Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (David Yates, 2011)

[I guess I should issue a spoiler warning for this review, but honestly, if you've neither read the book nor seen the movie yet are still reading reviews hoping not to be spoiled, what the hell is wrong with you?]

Viewed as a referendum on the Harry Potter film franchise (to say nothing of my childhood), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 is bound to fail. With precious few exceptions, this series has favored exposition over organic growth, deflated climaxes and spotty special effects, and at times this franchise has been so lifeless that Britain's talent pool has been drained to give these films any weight at all. Numerous critics and admirers have remarked upon the franchise's consistency given the number of editors and directors that have taken on the material, but I think that is something of a detriment. Regardless of who's made these films, the studio has made sure that nothing, not even Alfonso Cuaron's "none more black" mise-en-scène, has rocked the boat. Hiring David Yates, a workman whose primary skill has been putting exposed film into cans, seemed the final push to make these movies as crowd-pleasingly safe as possible.

And yet, Deathly Hallows Part 2, like its predecessor, shows Yates not overcoming his flaws but offsetting them with narrow but powerful strengths. The final installment in this film franchise suffers the same overarching, aforementioned issues that plague all these films, and it also suffers from the convolution, calculated audience appeasement and rush-job pacing of Rowling's written conclusion. Yet for once, I can confidently say that few, if any, of the film's major flaws can truly be traced back to Yates, while a great deal of its moments of pure atmosphere and character are specifically the result of his hand.

As he revealed in the last film, Yates works best when he captures communication between characters without using words. His sense of epic action is stodgy and he has no gift for eking anything engaging out of the exposition-heavy dialogue of these movies (and the exposition only compounded in the installments he helmed), but when Yates lets minimal language and tone carry a scene over plodding speeches or finds the intimacy in the bombast of these massive setpieces, he shines brighter than anyone before him. Compare the lifeless exchange between Harry, Ron and Hermione in Bill's cottage to pretty much everything around it in the first 40 minutes to see where Yates' talent truly lies: a haunting opening of dementors hovering over Hogwarts as Snape silently overlooks the youth prison the school has become sent a genuine chill down my spine, and the terse exchange between Harry and the goblin Griphook, conveying menace and urgency instead of spelling out the details, evokes mood from as few words as possible.

These opening 40 minutes may be my favorite run of quality of the film series. The raid on the wizard bank Gringott's is both Yates' finest huge setpiece and a clever way of compartmenatlizing the action to feel big even as it's being more tightly managed, from the mine cart ride through the multiplying objects within Bellatrix Lestrange's vault, making for what feels like a demented Indiana Jones setpiece. Also, letting Helena Bonham Carter act like Emma Watson, including her breathy deliveries and incessant hesitation, was a scream. Yates subsequently gets the characters back to Hogwarts as quickly as possible and even blisters through a protracted moment in the book involving Dumbledore's brother, Aberforth (Ciaran Hinds). I was particularly grateful for the omission of Dumbledore's past, which arbitrarily drags the character through the muck and, worse, kills all momentum to do so. (It doesn't help that Rowling basically makes him into a closeted homosexual Nazi.) There are plenty of moments in this film calculated to raise a cheer, but I never had a bigger urge to clap than when Harry cuts off the coming monologue and says "I'm not interested in what happened between you and your brother."

Notably, the preparations for the final battle, which feature Professor McGonagall finally getting to unleash her pent-up aggression (her giddiness at summoning statues to fight is infectious) and the Order of the Phoenix rallying around Harry, are more interesting than the actual conflict. The ephemeral shield the professors summon to protect the school, a globule of energy that rolls like melting ice cream over the castle, is beautiful, but the actual exchanges of magic when that shield falls feel and look too much like whiz-bang fireworks.

And yet, Yates changes tack after a while, moving from his grandiose, slightly clumsy setpieces to remain with Harry, who moves around the battle to finish his mission to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes. Yates makes this work a great deal better than Rowling's writing did, with its haphazard oscillation between the full picture and Harry's quest at the expense of connection to either. True, there are some setups here, such as Fred and George confidently awaiting the coming horde, that would telephone incoming tragedy even for those who haven't read the book. Nevertheless, when Yates abandons his futile efforts to be an epic filmmaker, he fantastically mounts the sense of doom and loss hanging over the fight. In the book, the deaths feel somewhat cheap, brought up just to tug at the heartstrings in callously flat terms. Visually, these become elegiac moments of sorrow, the sight of Lupin and Tonks together in death or the Weasleys bewildered in grief over Fred more fundamentally troubling than the book ever let on.

