Feature: Harry Potter Marathon, Part 8

YEAR SEVEN
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two

I apologise in advance. This is going to be a long one. Also, for those who care, beware of spoilers - I've tried to avoid them until now but it's going to be impossible here.

Whether it’s a trilogy or, in this case, an octology (a word I just made up but it sounds right), the final film in a series always has an almost impossible task to live up what has come before. When a series has the life, popularity, and massive worldwide fanbase to make it a cultural phenomenon, that task becomes even tougher. Can Harry Potter manage that Herculean feat?

My verdict: Yes. Mostly.

Having had a couple of days to reflect since watching it – unlike my previous critiques, which have been written almost immediately after watching – I don’t think it’s my favourite of the series, an honour which goes to either Prisoner of Azkaban or Half-Blood Prince, but it is a triumphant finale worthy of its predecessors. The decision to split the final book in two may have been primarily motivated by cynical quest for cash, but it does have a positive effect on the film. Hallows part one may have dragged in places for some viewers (it held my attention though), but this whole film is a practically breathless dash for the finish line, but a dash that doesn’t feel truncated due to having to cram too much in. It certainly has plenty of ground to cover even just being the second half of a book, but the pace of the plotting feels brisk rather than stupidly rushed. It still adds up to the shortest film of the lot.

After the non-ending of the first part, this one picks up straight away. There’s a small breather while Harry talks to Ollivander (John Hurt), but as soon as the trio decide they have to rob Gringott’s bank, where a Horcrux is being stored, the action never lets up. The bank heist is superb, and it’s satisfying to see elements introduced so long ago, such as Ollivander and the bank, come to have some important function in the plot. The sequence feels straight out of an Indiana Jones film or Star Wars (I had distinct trash compactor flashbacks when the characters started to get crushed by multiplying objects in the vault), and it’s as confident a set-piece as this series has ever staged, complete with great CGI and a very annoyed dragon.

But this film is really all about the long awaited Battle for Hogwarts, and the film doesn’t take too long to put the pieces in place, including Harry, stepping foot back onto the hallowed ground after spending an uncharacteristic film away from it. Harry and co reach it via some help from a new character, Dumbledore’s brother (Ciaran Hinds), who has apparently been glimpsed once before in the films – he owns the pub in the village of Hogsmeade – but has never had a line (and there was played by a different actor). He answers some mysteries brought up by DH1, in the process making one of Harry’s escapes in that film feel like much less of a convenient Deus Ex Machina.

As Harry reaches his friends holed up in Hogwarts, it’s accompanied by the most rousing statement of Hedwig’s Theme since John Williams was writing the music, and it did make me miss Williams’ presence here and in the recent films, despite solid work by his replacements. Alexandre Desplat continues on from DH1 and does enjoyable if forgettable work, livened up by more utilisation of the original themes than in his first effort or his predecessors’ (Patrick Doyle and Nicholas Hooper). I particularly enjoyed the full concert arrangement of Williams’ theme at the start of the end credits. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It’s great fun seeing all the pieces slot into place for the big showdown. In particular Maggie Smith’s Professor Minerva McGonagall reveals hitherto unseen (but suspected) badassery when she boots Snape out of the great hall and summons a load of protection statues – another callback to Philosopher’s Stone (the chess pieces) – and squeals in delight like a little girl at being able to cast that spell. The first assault starts quite quickly, and before long Voldy’s Death Eaters manage to break through the protective cocoon that the Hogwarts professors have conjured.

In the meantime Harry has to find another Horcrux by meeting an elusive ghost, and Ron and Hermione visit a familiar Chamber to recover a Basilisk tooth, which finally leads to their big first kiss, which must have been a cause of some cheering for cinema audiences (it’s about time, and it’s nicely played). Harry’s quest takes him to the junk-filled Room of Requirement, rather larger and even more cluttered than I remember it previously, where he confronts Malfoy and outruns a massive fireball in another impressively scaled set-piece. There’s definitely no expense spared on this film.

