Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (pt. 1)

Last summer, I re-read and posted my thoughts on the seventh and final entry in the Harry Potter series. At the time, I mentioned that I had serious problems with a number of elements of the book, both in terms of content and in structure. I also noted that my love of the characters and the ultimate redemption of Snape ultimately made the experience worthwhile. It's safe to say that, by and large, the same holds of part 1 of the film adaptation.

Since I already said pretty much all I have to say on the content of the book, I'm going to take this space to focus on some issues unique to the movie.

First, as anybody familiar with both the books and the movies would expect, the creators had to do a bit of backpedaling in order to make certain elements work. Instead of simply cutting the wedding scene, we get a ridiculously half-assed introduction of Bill ("Hi, Harry, I'm Bill Weasely. I got attacked by a were-wolf and like my meat on the raw side now!" "Oh, nice to finally meet you, Bill").

More distracting, as you might expect, was the way that Dobby was forced back into things after having all of his involvement since Chamber of Secrets cut out. I know that Dobby's sacrifice is immensely moving in the books, but movie-watchers have no familiarity with Dobby's work at Hogwarts or his adventures with Winky or Hermione's creation of SPEW.

I'm not even going to try to describe all of the problems with the scene where Harry and Hermione dance in the tent.

The final problem is that the screenwriters obviously didn't put enough time into some of the dialogue. There were a few lines so clunky that the audience actually laughed. In some cases, it was simply because the characters needed to express thoughts or explain things that could not have been spoken by a human being in a way that didn't sound ridiculous. This is a relatively common problem with any fantasy setting, and in these instances, the writers did a decent job of hanging the lampshade* and creating intentional humor out of the situation. But there were other areas where they didn't seem to recognize the problems. Similarly, the way they shot Harry's interactions with "Bathilda Bagshot" evoked laughter at a number of times in what was supposed to be a tense scene.

The filmmakers did a number of things extremely right, though. For one thing, the death of Hedwig, while a bit abrupt, made far more sense in this setting. Instead of getting hit randomly by a killing curse while stuck in her cage, she swoops in and harasses a Death Eater who was trying to shoot Harry. Not only did it provide Voldemort a much more reasonable means of identifying Harry than "OMG, he used expeliarmus! It must be Potter", but it makes more sense, since there's no good reason that Harry wouldn't have let Hedwig fly freely and find him at The Barrows later.

Second, the infiltration of the Ministry was one of the most entertaining scenes in the series so far. The actors who got to play the Ministry officials into whom our heroes polymorphed must have had boatloads of fun. The physicality of their performances was just perfect. It turned what was kind of an awkward, tense scene in the books into a great tension alleviator, punctuated at points by signs of just how twisted the Ministry had become under Death Eater control.

Third, as much as a handful of critics complained about the camping scenes, I felt that they were handled quite well (with the exception of the aforementioned dance). The creators did a good job of displaying the impact of The Locket on people's temperaments and of Ron's growing insecurity with minimal time commitment. Hermione's almost run-in with the Snatchers seemed a bit purposeless beyond showing the potency of the charms they had set up, but I won't complain too much about that. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see much of how Ron's absence strained Harry and Hermione, but I won't hold that against them overmuch. Ron was only gone for 80 pages in the book (mostly spent at Godric's Hollow), and the impact of his departure is something that was almost entirely told and not shown.

Finally, the animation used for the Story of the Three Brothers was absolutely fantastic. I would buy a DVD just containing the various Tales of Beedle the Bard told in that fashion in a heartbeat.

So, not a great movie for a person who isn't particularly fond of the source material, but an enjoyable time for Harry Potter fans. I'll never be convinced that Deathly Hallows was the appropriate way to end the series, but David Yates and crew are showing that they're devoted to making the best adaptation they can.