By framing the battle in this manner, Yates magnifies the haunting moments where Harry learns just what he will have to do to defeat Voldemort. With his more broadly foreboding tone, Yates better incorporates the awkwardly placed yet utterly wrenching reveal of Snape's entire motivations as a character, a fractured memoryscape so well handled by Alan Rickman that he makes the sequence, truncated into its most plot-necessary elements, feel as devastating as Rowling's full text. What's more, Radcliffe does some fantastic silent acting as he comes to terms not only with the revelations of Snape's importance to Harry but the final, horrible reveal of the boy's responsibility. That long walk out into the Forbidden Forest to let Voldemort kill him made me shake with hurt and fear, though I knew damn well what would happen. The use of the Resurrection Stone only brought me further to the breaking point.

Moments like these made me wholly forgive the film's flaws. These quiet grace notes offset the obligatory thread resolutions and lopsided pacing to give me all I've ever wanted from these movies, a moment to simply appreciate these characters. Radcliffe, Watson and Grint say everything best when they say nothing at all, and I was infinitely happy to see Matthew Lewis finally get his moment to shine as Neville. Without the St. Mungo's scene from Order of the Phoenix to capture Neville's fears and furies, Lewis got unfairly shafted a few years back, but it is staggering to look at this handsome, convicted man when one thinks of the British-toothed, pudgy weakling we met shamelessly crawling around a train looking for a toad. Now we see a man purged of fear, so defiant he can confront Voldemort without flinching. While Harry is quietly resolving to die for his cause, it is Neville who emerges the action hero.

In the past (and present, and likely future) I've criticized the Harry Potter films for a sense of deflated tension, of perennial anticlimax, yet Yates deliberately films the end with a far more downbeat, human note than the book's epic sweep. Rather than pit Harry against Voldemort with an onlooking crowd waiting to cheer, Yates separates them as the others fight. I'm sure this is indicative of seeing the film on Sunday rather than a midnight Friday showing, but I found it worth noting that my crowd justifiably went nuts over Molly Weasley's big moment and Neville's blow to Nagini, but no one made a sound at the conclusion of Harry's and Voldemort's duel. It's not a moment of victory but a whispered release, a relieving knowledge that it's all over. It's a tone Yates carries into the aftermath, one not of revelry but reflection. Yates even manages to make that god-awful epilogue bearable, cheese, bad makeup and all.

Most importantly, Yates' presentation of the climax shows a clear understanding of the overriding hope and dream of the main characters locked in this epic, fated struggle: normalcy. Rowling quickly subverted the wonder of her own series to refashion the wizarding world into one with the same basic conflicts and human developments as our own, with admittedly mixed results. But if waywardly metaphorical takes on puberty or inevitable romances delayed for plot convenience didn't work, Rowling always had a steady hand on the humility of the Boy Who Lived and how badly he just wanted to get on with his life. I've often wondered why international wizards feature so rarely in this series, with only a cursory mention of continental wizards and no Americans whatsoever; but the thoroughly British sensibility of this series has never been more plainly evident.

Rowling's world is one where a power-regulating bureaucracy is the best form of government, where magic is strengthened by love and empathy, and a quiet, content family life beats saving the world any day, even though one must sacrifice to save that world when it is threatened. Harry Potter has lost numerous loved ones throughout his life, faced death and vanquished evil, but that is all the price for happiness, not heroic triumph. I cannot say this is the best installment of the series—my spare comments for the whole middle act reflect my general lack of enthusiasm for its pacing issues and awkward staging, and Yates bungles Ron and Hermione's kiss—but this is the only film to truly remind me why I fell in love with this world and these characters in the first place. I wanted to see them win not for the thrill of it, but because I felt they deserved happy lives. I didn't feel the same wave of feeling that I did when I first read the book and knew the journey was over, but Deathly Hallows Part 2 made me truly, deeply care about these people for the first time in years, and perhaps it's fitting that my muted, relieved satisfaction matches their own.

