Review: HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART ONE

The long, sad end of the road

Look, at this point you’re either on board with Harry Potter or you’re not. Those who disdain the films (or the books) will find nothing in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One, to redirect them. Those who care about what’s going on here – and there are a lot of us – will continue to do so. Is there much purpose, then, in dissecting why this particular Harry Potter movie – instalment #7 of an 8-car scarlet train – is, in its way, rather exceptional, and in most ways more exceptional than the ones before it? Nah, not really. I might just as well indulge myself in a thousand words of Harry Potter erotica; it would reveal just as much about me, and about the film.

Incidentally, on that subject, Harry Potter 7 is the best Harry/Hermione fanfic ever written. It is as though, with one movie to go, and with (hey, total non-spoiler alert!) the gloomy spectre of Ron and Hermione consummating their helplessly vanilla non-chemistry in the finale, the writer and director (here, Mssrs. Kloves and Yates) decided to give one last, glorious drink of water to everyone who grew up thinking the coin should have flipped the other way, with Ron dying a hero’s death and the two H’s going off to make happy H-babies together. It is a grim reality of this film series, that Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe have grown up to have more sparks between their intertwined pinky fingers than Watson and Rupert Grint have had in six long movies. One cannot plan for everything; at least most of the kids grew up hot. And holy cow, Watson and Radcliffe’s energy in this film is hot.

But, about planning: it occurred to me while watching Deathly Hallows 1 that to have begun this franchise with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which seems ćons ago and ages away, and to have somehow landed, six films later, on something as mature, deft, and absorbing as Deathly Hallows – a film which seems of an entirely other echelon of storytelling than that original film, and yet startlingly and comfortingly of a piece with all of its forbears – is something of a modern filmmaking miracle. The series has a huge cast, an entire ecosystem of characters and connections that have been sustained longer and more successfully than, perhaps, has been done before in any other franchise. And at the middle of it all are the three kids: those three wonderful, watchable kids. It is certainly the most delightful, and significant, aspect of this project as a whole, the way that the Harry Potter films have repurposed 7-Up for the cosplay set. We have seen this small generation of wizards/actors grow up before our eyes, into the living, breathing adults they are now, and the filmmakers have successfully made that growth the living, breathing heart of the story.

Take, for example, one of Deathly Hallows‘ few significant inventions outside its source material. After Ron has departed Trio Tent in a huff, Harry and Hermione have a moment of innocent, affectionate play, largely to make themselves feel better. In the chaste iconography of the Harry Potter universe, their slowdance to a Nick Cave song (!) is essentially a sex scene, subbing in for the likelihood that on some of those long nights spent yearning for absent Ginny and Ron, the two remaining members of “The Trio” would have engaged in some sympathetic friend-sex. They’re lonely and they’re comfortable and their feelings are messy… and it is bloody fascinating. It’s fascinating because this sly wink towards a more adult understanding of physical intimacy feels infinitely more authentic than the naive abstinence claptrap of the Twilight movies, despite also standing within the middle of a movie about a magical war. Like the Yule Ball sequences in Goblet of Fire, Harry and Hermione’s relationship in Deathly Hallows is a real thing that would happen, if this thing were really happening.

Their quiet slowdance is bookended later on by a sequence of special-FX phantasmagoria as heightened as the earlier scene was naturalistic, when Ron returns to do battle with one of Voldemort’s evil Horcruxes to save the day. A gigantic somethingorother comes blasting out of the Horcrux in an imaginative, eye-opening repurposing of the content from the novel. In a fury of sound and noise, Ron is given a black vision of Harry and Hermione writhing together in silver and ink… and here’s this moment – a big, showy, Hollywoody moment – that turns entirely on Rupert Grint’s willingness to expose some dark corner of himself, and Watson and Radcliffe’s willingness to make the fuck out like they were the last two people on earth. And y’know what, it’s amazing how special a special effect can be, when the only thing you actually care about is what’s happening with the characters.

These two scenes are the best in the film, and they would not be possible if it were not for the richness that the three actors bring to the roles they’ve now been playing for ten years. Each has matured into a peculiar performer, and perhaps each of them will only ever be this good at playing these particular people. But I am hard-pressed to find a weak spot in the triangle: Radcliffe has evolved a crackling wit and a hardy egolessness, Watson can swing between fierceness and vulnerability in single line readings, and Grint is the most consistently surprising of the three, with an emotional availability that is sort of magical.

I found the film engrossing for reasons unrelated to its Harry Potterness, which surprised me as well – even de rigeur plot scenes like Voldemort conferring with his baddies to set up their evil schemes, to say nothing of Hermione obliviating her parents, or the freaky-deaky encounter with the snake at Godric’s Hollow. There is a dynamic range to the interminglings that hasn’t been here before. Dobby is a wholesale reinvention in this film, as is Kreacher; the elves are one of the highlights of the movie. The action sequences hit with crackling intensity, but are measured against more useful moments afterwards, where the characters survey their new emotional landscapes in the face of overwhelming loss. There are beats and moments and character pauses throughout that make this a lot more than the usual Harry Potter adaptation; tricking the book out into two films has returned us to a more considered pace than the harried frenzy of films three through six. This is a slow film, and the tempo works, giving weight and shade beyond mere action spectacle.

The principal flaw of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One, then, is just that Part One. The book was never designed to be split in the middle, and there simply isn’t any good place for the cut – the film puts its ending in what is perhaps the most likely spot overall, but the climax feels wasted and thin anyway, because it isn’t – of course – a climax. The ending of Part One is particularly egregious because it is completely unconnected to the principal drama of this film – the emotional trials that Harry, Hermione and Ron face when setting out on their final quest – and yet is also unconnected to the principal drama of the next film – namely, those Deathly Hallows. (The Hallows are introduced in an animated sequence that is lovely and rather perfect, but would also have been a poor place to end the film.)

And so the sails just run out of wind, and after an awkward denouement, we’re kicked into next summer without even so much as a “to be continued.” It’s a shame, as it will devalue the film as a whole for much of its audience, who will only remember that they left the theatre after Deathly Hallows, Part One, feeling rather flat. They’re not wrong. As with The Two Towers eight years ago, though, it’s largely futile to render a final judgment on HP7 at this point. It will be the first couple of hours of a five-hour movie, soon. And if the rest is as good as this start, this marvellous franchise will go out on its highest note.

This review is dedicated to Rebecca J. Wood. Seven down, douchey!