PART 1: The Pensieve, or Why These Stories Matter
13 years of flying motorcycles, Owl post, chatty hats, trolls in the dungeon, pissed-off chess pieces, spirited house-elves, flying hippogriffs, all-knowing chalices, foggy prophecies, and wand duels, all doing their business in the shadows of the twin monoliths of Love and Hate, hell, Life and Death, and for all of this sound and fury my chief thought in regards to both JK Rowling's staggering Harry Potter bildungsroman and the hugely satisfying final film adaptation has to do with silence.
If you've ever been to a midnight movie premiere, be it HP or Hairspray, you know what a noisy affair these things are; give hundreds of teenagers free caffeine and T-shirts and stick them in a crowded space for four or so hours, and you've got pandemonium on the plate. It's not just that we act like the rowdy adolescents we are; we act like the rowdy four-year-olds that tend to piss off adolescents. In the two hours between our admittance to the theatre and the start of the screening, childish games of MASH, rock paper scissors, and "Never Have I Ever" were going down in almost every row. Faux spells were being cast with faux wands, slow claps seizing up, pointless shhhhhh's scattered about. Even the Wave reared its ugly head for a bit.
Around 12:10, when we hadn't even gotten into the previews (late starts--another midnight premiere tradition), a hearty chorus of boos ensued. Then the previews. Overwhelming laughter and catcalls for Cowboys and Aliens which, believe it or not, is not billed as a comedy. Then came an actual comedy trailer, for some God-awful-3D-I-wish-I-were-Despicable Me-flick called Arthur Christmas. Let's just say we weren't feeling the seasonal cheer. With each preview the snarky conversations and blatant catcalls escalated, the commotion escalated, and by the final few it had ballooned into an all-consuming bedlam over which I couldn't hear myself think, much less whatever the voice-over guy was saying.
Then total blackness. After a moment, the ubiquitous WB logo came up. By the time it had vanished, you could hear a pin drop. There had been no agitated shushing, no emphatic jabbing, no "Oh my God, its starting!" Everything simply got dead quiet. For men in bootstraps fighting CGI slime and dancing animals and Santy Claus we showed nothing but disdain, but when it came time to reunite with Harry Potter and his friends, there was an unforced air of total, nearly reverential respect. Proof that, for all the digitized dumbing-down our ADD-addled generation has faced, not always but often, when you tell us a story that's actually worth hearing, we'll listen. Ultimately, that's perhaps the greatest give the Generous Jo gave our generation-- her trust.
I was going to attempt to strip this next paragraph of ostentatious soapbox-ing, but I'll tell you right now that that's about as likely as me getting Adele concert tickets or a girlfriend. Look, the fact is, art at its best isn't just a chance to live other lives, explore other universes. It's a powerful aid to human empathy. We deal with fictional love and fabricated death far more often then we do with honest love and actualized death. Compassion is a character trait, yes, but it also acts like a muscle that needs occasionally strengthening--thus, is it through witnessing the trials and triumphs of made-up characters who we come to care about that we expand our capacity to care about people in our own lives.
In the same vein, if our generation has been oft accused of chronic apathy, it's only because of the apathetic nature of our modern artists. It's not that Michael Bay, Stephanie Meyer and co. are entirely untalented; it's just that they underestimate our generation, deeming us narrow-minded and small-hearted, and thus only worthy of works that traffic in cheap wish-fulfillment instead of true feeling. When people declare their love for, say, Transformers 3 or LMFAO, it's with a slightly embarrassed, knowing air---they enjoy it, but they secretly believe they deserve better. So did JK Rowling. She gave us words to get swept up in, worlds to get lost in, and the greatest gift any artist can give us, characters to care deeply about. Sure, her descriptions are occasionally lacking, and her pacing is a little off every now and then, but and yet I'd pick her over the cold perfection of Conrad or Melville any day. In a world where terror and paranoia are now legitimately integrated into the common fabric of our everyday lives, we risk desensitizing ourselves so as not to feel the agony of it all. But JK Rowling, wise woman that she is, knew that the price of love is loss, the price of peace is pain, and the price of growth is sacrifice. And she knew that we needed to know it. And, by creating Hogwarts and filling it with all the right people, she gave us a bit of an education, too.
Potter is not just a cultural milestone, it's an exquisitely constructed bridge between highbrow and lowbrow. As with that other great Brit import, The Beatles, everyone from the most pretentious college professor to the crudest of first graders can get into this. It's moral in an age of amorality, daring in an age of cowardice. I speak in the present tense because this isn't over yet. If--and the tears come freely as I write this sentence-if anyone ever mentions that pop art is dead and the standards of my generation are trending ever downward, to them I say this; "Accio, Harry".