The first round of the main event has no shortage of excitement, but ends quite unpredictably when Voldemort calls a temporary truce, asking for Harry to come forward and sacrifice himself. There’s enough time to give Snape a death scene and finally reveal his moving backstory in a lengthy, and deserved, flashback. We now know how Rowling convinced Alan Rickman to take the part, filling in him in on his character’s future arc, and it is a humdinger. Rickman has been a joy in the role and Snape is finally revealed to be one of the best, most intriguing and most complex characters – just as we always knew he would be. Good old dearly departed Dumbledore also gets some face time in flashbacks, revealing further depths and motivations to his character too, making him far more than just the benevolent grandfather figure as originally embodied by Richard Harris. Michael Gambon proved to be an able replacement for the late actor, making the role his own especially when he got more to do later on.

Harry’s mano-a-mano with Voldemort – Feinnes is more chilling than ever – in the haunted forest is clearly the scene Rowling had been building up to all along. All the suspicions about whether Harry dies reach fruition here: the answer is a resounding ‘sort of’. Yes, Voldemort casts the fatal spell, and Harry visits the afterlife, a spectral King’s Cross Station, where he meets Dumbledore again, who basically tells him he isn’t dead if he doesn’t want to be. There’s also a bloody foetus of Voldemort lying under a bench. Yeah. This part I wasn’t sure about, and it’s really the only development I wasn’t entirely happy with.

Naturally, Voldy, thinking he’s won, marches back to Hogwarts triumphantly, Hagrid in tow carrying Harry’s lifeless body. Given the previous scene it’s all a little predictable – you know Harry is going to come back to life. That said, it’s still a satisfying moment when he does.

The final duel between the pair is slightly brief and feels a bit easy, but in hindsight I’m not sure what else the filmmakers could have done. Really, after all that buildup, there was no way it for it not to be a slight anticlimax. Harry Potter has never been purely about the action, which is one of its virtues, yet this film delivers as both a pure action spectacle and an emotional farewell. There are numerous heartstopping moments of awe and pathos, some laughs, at least one cathartic redemption and several deaths, albeit all of minor characters. There is as much a tangible sense of threat as there could be, given the prior certainty that the villains are never going to win, and the deaths do give it some consequence. In that sense it delivers pretty much everything I personally hoped for or expected, without much truly surprising.

In the end it worked out well having David Yates direct the last four films, as it’s obvious that he increased in confidence in his handling of scale since Order of the Phoenix. Indeed, DH2 could be described as epic. He’s also at home with the characters, and the actors are evidently at home with him given the strength of their performances. He seems to share my distaste for the Dursley scenes, as Privet Drive only featured in two of his films, and any speaking roles for the Dursleys themselves only remain in Phoenix. (Their final scene was cut from DH1.) He has also lightened up a bit in the visual department since Half-Blood Prince, this final two-parter actually having an attractive, if still subdued, colour scheme. I have a few niggles regarding geographical inconsistencies in Hogwarts itself – the main square where much of the battle takes place in this final instalment has been conspicuously absent in any prior film, which is a little jarring, for example, but hardly that important.

DH2 ends with the 19-year-later epilogue, which I did know was coming, having heard spoilers when the book first came out. Although I thought the concept sounded cheesy I actually think it was quite well done in the film, with relatively convincing age make-up on the young actors.

Overall I was highly impressed with the film. I must admit, I did actually miss the old Harry Potter formula in this climactic brace - Half-Blood Prince turned out to be the last time we’d see all the familiar beats, like catching the Hogwarts Express, meeting a new professor, playing Quidditch etc. Luckily Prince did that as well as any of them, having finally refined the formula into something properly filmic. In hindsight Hallows does feel too extended in its first half – some of the meanders in the plot turned out to have little real relevance – and it became a little bit contrived, but I’d imagine it works well edited together as a 4.5-hour single film. It certainly does not feel like it staggers over the finish line having expended all its energy. It’s still a series with more to give, which is probably exactly the right time to finish.

I’ll write one more entry to finish my marathon, looking back over the series as a whole.