It doesn’t seem that long ago when Professor Dumbledore had warned Harry Potter and his devoted audience of the impending doom: “Dark and difficult times lie ahead of us.” Dark and difficult times are finally here. And the end is near, but not quite here. The adaptation of the final book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, hit the theaters around the globe last week. As to why the end is not here, the conspicuous Part 1 attached to the movie title might answer it. In a probable attempt to milk the final drops of the cash cow that is the Harry Potter franchise, Warner Bros. decided to split the epic finale into two movies.
For fans, this works just fine. Warner Bros. might just have given us 14 movies from the very beginning. For those who have been following Harry Potter not from the best-selling books by J.K. Rowling but from the movies, it seems splitting the final book into movies works just as well. Now in his third Harry Potter film, director David Yates manages to treat the first half of the book as a complete and coherent story of its own.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 does not look like a film sliced into two. Yates captures the calm before the final storm that will mark the end of the Harry Potter stories. The penultimate film sets the tone of the epic finale, just like the first half of the book was a preparation to the action-packed final chapters.
The film will only be a disappointment to those who belatedly decide to jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon from the seventh film. We had seen in the previous film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, that Yates had made a brave decision to make newcomers feel unwelcome unlike the four directors before him. He continues his conviction here, hence making the film more about its characters than magical extravaganza.
Lost in the woods
It has become a tradition, even a cliché, to label the latest Harry Potter movie darker and more adult than the previous one. But clichés have a way of sneaking into film reviews. The film begins in an Orwellian world where Dark Lord Voldemort’s name is pronounced openly to the sheer horror of witches, wizards and even Muggles. Voldemort’s dark mark in the sky and the Death Eaters capture the essence of this apocalyptic world. The realization that things have changed so dramatically comes perhaps best with seeing our hero Harry Potter and his friends, Hermione and Ron, not in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the first time. There are no innocent school antics, no experienced wizards and witches to protect them from deadly spells, and sadly no Dumbledore to guide Harry Potter from the underbellies of darkness.
Seeing Harry Potter and co. lost and paranoid in the middle of the desolate English countryside as opposed to strutting behind the safe walls of Hogwarts hits harder when we see the three children as young adults. As Harry, Hermione and Ron bicker and fight about the Horcruxes they have to find and destroy, we can’t help feel the empty nest syndrome looming just around the corner.
It is at best sad to see these children we have watched over a decade become the equivalent of young GAP models. There is love, teenage angst, rebellion and hormones, something hard to watch at times akin to seeing your child become a teenager. The three know they have to destroy the Horcruxes, the objects containing fragments of Voldemort’s soul, to send the Dark Lord into oblivion. But they don’t know how. They no longer have the guiding magic of the elders. And there are few things sadder than seeing young wizards trying to find their way on their own.
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