no longer just for kids; a dark adult-fantasy movie with a couple of lulls

Rating: 8/10 (22 November 2010)

As Harry and Ron and Hermoine and everyone else has grown up, so have the audiences with the Potter franchise. So it should make some sense that by the time the seventh book has come around that it's coming down to the wire: the big showdown between Harry and the Man-We-Don't-Speak- His-Name, oh, whatever, Voldemort. It's usually that the mid-point movie (i.e. Empire Strikes Back) is the darkest one, but there was a quasi-dark ending to Half-Blood Prince, so it makes more sense that the filmmakers take Rowling's Deathly Hallows and turn it into what it should be: a ripping good apocalypse yarn.
I kid a little, but it is a movie with a lot of black contours and desolation, as the trio might be walking through the British version of The Road minus some of the gray-scale photography. That, and the main 'plot' being that Harry has to find the horcruxes, which are items that could be used by Voldemort for very evil purposes. But then the next problem comes as how to destroy them? It's this section of the film, after a very entertaining section where the three go in disguise as full-grown-ups (a funny and intense scene in the Ministry of Magic), that it gets into a rhythm that is not what one would expect in a big- budget holiday blockbuster. A lot of it is sitting around contemplating, waiting, trying to figure things out, and if the audience gets impatient it's not due to the filmmaker's making it bungled but because the characters are having trouble figuring it out too, and we feel for them.
Talking with my wife about the books in relation to the movies, I'm told that book seven is meant to be a character piece for a large part of it when they're in the woods (indeed it's something like a hundred pages of these woods scenes with the three, or sometimes two, of them frustrated in figuring out the symbols and suspense of running from the gestapo- like figures of the Dark Lord). But is Rowling as good at characters as she is at clever plots and intricate details of magic? Yes and no. Yes in that she makes good characters that we want to be around (for the most part, sometimes Ron gets on ones nerves), and no in that they are at best two dimensional figures, even with Harry, and there's only so much character to explore. But there are instances where one can excuse the tedium of some of these woods scenes. A moment where Harry and Hermoine have a levity pause and dance to music could be seen as extraneousness, but when it has the music of Nick Cave signing sad blues, why carp?
David Yates' direction has found after a few of these movies- Order of the Phoenix still the best of his efforts but not far ahead of this one- and he has a classical style as far as big-budget high-action-adventure movies go in Hollywood. He can let an actor's rhythm speak for itself, and he has a really wonderful scene for a whole mess of top-tier British talent (i.e. Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter et all) in the opening scene at Voldermort's castle. When it's exciting such as a fast-paced chase in the sky, it's exciting, and when it needs to slow down there's still attention to be paid to what's going down. Only a few points that a non-book reader such as myself such as a wedding scene for a minor character from movies past and a few points of reference for a couple of items or characters get lost on me.
This is the kind of production that has great attributes and only a couple of damning liabilities, though the former outweighs the latter. There's a sequence where the story of the Deathly Hallows- how the three men who made deals with death for items and things- is told with a unique animation style that has silhouettes and figures that look like a Tim Burton special. It's one of the most breathtaking passages in any Potter movie, sophisticated to the point of impressing any serious fan of fable-storytelling. But the downsides... well, again, some of the pacing in those woods scenes are less than great. But more than that is a kind of curious aspect to the climax, which without spoiling much involves a character who we've only seen in one other Potter movie (I leave this non-spoiler for those who haven't read the books - those that do know what I mean already), and it's a tragic fate for the character. It's a fine moment of drama, but it lacks the punch that was likely there in the book as it's a character who is barely in the film itself and will need some memory-digging for the character's significance before.
But as far as movies where artistic integrity takes place over dumb-loud action and is able to weave visual fx with the practical side of sets and costumes and things with the CGI is very commendable. It's no wonder that Guillermo del-Toro came close to directing this movie, as it appeals to a sensibility that reads the fantastical and supernatural as part of the world, even if one can't see it quite at first. Oh, and the other downside I almost neglected... it's the first part of a two-part finale. It's like getting a half slice of a BIG epic movie, so it's still big, but half-big. But as far as half-slice epics go, it's one of the best in the franchise.