You Can't Make a Silk Purse out of a Sow's Ear

Rating: 5/10 (26 July 2011)

Let's be honest here: the last book in the series is not good literature. It tries to combine far too many themes to be effective, and has recourse to deus ex machina far too often. While the series from the first to the sixth book is a classic, the seventh book turned what could be the Y-generation's LOTR into a rather convoluted, rather trite mess.
Spoilers follow.
Two main themes from the last book are at odds with each other, and are very anti-cinematic. For one, Dumbledore is brought down from his pedestal, and from being this father figure full of wisdom, we see him as a more complex character with a dubious past and rather selfish motivations up to the end. He puts Harry at risk, and basically forces Snipe to commit a sacrifice. Dumbledore, by the end of the King's Cross chapter, is someone we wouldn't really trust. That is the reason why his back-story was excised, it'd have taken too much from the character.
The second difficult theme is Snape. A complex character who, truth be told, is borderline bitter stalker, borderline Quixotic romantic. Once again a theme impossible to convey on film unless such character is the main one, and the story revolves around him. As is, we get to see too little of him, and we lose the dimension of love he presents (a nice antithesis to the love of Lily for her family, in particular Harry).
The other two themes are much more amenable to an action movie, but they are at odds with each other: Horcruxes vs. Hallows.
The book never resolves the issue. The Hallows seem an afterthought, material that could have been used in another novel, and are used instead to remark in the corrupting nature of power and the lust for it. But that is also Horcrux territory. Both deal with similar emotions, and serve (in the book) to create a parallel between Voldemort and Dumbledore, seeking power, and Harry and Aberforth rejecting it.
We miss on the most important element of the Hallows long history, how the fall is born out of pride (very well represented by the Gaunts, who are poor like rats but still consider themselves superior to everybody else as a function of their blood), and how the manifestation of pride is a lack of love (symbolized by Merope using an elixir to seduce Tom Riddle Sr.).
Without that information, the whole Hallows bit becomes irrelevant and takes time away from the Horcruxes, creating some confusion to the end.
We're left with the most simplistic messages from the series: the fights, the effects, the pain, and the victory. But gone are the elements of redemption (Snape, Draco, etc.), the idea that there is no perfect good and even the good can do evil due to zealotry (Dumbledore, James Potter), that pride and love pull in opposite directions, that friendship and love is above all being able to renounce to yourself, and that power by its very nature takes control of you, no matter how wise you may seem to be.
The ending speeches of the first three movies had more depth than the series ending, I must say. But this time the disappointment was not as bad as the first time, when I closed the last book.