Like a Good Wine, Harry Potter Gets Better with Age

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2010)

The unique thing about the Harry Potter is that unlike most movies things it has had a chance to evolve. Very rarely will you see Hollywood take such great pains to maintain such a momentum as it has with this series. Perhaps because HP is just so huge, and the novels just so perfect, that to get it wrong would be crime against nature. Because of this we get characters and a story that grows up with us, from the awkward but pleasant freshman years, through Cuaron's dark, coming-of-age masterpiece, and on to this solid penultimate chapter
Part 1 of Deathly Hallows is not perfect. It has the same flaws any other movie adapted from a book does--too much material and two little time to include it all. Thankfully the decision to split the last book in half paid off because the pacing doesn't seem nearly as rushed as the others. David Yates, who has had time to hone his Potter craftsmanship, has taken the best of the series' drama, fear, suspense, and humor and fashioned it into something very enjoyable. But with this one the stakes are so high and impending doom so pervasive, that it becomes obvious that you aren't watching a children's fantasy anymore. The kids have to safe, whimsical Hogwarts to return to. Instead they are lost out in the open world amongst unsympathetic Muggles and a wizarding world that has become completely treacherous.
Aiding this gritty realism is the closer attention paid to the psyche of Potter trinity (Harry, Ron, and Hermione). After a chaotic, violent first half-hour Harry, Ron, and Hermione go into lonely exile where they are confronted with possibly the scariest monster we've seen in HP thus far: powerlessness and hopelessness. Frustrated and powerless, the trio spends weeks walking in the English wilderness, listening for their loved ones' names as the radio reports the newly-murdered. At the same time the heroes are forced to confront the weaknesses of their very friendship, so much more poignantly laid bare in wasteland than it was amongst the hormonal chatter of the teens back at Hogwarts.
This is not to say that the other characters do not shine with nuance and charisma in the limited screen time they are given. Newbies Bill Nighy as Rufus Scrimgeour and Peter Mullen as the Death Eater Yaxley are particularly efficient with their few minutes, not to mention Potter alum Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge.
But despite having the same magic of the other films, Deathly Hallows Part I is where the series finally matures.