A very worthy farewell

Rating: 8/10 (29 June 2018)

It seems that after the pure filler that was Deathly Hallows: Part 1, David Yates finally seems to get down to business in Part 2. Whereas indeed nothing happened in Part 1, Part 2 provides a wide range of narrative, revelations & emotional outbursts.
Like in Part 1, the cinematography is top notch, although it is more of a lightshow this time around, as it shows the full scale war of Hogwarts in a visually impressive fashion. It is however not one of these productions that becomes lazy in its visuals due to modern technology, as every shot and every angle seems carefully planned out and the CGI is handled with utmost care resulting in stunning visuals. ( Except perhaps the broom escape from the room of requirement scene, which looked pretty bad ) The score by Alexandre Desplat is also excellent, and while he is not John Williams, it uses a fair bit of nostalgic scenes in which Williams's themes from the first film make a long awaited return, and since nostalgia is ofcourse such a powerful emotion ( Atleast when it reminds us of great things, such as the first couple of Harry Potter films ) this should provide the audience with a very 'satisfying' feeling, which is also primarily what makes this such a good finale.
The most fascinating part for me was the revelation of Snape's intentions and his changed depiction from villain into a hero. When we watch the pensive sequence, everything that has happened before makes sense, and this will leave you all the more sad about the fact that ever since the Sorcerer's Stone Snape has mostly always been seen as the villain of the story, and his true intentions are only shown at the end, when it is too late for him. There is no doubt that the pensive sequence is the greatest scene in the film, as its sheer emotional power & the incredible character transformation will leave you in awe for a long time afterwards.
I was quite worried that since Part 2 relies on loads of action sequences that these sequences would look the same as they did in Part 1. ( That is, loads of shakycam and quick cutting so you never see what is going on ) Fortunately Yates seems to have learned from his mistakes and as a result Part 2 features great action sequences with fantastic angles and subtle camera movements, instead of the shakycam nonsense the first one had.
On the contrary to Part 1, Part 2's narrative instead DOES seem to be going somewhere, as there are less overly melodramatic scenes and more plot-driven ones. It might be shorter, but loads more Horcruxes are destroyed in Part 2 as compared to 1, while in the meantime we witness Voldemort's assault on Hogwarts, which creates a 'race against time' kind of picture in which the tension and immersion is fantastic, since pretty much every likeable character still alive from previous films joins in the fight, and since there are so many likeable characters in the franchise you genuinely care about their fates. Harry's melancholy stroll through the hospital which shows the death of long time characters such as Fred Weasley & Lupin really tug at the heartstrings since we have grown to like them so much over the previous films, and it definitely results in you becoming immersed in the moment, as you know Harry Potter is no longer the fairytale it once was, and in contrast to the first few films shows that its world is not a perfect place and that the good guys can die too. It also features the by far best performance in the series of Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, who finally seems to truly capture the essence of the feelings of his character perfectly. The camaraderie between Ron, Harry & Hermione might have been terrible in Part 1, but they once again grow closer to eachother in Part 2 and coupled with the many nostalgic sub texts to its previous films their character bonding once again seems genuine.
However, i won't state that it couldn't end any better than this, as it does have some slight negatives. It should have obviously been longer, since running at 2 hours and 10 minutes it is the shortest of all Harry Potter films, and this seems a bit underwhelming when you know that this is the one where everything is going to end, which in turn results in the picture sometimes being slightly too hasty. Voldemort's death was extremely anti-climactic, as in the end he easily kills himself with a backfired curse because the elder wand never belonged to him. While a lot of Harry's clashes with Voldemort are brilliantly filmed, with a lot of slow motion added to it to increase the tension to a fantastic degree, the way he meets his demise in the end is not as satisfying as it could have been.
This all results in a final installment that features excellent action sequences, impressive visuals due to outstanding cinematography and a great use of CGI ( which was for once not lazy ), many nostalgic references to invoke emotions in the lifelong audience, genuine interest in all of the character's fates, the definitive Radcliffe performance, and save for Voldemort's death, a very satisfying experience which results in it being one of the best entries to the HP series ( Prisoner of Azkaban is still objectively better, but it would rank second. )