Part 2: It All Ends-The Review
Oncemore, silence is golden. In the final hour of Deathly Hallows, Part 2, when Harry finally learns the nature of his fate and confronts it, director David Yates lets the soundtrack bottom out and gives us only Harry's footsteps. It's a fitting symbol for the very nature of this glorious Harry Potter movie business; even in the shaky first films, these movies never forgot that this was really the story of a boy on a journey. Even the weaker installments, lop-sided and somewhat lacking as they were, could never be accused of a deficit of heart. Indeed, heart, in my opinion, is what saved the first installment of The Deathly Hallows from crashing and burning entirely. Packed with part-one filler and allowing outside opinions of the actors and characters to seep into the storytelling, it was saved only by a few tremendously realized setpieces and a truly committed cast. Part 2 ain't quite perfect, but it sure as hell don't need no rescuing either--its an electrifyingly accomplished finale that thrums with gratitude for the fans, love for the characters, and faith in JK Rowling's eternal wisdom.
You know where we left off--or I hope you do, for this film doesn't play catch-up, not for a second. Harry, Hermione, and Ron (if you need me to tell you who plays them, go to therapy) are hunting for Horcruxes, parts of Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) that enable him to live eternally as long as they exist. Of course the hunt will bring them to Hogwarts, and of course there will be a final battle of staggering proportions.
So battle royale it is, for most of the film as well. After one last wonderfully measured moment of suspense involving a shifty goblin---you can sense the series gravitating on the edge one final time before it finally takes the plunge into chaos--Deathly Hallows is exclusively payoff, the total opposite of its predecessor. Yates doesn't go for an epic, Return of the King-esque finale, but instead gives us a spirited sprint to the bloody finish, and if his approach proves occasionally frustrating for those of us wishing for a few moments to say our goodbyes (some of our favorite characters don't even get a quick close-up), then there is still a sense that every moment that is onscreen is hugely important--everything's at stake here, and there's a definite sense of tense, almost competitive energy, as if every member of the cast and crew is hell-bent on going out with a bang. That they do. All the Oscar talk centers on Alan Rickman's Snape, and for good reason--he's perhaps Rowling's most vivid creation, a tragic antihero for the post-9/11 world, and when he stands center stage for the "Prince's Tale" sequence, its perhaps the most affecting stand-alone moment in the entire series. But the performances stupefy across the board. Maggie Smith and Julie Walters remind us just why they're fan favorites. Helena Bonham Carter takes her bitchy Bellatrix to the next level. All three Malfoys are imbued with shadings of regret and existential anguish we've never caught before. Ralph Fiennes's ballsily theatrical Voldemort has always been the stuff of controversy, but I think his high-wire act finally pays off here. Hell, even Michael Gambon makes the best of his limited, post-death screen-time, finally becoming the ebullient-but-erudite Dumbeldore we'd always hoped he'd be. To say Dan, Rupert, and Emma get better with each film has become redundant, but this truly is the pinnacle of their careers thud far. Ron and Hermione figure less prominently in the plot here than usual, but they make the most of their moments--especially that moment, if you know what I mean. Daniel Radcliffe is simply a marvel; you watch him seize control of the screen here and feel as if you've watched your own kid mature into a great man before your eyes. Acting like this is simply how it's done.
The behind-the-scenes department wasn't slacking off, either--the effects uncover some of the hidden poetry in Rowling's prose, the sets become a character in and of themselves, and the score is the best since John Williams gave up his conductor's baton several years ago. In fact, none of the (minor) issues with the film have anything to do with poor execution, just some slightly off-center ideas. An attempt to establish a new set of villains, the Carrow Twins, pretty much bombs. Voldemort and Harry's final duel crackles with a truly epic sense of dread and awe, until it segues into a briskly edited fistfight as intense as it is arbitrary. And the epilogue, while still deeply stirring, doesn't convey the depths of meaning that it did in the book. I don't knock the picture for being imperfect though. Anything made by a human being will be flawed, for we all are.
Is it the best adaptation of the series? Probably--almost all of the fan-treasured moments are fantastically rendered and received deafening applause at my screening. Yet, purely cinematically speaking, I'd deem it second best, just a step below the sublime Half-Blood Prince. Second and third viewings may change my mind, but the fact remains that this an explosively emotional The End worthy of all the hype. It gives us a lasting gift--it lets us get lost in this imaginary world one last time. The beauty of this glorious Potter synergy between Rowling, Radcliffe, Heyman, Yates, and the readers, viewers, and die-hard fans is this; these people and their lives are so vividly imagined that we can carry them with us, like a reverse deluminator that projects little pieces of light and beauty in a world where all things bright and beautiful too often flame out. Dumbledore, as always, said it best; “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” A-
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