Harry Potter Books, Ranked

Compared to my marked indifference to the films, the Harry Potter books continue to charm me long after I move beyond YA fiction. The endless exposition does get to me at times, but there's a reason these books caught on: the relatable characters, the engaging plot and the element of surprise that remains in these works after numerous rereads and a general understanding of its wholesale ripoff of classical hero archetypes. I've cheered on Neville or been smitten by Hermione as much as I've been affected by any characters in fiction. So, to offset the light cynicism of my film post, allow me to take a more pleasant stroll down Memory Lane with Rowling's novels.

7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Rowling's second book has wild tonal inconsistencies between more gosh-gee whimsy and sudden dips into darkness without any kind of balance or transition. The added characters, such as Colin Creevy and Ginny, are largely pointless and suck ridiculous amounts of time from the rich cast of characters already introduced and interesting enough to warrant further analysis. Gilderoy Lockhart makes for a great buffoon, his fame-hungry attention seeking a key counterpoint to Harry's humility, something called into question by so many in the later books. Overfilled with exposition, lacking almost entirely in solid character growth and erratic in tone and thrust, Chamber of Secrets is by far the most frustrating of the novels.

6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

It's a shame that the most thematically interesting novel of the series is also the most cumbersome and unfocused. The main plot, dealing with an arch-conservative, isolationist propaganda war designed to silence news of Voldemort's return, offers heady social commentary for youth fiction, and the couching of this plot in the loathsome toad Dolores Umbridge, who is terrifying for all the reasons one wouldn't expect, is genius. But Rowling burdens this story with wayward hormones, which she has to spruce up with magic and possession, an attempt to link these asides with the overarching importance of Voldemort's return that ultimately leads only to absurdly OTT and blithely selfish outbursts from a Harry who has never been more unlikable. Tack on the interminable sideplots and what might have been a vicious take on government's unending, counterproductive desperation to never let on that something has gone horribly wrong instead feels like a distended, scattershot rant on puberty.

5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I've read this book four times and I still don't remotely understand the arbitrary creation and subsequent all-importance of the rules of wand ownership. It's such a random way to handle the climactic duel that I just assume Rowling pointed a wand at her ass and yelled "Accio resolution!" Having only introduced the concept of Horcruxes in the previous book, Rowling leaves most of the object hunting to this entry, leading to awkward plot jerks between hiding out in the woods away from detection and constantly coming into conflict with enemies to destroy Voldemort's soul fragments. Like all concluding entries, Deathly Hallows has to tie up a lot of loose ends, but there is a perfunctory feel to many character returns and subplot payoffs, thrown in just to get a cheer rather than as a narratively justified insertion. Nevertheless, it's a thrilling read when elements fall into place, and the utter disappointment of the convoluted finale cannot undermine a overriding feeling of relief at this poor boy's ordeal finally ending. And it made me care about Dobby, which is kind of like making me mourn Jar-Jar Binks.

4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Granted, even by Rowling's standards, this trades mood for exposition, but then this is obviously the most child-oriented of the series. Besides, its giddiness is infectious; from the moment Hagrid arrives to remove Harry from his Dickensian trappings, Philosopher's Stone is whimsical, charming and wondrous. It manages to cordon off allies and enemies quickly while giving sufficient reasons why those lines will more or less maintain over the whole of the series. Even the climax, with its multi-stage progression to the final confrontation, is more exhilarating than dark. Not a "great" novel, per se, but certainly the most delightful of the books. It's no wonder this captured so many imaginations, and continues to do so.

3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

It was obvious in Chamber that Rowling wished to go to less savory realms with this saga, but the pall that hangs over Prisoner of Azkaban is still surprisingly unsettling. The mystery of Sirius Black drives much of this atmosphere, but even in retrospect this book feels dirty and ominous. When the most helpful and gentle character is as rough-looking as Remus, you know you're not in for a sunny year at Hogwarts. Dementor attacks, disappearances, the feeling of always being watched and threatened, Prisoner of Azkaban markedly splits the series from children's lit into the more demanding levels of YA fiction, the rapidity of maturation reflected in the choices Harry himself must suddenly make. While the falling action of time travel and abetting criminals is thrilling, it is the climax in the Shrieking Shack that proves not only the most intense moment of the book but of the whole saga, forcing moral choices of not only Harry but Ron and Hermione that show how adult they really are.

