When we were young
So that’s me. Ten years and out. I picked up my first Harry Potter novel just a few months over ten years ago, which was right around the time the first trailer for the first Harry Potter film made its appearance. You know where it went from there, as the twin threads of books and films wound their way together over the ensuing decade. Somehow, we all know the story, and in the Pottermonium at the movie theatre tonight, lost amid a throng of Potter-faithful, I was reminded of all those times before – but never more than in that summer of 2007 – when we all stood together, subtly united; card-carrying alumni of a school that does not exist. I suppose we all wish we’d really gone there. More than this, I wish these books had been around when I was Harry’s age.
But that’s a small regret, and not troublesome. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two, the last of the films, is magnificent. It suffers by the corollary flaw of its kindred, Deathly Hallows 1: that film did not properly have an ending, and Part 2 does not properly have a beginning, and ultimately these two halves are less extricable than the Kill Bills or the Lords of the Rings. But no matter. Part 2 reminded me of nothing so much as tumbling down a mountainside, a great gathering of force and power. Its beginning might seem muted and almost ordinary, but by the time our cartwheel towards the end of all things has reached a good speed, our breath is surely and cleanly taken away.
For the grand finale of an 8-film saga, and a movie not lacking in enormous visuals and epic goings-on, I was impressed at how small – and even, in some ways, subtle – Deathly Hallows 2 felt. It is, after all, a story largely confined to a single location and a fixed, previously-introduced cast of characters; as an epic, the Potterdammerung is a remarkably personal one. There is a minor fracas at the outset involving Gringott’s and a dragon – and a war-whoop from me when Hermione, in full-throttle fetish gear and wet hair no less, leaps onto that dragon – the best plans are always the mad ones, aren’t they?? – and this is followed by a bit of buildup as both Harry and Voldemort realize that they are in freefall towards an unavoidable final clash at the most appropriate place in the world for such things, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
From this point forward, however, Deathly Hallows 2 is wonderfully specific in its goals. There’s a good team, and a bad team, and a battlefield. There’s a hero, and a villain, and there is something that must be done – a string of somethings, in the case of Harry and the Horcruxes – in order to blow up the Death Star. Director David Yates, now responsible for the success of the entire back half of the Harry Potter franchise, has crafted a final film with little ornamentation or affect, preferring instead a ghost-grey retelling – like what the survivors will be telling their grandkids around the fire, many years hence – of what went down at the Battle of Hogwarts.
The delights, then, are in all the details, and in how Yates pays out the gossamer lines of character and emotion that have been slowly accumulating for these last ten years. I have said it before and I will reiterate: regardless of what you think of the story of the Harry Potter books and films – surely, to some, just not their cup of tea – one would be a fool to ignore the achievement of this franchise on its many other merits. Firstly, as filmcraft, the Potter movies are as handsomely and sturdily made as British sailing ships. Secondly, more importantly, the act of will – the act of sheer, mad faith – of keeping this group of children together for ten years to watch them grow up, means that – yes – when Neville Damn Longbottom goes after that snake, we are damn well gonna cheer. We’d have watch-gears where our hearts should be, if we didn’t.
It is in this that the magnificent machinery of the complete Harry Potter project becomes plain. In one landmark scene, for example, the Trio – Harry, Ron, Hermione, clutched together like hands at a funeral – fight their way across the battlefield to reach the other side. As they move, we realize that every character they are passing – every character struggling, rallying, dying – is one with whom we are intimately familiar. The entire Harry Potter world, nurtured and humanized in a nearly 20-hour film project, is here in one place, and it’s fighting for its life. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two, plays out on – and counts upon – the accrued momentum of not one film, nor even two, but all eight. As such, DH2 is a single-handed act of storytelling ballsiness that is franchise-defining, even here, in the final hour.
McGonagall! Minerva McGonagall is extaordinary in this film. May I single this out? I learn that Dame Maggie Smith was ill and in quite a bit of pain during filming, but felt it was important to see the series through to its end. Warwick Davis, too, is finally brought to the foreground after seven films of cameos, sinking his fangs into a new role as Griphook that is legimitately one of the showpiece performances of the entire film series. The same level of commitment is in evidence across the group of performers, though perhaps no more so than from Alan Rickman, and Daniel Radcliffe. Both actors take their characters to their natural conclusions with such startling emotional nakedness that one almost feels as though they weren’t playing up to their true level until this film.
I miss the complex web of character beats between the Trio that made up Deathly Hallows 1; there’s no time for such things here, and Ron and Hermione share a mighty clinch but are otherwise relegated to support status. Instead we have a thrilling extended flashback for Snape, and a nice aside with Ciaran Hinds as Dumbledore’s brother, and a grand showpiece of Ralph Fiennes’ performance as Voldemort. We have a scene – two scenes, rather – in King’s Cross station which are remarkable, lighthearted, and wondrous.
It is a testament to J.K. Rowling’s design that so many years after muddily attributing Harry’s survival to the power of love, that same notion plays out so victoriously here. Every success our guys enjoy in the finale of Harry Potter happens because one character loves another, even a beat as simple as Narcissa Malfoy faking Harry’s death. One can imagine why poor Voldy is so confused, and ultimately so doomed. He’s an unhappy character lost in a happy story. Perhaps this is the root of my overwhelming, nearly giddy, joy.
Yes, joy. Even though, as everyone who has read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (surely, the finest of the books, the height of Rowling’s literary skill, and just one hell of a well-told story) knows, the things that happen as Hogwarts shatters like old porcelein are neither frivolous nor insignificant… yet I could not help finding myself, as I did when reading the book, taken away by a nearly inappropriate level of joy. Though it might be cloaked in many dark goings-on, the story of The Deathly Hallowsis nonetheless a forthright installment of a genre that Northrop Frye would have called the Mythos of Spring. We watch the wholesale revolution of the standing adult world by the young generation coming up from underneath, and as a result, this is a joyful tale. It is the story of a great person, and a great generation of people, all of whom we have watched and minded for years and years, coming into their own. And somehow – oh, wonderful words; oh magnificent lights and sounds – it always feels like we’ve gone along, too.
One more thing, something I have no real place to say but should say anyway. To Daniel, Emma, and Rupert: thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
Only love – only love – can leave such a mark. – “Magnificent”
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