Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 26, 2010
The Critic's Corner
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1”
David Laprad
About 90 minutes into “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 1,” I sent my daughter a text message. She’s a big fan of the series, and had assured me it was a masterpiece, so she was crestfallen when she read the words “boring and incomprehensible.”
My daughter replied with what she thought was a rhetorical question: “You re-watched all the other films first, right?”
She wasn’t kidding.
The “Harry Potter” movies long ago ceased to be for casual viewers. If you haven’t read the books, or made the grave error, as I did, of missing one of the recent sequels, then you’ll be lost as you watch “Deathly Hollows Part 1,” the first of two movies based on the final book in the “Potter” series. The film is a whirlwind of bizarre names, flashbacks and self-referential dialogue. Worse, the director of the series since the fifth installment, David Yates, gave in to the temptation to shake his camera during the action scenes and apparently employed a hyperactive editor who’d stopped taking his ADHD medicine.
When you have to read a plot synopsis on Internet Movie Database to make any sense of what you’ve just seen, you can rest assured the movie was not made with you in mind. Characters appear in one scene and never appear again, only for someone to mention their death took place off-screen; Harry Potter uses a magical artifact not seen in the previous movies but mentioned in the books; and Hermione, one of Harry’s friends, has the ability to instantly transport herself to another location, but still runs away from or fights bad guys.
All I was able to intuit on my own was that the evil Lord Voldemort continues his pursuit of Potter, and Harry, Ron and Hermione continue their search for the remaining Horcruxes in which Voldemort hid the fragments of his soul. If they can find and destroy them before Voldemort kills Potter, they’ll presumably annihilate the dark wizard.
There was a time when I was a fan of the “Potter” movies, too. Each one was a self-contained fantasy adventure that included hints of a bigger battle down the road. But the simple and adventurous days of Quidditch matches, invisible cloaks and sneaking down the forbidden passages of Hogwarts are over, and we’re left with Harry, Ron and Hermione brooding over God knows what in one barren wilderness scene after another.
I kept waiting for the magic that made the earlier Potter films fun, but it never came. When the ending arrived, I stared at the screen and blinked, surprised the movie had ended on a weak, anti-climactic note. I thought Hedwig, Harry Potter’s owl, might show up with the missing final reel, but she never did.
Although I didn’t care for “Deathly Hollows Part 1” as a whole, I admired individual parts. The acting continues to be extraordinary across the board.
The look on Severus Snapes’ face as Voldemort tortures and then kills one of the teachers at Hogwarts is priceless. Although aligned with the evil lord, Snapes’ eyes betray at least some compassion for his friend.
Also, the film has a beautiful, washed out look that complements the dark nature of the events that take place. And I liked the opening scenes, during which Hermione erases herself from the memory of her parents, and Harry stands outside his home, the street lamp Dumbledore had lit up with his wand in the first movie standing dark. The sense of sadness, reluctantly moving on and approaching doom is overpowering.
The thing I admire the most about the Potter movies, however, are the three actors who spent their adolescent years inhabiting the roles of Harry, Ron and Hermione. As the themes in the movies matured, so did they, and as the films grew increasingly dramatic, their acting improved. To have played these roles through their formative years, and to have made it through all of the movies without dropping out or taking a break, amounts to one of the most impressive accomplishments of any group of actors in the history of cinema.
If I’ve ruffled your feathers, then you’re probably a fan of the “Potter” series, and this review wasn’t meant for you. Besides, you probably saw “Death Hollows Part 1” during its opening weekend, and nothing anyone says will sway your love of the movie. Rather, I wanted to warn those of you who aren’t fans of the books, or who have missed one or two of the movies, that you’d better watch the previous six films before seeing the seventh. My daughter says you’ll be glad you did.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad@hamiltoncountyherald.com.
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