country has mentioned in their review, you have to come into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 with a working knowledge of the previous six books/movies. You don't get much background information. We know that Dumbledore is dead, Voldemoort (Ralph Fiennes) is gathering his forces, he has his deputies as headmaster of Hogwarts and as the head of the Ministry of Magic. In other words, no place is safe anymore. If you don't abide by Voldemoort's rule, you get a spell cast on you and you're fed to a snake.
Harry does have one brief happy event early in the film; the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delaceur. I think seeing characters from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire immediately gave the film a good foundation; I was reminded of how powerful and moving that experience was on Thanksgiving night of 2005, and sure enough, Deathly Hallows 1 was on track to return me to that experience. Early in the film, Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Bill, Fleur, Fred and George, Mad Eye, Lupin, and several other beloved J.K. Rowling wizards are attempting to flee from Order of the Phoenix headquarters to the Weasley's new rural residence without getting caught by He Who Must Not Be Named. In order to do this, they all drink potions that make them transfigure into Harry Potter.
The film does away with certain creatures who had brought some of the fantastical charm to the first two Harry Potter installments. These characters get gallant send-offs, though, working up to their last breaths to protect Harry from the Dark Lord. Seeing it with Blake and a lady friend exacerbated the emotional impact of the said sequences, even as the first one was downplayed.
After Harry succeeds in cracking the clues that lead them to the first Horcrux, they find it not so easy to destroy; rather, it cannot merely be smashed. Harry and Hermoine (Emma Watson) pour over books to try to find an answer for whether there is some loophole that could bring about a horcrux's demise. Hermoine recalls the instance where Harry had to defeat the snake back in the Chamber of Secrets (I remember that, when I was an undergraduate and Harry was a lad of twelve), and he had used a sword that was enshrined there. So basically, they need to access only that sword, and it's capable of permeating whatever spell the Dark Lord has cast over the Horcrux.
They find one of the horcruxes in Sirius Black's old house. Harry, Ron, and Hermoine are burdened with taking it with them wherever they go, as they can't let it out of their sight until they figure out how to destroy it. The horcrux, of course, starts to have some ramifications, as its energy brings about mistrust of each other. Ron (Rupert Grint) watches Harry and Hermoine think of ways to break its spell, and immediately assumes she shares something more significant with him than she does with Ron. So Ron jumps ship for a while, but not before a spectacular argument with Harry and Hermoine about continuing Dumbledore's mission. Ron's been listening to the reports on transistor radio about wizards being killed by the Dark Lord's army, and he can't bear to be away from his family anymore.
Harry and Hermoine continue alone. I have always been fascinated by their friendship, which may have been protected by the very fact it's platonic. They are true friends who would do anything for each other, and in that sense it's even more stable than romance, I think. The scene where they slow-danced to contemporary blues in their makeshift tent was not only one of the great scenes of this film, but of the franchise for me. No matter what went on out there, they had each other.
Harry manages to find the sword, hidden deep under a frozen pond, for which he strips down to his underwear before jumping in to retrieve.
Harry's red-headed sidekick makes a much welcome return, and when between the two of them they decide to try to access the sword's powers to dismantle the horcrux, we see the horcrux unleash some unsettling visions for Ron. It is an image of Hermoine, listing bulletpoint all of his inadequacies. She talks about him being the sixth of six boys, when his mom wanted a girl so badly. (Though Ginny would follow.) She talks of him never having any reason for a woman to want to date him, and followed this up with an open-mouthed kiss with a vision of Harry. Even as it is only that, a vision, I can see where this would drive Ron to the brink of jealousy and despair. He gets so little good fortune in the Harry Potter books, but at least he got Hermoine.
Though the real Harry, standing by and observing the same vision, implores that Ron realize it's a lie, we can see where Ron would imagine Hermoine thinking these things. And, for what it's worth, Harry and Hermoine seem really into it while making out in the Horcrux vision.
Will Ron summon up the courage to destroy the horcrux rather than take it out on his best friend and girlfriend?