2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Where Azkaban went full-tilt into darkness, Goblet eased back and bit and offered the best balance between the light-hearted wonder of the early books and the darkness to come. The best-paced of Rowling's books, Goblet even manages to go off on its tangents—Rita Skeeter's tabloid hack, the unwelcome return of Dobby—without disrupting the flow, and in many cases she only enriches the book. For example, Krum is an extraneous character, but he serves to bring out the tension in Ron and Hermione's relationship for the first time, or at least to clarify the edge they always had as a show of mutual affection. Furthermore, this is the one book that shifts tones with smooth, natural transition, moving from glee to bombast to creeping menace to full-on horror without flagging. It doesn't get across as much character as the two books to either side of it in my rankings, but the exceptional plotting more than makes up for the relative lack of growth.

1. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

With the exception of the random repositioning of Ginny, the least developed major character of the series, as Harry's sudden love interest, Half-Blood Prince is a nearly perfect character study, incredible given how late in the series it arrives. The dips into Voldemort's past not only elucidate his character but add more depth to Harry, Dumbledore and the relationship they have. Ron and Hermione dig into their tension so fully that its continuation into the final installment frankly feels a step too far because they have nowhere else to go as a will-they-won't-they couple. Though the final book flat-out dives into Nazi imagery, I find Half-Blood Prince, with its sinisterly scribbled textbook, uncomfortably humanizing and literally de-humanizing progression through Voldemort's life, and the horrific ordeal in the cave and ambush at Hogwarts, to be the darker work. And yet, it also weaves a thread of genuine wistfulness into the pages, taking stock of the home Harry and his friends will have to leave behind in the coming war, and it's remarkable how poignant such scenes feel. None of the books is perfect, but the combination of tonal sophistication and meaningful character insight makes this by some degree my favorite installment in the saga.

Harry Potter Films, Ranked

With the final installment of the Harry Potter film franchise at last upon us, allow me to briefly take stock of a film franchise that has often failed to capture the magic of its magical source material yet continues to suck me in almost against my will. I noticed as I compiled this list how few of the films really held any pull over me at all these days, and in nearly every case, when I revised my opinion of a film, the film in question went down in my estimation. Still, there are moments to treasure in all of these films, even the worst ones. When the franchise's impeccable casting and generally competent setpieces are allowed front-and-center over awkward comic relief and endless exposition, even the weakest film shines, if only for a moment. To give a sense of my opinion of these films as films, I included ratings next to each entry, along with how I originally rated them back when I rewatched the films two years ago before Half-Blood Prince. So without further ado, let's take one last tour through Hogwarts.


7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rating 1.5/5; Original Rating 1.5/5)

It is difficult to believe that Chris Columbus was once something of a protégé of Steven Spielberg, given his utter inability to capture anything like wonder in his direction. Spielberg considered doing the first film (though admittedly he had the utterly stupid idea of doing it as a cartoon), but I would have given anything for him to have directed this. Imagine the director of Jaws handling the basilisk's frenzied whispers in the pipes, the best part of the book (incidentally also the weakest of the written franchise) almost totally brushed aside here. Columbus needed to truly capture the magic and joy of this realm before things went dark with the third installment, and his failure to do so is, I think, what undermines not only this film but the whole franchise. See it for Ron's last gasp as a true equal among the three friends before his subsequent marginalization, and for Kenneth Branagh's note-perfect performance as Lockhart.

6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Rating 1.5/5: Original Rating 3/5)

If The Order of the Phoenix ironed out too many of the subplots of Rowling's most lugubrious book, excising the good with the bad, Half-Blood Prince devotes far too much focus to the extraneous details of the richest novel of the series. Admittedly, it's a hard juggling act to go between nostalgia for a world the characters will soon see fall and the perilously dark trips into Voldemort's past and the unexpected recesses of previously worshipped characters. But again, Columbus' failure to establish the HP universe's awe negates the former, creating a lopsided oscillation between lilting and despairing that ultimately makes the film's tone one of mass indifference. In my original, more positive review, I noted Tom Felton's performance, and it's only gotten better to me since. Always the best of the child actors, Felton doesn't miss a beat translating Rowling's deepening of the character, and this movie is worth watching multiple times for him alone. Shame that's that only reason for watching it.

