Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Rating: Null/10 (19 November 2010)

I recently attended a midnight screening of David Yates's latest Harry Potter film with my younger sister and her friend, both girls age 11. The two sat enraptured throughout, and walked out of the theater with a nearly full tub of popcorn. "Hmm," said the friend, looking at how little she'd eaten, "I guess that wasn't really a popcorn movie." She said a mouthful there.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 is worlds away from Chris Columbus's charming children's films, both in tone and impact. Where the series began in light ooh-look-at-that fantasy, it now accepts the wizarding world as established and takes its stories and subjects seriously. This means that those uninitiated will likely be very confused, but who cares. Deathly Hallows 1 exists as a bridge between the six films proceeding it and the one to come; there is perhaps limited narrative potential in that purpose, but there's plenty of room for character, exposition, and style.
These three functions offer mixed returns. In terms of character, I do feel that any realistic appraisal of the film must acknowledge a certain amount of sketchy dialog and strained conversational rhythm. This can occasionally be distracting, particularly as the three protagonists' interactions dominate the film's second act. The best developments on the character front come in Hallows's subtler moments; Emma Watson's Hermione is afforded a heartbreaking opening only alluded to in the source material, and Yates allows Rupert Grint's Ron to carry much of his performance in sustained emotional gazes.
In terms of laying out exposition for the series finale, Hallows delivers about as well as it can. As I was already familiar with J.K. Rowling's novels, I can't be entirely sure how understandable this will all be for the film-only crowd; some things are intentionally not yet explained, others may simply be unclear--I knew what was going on so I can only speculate. One block of exposition that I had been dreading actually turned out to be a highlight: the story of the Three Brothers is accompanied by a lucid sequence of stylish animation; it offers effective visual interest without disrupting the film's tone.
In fact, it is in the film's style that it truly exceeds expectations. Yates, as mentioned earlier, takes this story seriously and photographs it as such. The film's effects are rarely ostentatious, and when they do tend toward spectacle, the grandiosity is earned from Hallows's quieter passages. Yates mostly commands the camera as a tool of framing and focus, which lends the film a maturity of form to match its more mature content.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 will please its fans and most likely baffle everyone else, but whether one is familiar with the books, the films, both or neither, this is a solid, serious, and stylish entry in the series. Its effectiveness will be best judged when Part 2 arrives to ideally validate the work done here, but until then this film exists as an unexpectedly compelling placeholder. To those in it for long hall, Part 1 comes highly recommended--just don't expect to eat much popcorn. -TK 11/19/10