Oh, speaking of Ginny, the film continued to explore Harry's actual romance with the younger sister of Ron. I've been watching the writing develop on the wall between Harry and Ginny since seeing Order of the Phoenix, and have been observing the clues in the fifth book as well. The Harry and Ginny scenes in Half-Blood Prince were crackling with restrained sensuality, and it's nice to see them, momentarily, act on their love for each other in that early moment of the seventh film.
Oh, man, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was an adventure. It may have had longer periods of stillness than any other Potter film, but it punctuated the film with moments of real action and raw emotion. Director David Yates had a good start with Order of the Phoenix, graduated to great with Half-Blood Prince, and now arrives at outstanding with Deathly Hallows, not without the help of book author J.K. Rowling, screenwriter Steve Kloves, and cinematographer Eduardo Serra, as well as a talented cast. I look forward to reading the last of the fifth book, the sixth, and the seventh before Hallows Part 2 comes in July. Not only is Hallows 1 the best movie of 2010, but it sets the bar pretty high for anything else on the year's slate to unseat it.
Four stars.
Prisoner of Azkaban was the first time I read the book, then watched the movie. So the film felt really hurried to me, but at very least it started to show the characters as teens, shirts untucked, hair toustled, voices deep. Daniel Radcliffe as a coming of age Harry started to remind me of Noah Taylor as the adolescent David Helfgott in Shine, a teenager trying to make sense of his enormous abilities.
When Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out, we really started to see characters colored in. Azkaban added color to some of the characters (to make a Pleasantville metaphor), but the fourth installment really showed its subject wizards as vulnerable humans whose magic wouldn't always get them out of a jam. It set the bar high when it came out, and I judged the next two films against that standard.
Now comes Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Volume 1. Here, we have Harry, Ron, and Hermoine narrowly escaping Death Eaters with a last-minute apparation charm, and spending much of the film alone in the barren countryside and bleak forests of rural England.
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) will spend what would have been his seventh year at Hogwarts searching for the seven horcruxes that brought Voldemort back to power. I vaguely remembered from the sixth film that Harry and Dumbledore had found one such Horcrux, and were attempting to bring about its destruction when Severus Snape came in and cast a spell that sent Dumbledore over the ledge of a building.
By all accounts, Snape (Alan Rickman) appeared to be deceptive (his gesture to Potter to remain quiet suggested that everything was going to be alright, that he was going to do the right thing finally....and then Snape kills him). And as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows opened with him passing through a gate to enter Voldemoort's lair and sit down with the Death Eaters for a council meeting concerning the extermination of one of his fellow Hogwarts professors, I remember thinking to myself..."You filth, Snape...You dirty scum... I let you have the benefit of a doubt all these years, I told myself you had a troubled childhood, but there's no excuse for this!"
I think of all the bad teachers who have deceived me in my experience with education, and none of them are as appalling in their betrayal as Snape. Everyone who read the seventh book tells me there's more to it than him being a henchman for Voldemort....yeah, that may be so, but the evidence I have so far is that Dumbledore, one of the most powerful good wizards, lies dead in his grave because of Snape, his wand waiting with him in his grave to be stolen by Voldemoort.
As practically every critic in the country has mentioned in their review, you have to come into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 with a working knowledge of the previous six books/movies. You don't get much background information. We know that Dumbledore is dead, Voldemoort (Ralph Fiennes) is gathering his forces, he has his deputies as headmaster of Hogwarts and as the head of the Ministry of Magic. In other words, no place is safe anymore. If you don't abide by Voldemoort's rule, you get a spell cast on you and you're fed to a snake.
Harry does have one brief happy event early in the film; the wedding of Bill Weasley and Fleur Delaceur. I think seeing characters from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire immediately gave the film a good foundation; I was reminded of how powerful and moving that experience was on Thanksgiving night of 2005, and sure enough, Deathly Hallows 1 was on track to return me to that experience. Early in the film, Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Bill, Fleur, Fred and George, Mad Eye, Lupin, and several other beloved J.K. Rowling wizards are attempting to flee from Order of the Phoenix headquarters to the Weasley's new rural residence without getting caught by He Who Must Not Be Named. In order to do this, they all drink potions that make them transfigure into Harry Potter.