5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's/Sorcerer's Stone (Rating 2/5; Original Rating 2/5)

Columbus' hackdom isn't as noticeable here as even with his banal direction, he simply cannot destroy the feeling of pure giddiness radiating from the children as they step into this world. I don't know if Daniel Radcliffe ever topped the moment when Hagrid arrives and tells him a wizard; the look of confusion giving way to elation and hope is one of the franchise's most powerful moments. Still, the rest of the film feels like perfunctory franchise establishment rather than true immersion into the unknown and fantastic and again, it's hard not to lie back and imagine what might have been if a better director got a hold of the material. Oh, and it features one of John Williams' absolute worst scores, an unsubtle, clanging contraption that sounds like some noisemaker Fred and George might have set off in the prefects' bathroom.

4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rating 2.5/5; Original Rating 3-3.5/5)

At last, we move to a film I could possibly recommend, though Goblet of Fire suffers from rush-job pacing and misplaced humor as it barrels through its three tasks. The most action-packed of the films, at least until the protracted climax that is the final installment Goblet of Fire traded its predecessor's ethereal spook for blunt blockbusting, but there are still moments (like the possessed Krum in the maze) that unsettle as well as anything in Cuaron's macabre vision. But overall, Newell's Goblet does not capitalize on the mixture of solid plotting, unforced wit and mounting atmosphere that make the book maybe the sturdiest of Rowling's set. Nevertheless, its setpieces are splendid enough that its straightforward manages to combine the popcorn sheen of Columbus' films with Cuaron's more shadowy realm in a largely inoffensive manner.

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rating 3/5; Original Rating 2.5/5)

It is a sign of sensitive fandom when one gets excessively hung up on an omission in the translation from book to screen, but the complete marginalization of Neville is so grating I take it out on this film, which has enough other issues to spread out my annoyance. Matthew Lewis, without ever calling attention to himself, wonderfully progressed Neville in his flakes of screen time throughout this franchise, and I was looking forward to see him shoulder the heavier reveals about his character, but that gets promptly thrown out. Instead, we get all of Harry's moping without any of the offsetting properties of the book. The climax in the Hall of Mysteries is an exercise in tedium, sapping all the delirium and terror from the book's run through madness and making for a dully linear romp. However, everything to do with Dolores Umbridge, from Imelda Staunton's ingenious performance to the mounting rebellion against her, is more than solid. Also Luna Lovegood and Bellatrix Lestrange feel just the way they do on the page. Additional silver lining: we must suffer none of Hermione's house-elf campaigning.

2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rating 4/5; Original Rating 4/5)

Everyone chill. I got this.

If Chris Columbus never properly conveyed the more whimsical nature of Hogwarts and the wizarding world, Alfonso Cuaron had no problems whatsoever bringing out that universe's capacity for nightmarish darkness. His version of Hogwarts feels as much an elaborate prison as Azkaban itself, a more pronounced visualization of the buried suggestion of this parallel in Rowling's writing. Though Cuaron cuts or modifies too much for his own good—the climactic scene in the Shrieking Shack, for example, loses much of the intensity of the written sequence, perhaps my favorite moment of Rowling's entire series—but mostly the changes all aid Cuaron's Grimm's fairy tale atmosphere. And again, the damn casting in this movie: whoever picked David Thewlis to play Remus should get a fruit basket or an awkward shoulder-punch or something. Furthermore, John Williams' final score for the franchise makes up for the music-box-from-hell din of his Philosopher's Stone soundtrack with one of the most understated scores of his career.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 (Rating 4.5/5; Original Rating 4/5)

Rereading Rowling's convoluted, calculatedly base-covering conclusion convinced me that the movie could have done with mass trimming rather than bifurcation. Yet Yates managed to not only make the plodding first half work as a standalone film, he finally overcame his limitations and put out the finest film of the franchise, loaded with rich, understated character growth. Where his previous Potter films had moments of unintentional ennui, Yates' Hallows deliberately plods and makes sure to record its characters reactions to their banal situation. Frankly, Yates captures their frustration of being secluded from the action and often left with no clue of how to progress better than Rowling, and his light tweaks, such as the Platonic dance between Harry and Hermione, are wonderful. Radcliffe and Watson, the least compelling major actors of this franchise and the ones to whom so many other actors' time has been sacrificed, finally justify that monopolization of screen time with their finest work yet. Bonus points for the Lotte Reigner-inspired animated segment of the Three Brothers story, one of the most striking moments in the whole franchise, and even of 2010 film.