Deathly Serious

Yes, my money was among the $125 million and then some that went toward the newest Harry Potter movie this past weekend. Before I get into discussing the film itself, I'd like to weigh in on the way book seven has been divided into two movies. Many have groused about this, saying it's nothing but a way to make more money. And there's no question that Warner Brothers is going to earn a lot doing it this way.

But I think this was probably the right thing to do for the story as well. Book seven was mammoth. And unlike the other books, which had fun side plots and character moments to entertain the reader, very little of book seven was superfluous. It was long, yes, but I felt it was also distilled down to the essentials. I don't think a single two-and-a-half hour film could have been made of the book without cutting a great deal of vital material.

This one film ran that long by itself, and while I would agree that perhaps you could find as much as 30 minutes to cut from it without doing tremendous harm, you would have to cut between 60 and 90 minutes before things would slim enough to pair with a similarly abridged Part 2 to create a single movie. I do not see that happening. In any case, I certainly would not have wanted to see that.

Others have also suggested that it still could have been one movie -- just a crazy-long one like The Return of the King special edition. Really, you should dream for something more realistic, like winning the lottery or world peace. Despite the most daring, line-overstepping content in these films yet, Deathly Hallows is essentially a kids' movie(s). Or at least, they're adult movies made with the full knowledge that a large number of kids will see them. No studio would ever make a film over three hours for such an audience, never mind one that would come closer to four.

So I support this decision to divide Deathly Hallows into two films, preserving more of the story in the process. Note that I support a two films approach in this instance. The notion that The Hobbit could or should somehow be stretched into two films is ludicrous to me.

But enough speaking in general terms; to the movie itself. This may be the best Potter film yet. Yes, there is a bit of slow moving dead weight in it -- that maybe-as-much-as-30-minutes-that-you-could-maybe-cut that I alluded to earlier. Some scenes in the film seem like they exist only so that a particular actor (Alan Rickman, for example) will get screen time when they otherwise would be absent completely until Part 2.

Then there's the dramatic paradox of the lengthy tent camping sequences. In both book and film, in his argument with Ron, Harry perfectly articulates the necessity for this: did you really think that they'd just be finding a Horcrux every other day and having a grand old adventure? This trio is on a long, difficult quest, with little knowledge of how they're actually supposed to fulfill that quest. It has to really be hard, and the struggle to even know where to begin the struggle is a big part of that.

Much of the camping material contains moving character content as well -- the jealousy brought about by the corrupting influence of the Horcrux, Ron's near-fatal accident, Harry visiting his parents' graves, and more. But it's an unfortunate conundrum that in bringing to life tedium and frustration on the screen and making the audience really feel that... that you really make them feel that they wish the movie would get on with it.

But really, that's about the only bad thing I can say about the entire affair. Because when the emotional moments in Deathly Hallows Part 1 do come -- and they come in dozens -- they land more powerfully than anything we've seen in six prior films. (Hey! Spoilers in the next paragraph -- of just this film and not the rest of the book, if you haven't read it.)

It begins in the very first scene of the film, when Hermione tearfully erases her parents' memories of her. (A moment powerfully echoed later when she has to cast the same spell on an enemy.) It ends with you somehow, against all odds, being moved by the death of Dobby, the Jar Jar Binks of the Harry Potter series. And in between, you feel everything from lows like the maiming of George Weasley and the departure of Ron from the trio, to highs like the tense heist to break into the Ministry of Magic, and Ron's moving speech upon his return to the trio. (I for one believed in the Ron-Hermione relationship more from this performance than I ever did reading the books.)

All together, it shows just how impossibly lucky the filmmakers got when they cast these three kids nearly a decade ago to embody Harry, Hermione, and Ron. The odds that at least one would turn out to be a tabloid-baiting flake? Or grow up to be incapable of the dramatic depth required in the later books (which hadn't even been written yet, so they couldn't even try to plan)? That all three would be here at the end, and so skilled in their roles, is next-to-impossible. But it makes the movie even richer for it, that it's been them all along and we're that invested.

I can really only scrounge around grasping at straws to find one other bad thing to say about the film, and that's my disappointment that they had to go to another composer, Alexandre Desplat, to provide the score. He's the fourth composer to work on Harry Potter, and while the themes John Williams provided originally do crop up as a token nod to constancy, it's still not what I ultimately would have hoped for.

The director of Deathly Hallows, David Yates, also directed the previous two installments, and he has had a long working relationship with composer Nicholas Hooper (whose Order of the Phoenix score I thought the best of the series). I'm not sure why he's absent for these final films, but I was looking forward to his return -- or failing that, the return of John Williams, who started it all. Desplat provides a good enough score, I suppose (I've not had a chance yet to really listen to it on its own), but I simply wouldn't choose to bring another new cook into the kitchen at this point.

Still, any quibbles I have with Deathly Hallows Part 1 are minor -- including the fact that it is ultimately incomplete (an obviously unavoidable consequence of breaking one narrative into two pieces). I rate the film an A-. It's sure to end up on my 10-best-of-2010 list in a month's time.