The film does away with certain creatures who had brought some of the fantastical charm to the first two Harry Potter installments. These characters get gallant send-offs, though, working up to their last breaths to protect Harry from the Dark Lord. Seeing it with Blake and a lady friend exacerbated the emotional impact of the said sequences, even as the first one was downplayed.
After Harry succeeds in cracking the clues that lead them to the first Horcrux, they find it not so easy to destroy; rather, it cannot merely be smashed. Harry and Hermoine (Emma Watson) pour over books to try to find an answer for whether there is some loophole that could bring about a horcrux's demise. Hermoine recalls the instance where Harry had to defeat the snake back in the Chamber of Secrets (I remember that, when I was an undergraduate and Harry was a lad of twelve), and he had used a sword that was enshrined there. So basically, they need to access only that sword, and it's capable of permeating whatever spell the Dark Lord has cast over the Horcrux.
They find one of the horcruxes in Sirius Black's old house. Harry, Ron, and Hermoine are burdened with taking it with them wherever they go, as they can't let it out of their sight until they figure out how to destroy it. The horcrux, of course, starts to have some ramifications, as its energy brings about mistrust of each other. Ron (Rupert Grint) watches Harry and Hermoine think of ways to break its spell, and immediately assumes she shares something more significant with him than she does with Ron. So Ron jumps ship for a while, but not before a spectacular argument with Harry and Hermoine about continuing Dumbledore's mission. Ron's been listening to the reports on transistor radio about wizards being killed by the Dark Lord's army, and he can't bear to be away from his family anymore.
Harry and Hermoine continue alone. I have always been fascinated by their friendship, which may have been protected by the very fact it's platonic. They are true friends who would do anything for each other, and in that sense it's even more stable than romance, I think. The scene where they slow-danced to contemporary blues in their makeshift tent was not only one of the great scenes of this film, but of the franchise for me. No matter what went on out there, they had each other.
Harry manages to find the sword, hidden deep under a frozen pond, for which he strips down to his underwear before jumping in to retrieve.
Harry's red-headed sidekick makes a much welcome return, and when between the two of them they decide to try to access the sword's powers to dismantle the horcrux, we see the horcrux unleash some unsettling visions for Ron. It is an image of Hermoine, listing bulletpoint all of his inadequacies. She talks about him being the sixth of six boys, when his mom wanted a girl so badly. (Though Ginny would follow.) She talks of him never having any reason for a woman to want to date him, and followed this up with an open-mouthed kiss with a vision of Harry. Even as it is only that, a vision, I can see where this would drive Ron to the brink of jealousy and despair. He gets so little good fortune in the Harry Potter books, but at least he got Hermoine.
Though the real Harry, standing by and observing the same vision, implores that Ron realize it's a lie, we can see where Ron would imagine Hermoine thinking these things. And, for what it's worth, Harry and Hermoine seem really into it while making out in the Horcrux vision.
Will Ron summon up the courage to destroy the horcrux rather than take it out on his best friend and girlfriend?
Oh, speaking of Ginny, the film continued to explore Harry's actual romance with the younger sister of Ron. I've been watching the writing develop on the wall between Harry and Ginny since seeing Order of the Phoenix, and have been observing the clues in the fifth book as well. The Harry and Ginny scenes in Half-Blood Prince were crackling with restrained sensuality, and it's nice to see them, momentarily, act on their love for each other in that early moment of the seventh film.
Oh, man, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was an adventure. It may have had longer periods of stillness than any other Potter film, but it punctuated the film with moments of real action and raw emotion. Director David Yates had a good start with Order of the Phoenix, graduated to great with Half-Blood Prince, and now arrives at outstanding with Deathly Hallows, not without the help of book author J.K. Rowling, screenwriter Steve Kloves, and cinematographer Eduardo Serra, as well as a talented cast. I look forward to reading the last of the fifth book, the sixth, and the seventh before Hallows Part 2 comes in July. Not only is Hallows 1 the best movie of 2010, but it sets the bar pretty high for anything else on the year's slate to unseat it.
Four stars.