Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (2010)
Adam,
By the time Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 1 came out, it was almost irrelevant whether it was “good.” Too many of the books’ fans seemed more concerned with the exactitude of the adaptation than the quality, and faced with an onslaught of enthusiasm rendering their opinions moot, many critics reacted with a mixture of resignation and condescension. Quoth Dana Stevens: “this movie’s not for Muggles like me—it’s for the millions and millions of Harry Potter fans who, quibbles aside, will welcome its arrival as a blessed event. It’s evidence of how happily critic-proof these movies are that even the Warner Bros. logo…was applauded when it appeared on the screen.” And Anthony Lane with a more curmudgeonly take: “I hate to remind the millions of fans, but didn’t this all begin with a bunch of kids buzzing around on broomsticks?”
All of this seems pretty irresponsible, on both sides. On the one hand, to ask for nothing more than a rendition of the book misses the point of an adaptation. On the other hand, refusing to acknowledge or grapple with the thematic content of the movie betrays a rather unflattering elitism.
Because I think there is plenty to take seriously about this movie. It takes from the book a number of complex ideas—for example, how to grieve someone whose history and legacy are at best ambiguous, as Harry has to learn in the wake of Dumbledore’s death. Or the series’ continual preoccupation with the trials of growing into adulthood and all its attendant responsibilities, regrets, and romantic confusions.
Plenty have already commented on how surreal and satisfying it has been to watch these young actors grow up in the course of seven-going-on-eight films. But it’s worth marveling again at how much could have gone wrong in that time and how little actually does. This film especially places a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of its central three cast members, who in spite of considerable odds (remember that these are kids who at the start had only two professional acting credits between them) pull off the demanding emotional material with grace.
It’s a pretty strong vindication, not only of the actors themselves, but also of a casting process which long ago selected for internal qualities rather than proven skill or experience. To compare, imagine if, say, Shia LaBoeuf had been cast as Harry Potter instead of Daniel Radcliffe, who manages to always embody an essential decency and dedication in the role, in spite of having spent a decade in the reality-warping spotlight of attention and privilege. For his part, Rupert Grint, as Ron, succeeds in grounding his character’s jealousy and insecurity in care and concern. Emma Watson, for me the most problematic of the three actors, doesn’t get Hermione’s highs and lows quite right, but her sustained expression of worry is finally justified by the peril she and the others find themselves in.
The rapport among these three actors—with whom alone we spend long stretches of the movie’s duration—feels real and lived-in, wavering authentically between casual familiarity and the kind of tension that can only arise in friends who have known each other a very long time. Even a little scene, like the one where Harry and Ron sit together after Ron’s return to the campsite (there’s an amusing bit of business with a fire spell), serves a purpose. If we didn’t believe Harry, Ron, and Hermione had something to lose in their friendship, we wouldn’t care if they really did lose it.
Some of the smartest decisions this film adaptation makes in general are related to pacing and content. Conventional wisdom suggests that an adaptation, especially of a book as long and as dense as Harry Potter, ought to be more concerned with cutting than with adding. But director David Yates, who also helmed movies five and six, understands that given the choice between emotion and plot, emotion must always come first. So while he does abbreviate or eliminate certain plot details, he also includes a number of scenes which don’t occur in the books, but which emphasize atmosphere and character dynamics. For example, a melancholy dance between Harry and Hermione soon after Ron abandons their campsite. Or a clever, wryly-staged little fight scene towards the beginning of movie that takes place in the real world of late-night cafeterias and oblivious waitresses.
As a result of all this, the film as a whole has a strange, shambling rhythm that turns out to be appropriate to the content of the book. There’s something true about the film’s insight that heroism is often really, really tedious, involving less fighting of bad guys than sitting around and hiding out. That Deathly Hallows mostly avoids actually being tedious owes a lot to the aesthetic seriousness with which Yates undertook filming. He makes great use of desolate, rural and post-industrial British landscapes as backdrops for the characters’ anxiety and isolation.
At first glance, this scenic choice in particular seems an odd one for a fantasy blockbuster, but there’s a shrewd, sobering little message tucked inside of it. As in the aforementioned cafeteria fight scene, Yates is constantly reminding us of what we Muggles come to Harry Potter to escape from, but which all books, all movies—fantasy or otherwise—aim to have at their heart: real life, in all its toil, confusion, failure, and frail hope.
Before I close out, this is where I should probably address the trend, originated by this movie, of splitting the adaptations of franchise books into multiple parts. (This is also where I should note that the benefactors of our Film Crate neglected to own a copy of Deathly Hallows, Part 2–what gives, benefactors?) Like pretty much all trends, this one is necessarily neither good nor bad, but depends on how it’s applied. I would argue that Deathly Hallows justifies its being broken into two parts. While it is clearly a precursor to more action-packed things, the fact that it doesn’t have to rush to get to the “good stuff” frees it to focus on emotional beats. The more cynical explanation—that the adaptation was bifurcated to maximize box office returns—is belied by the care and attention paid, not just to set decor and special effects, but to character and narrative.
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