‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1’: Wait for it
I’m a fan of the Harry Potter books and have enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, particularly since Chris Columbus gave up the reins after the first two. What started out as a series of benign magical fantasies for children has come to more closely resemble the works of J.K. Rowling on which they’re base – epic (if fanciful) struggles between good and evil, played out against a backdrop of wizardry and witchcraft.
When Rowling announced that the seventh book in the series would be the last, she faced an unenviable task: She had to find a way to bring together all the themes, characters and tropes she had created into one final life-and-death showdown between the evil Lord Voldemort and the adolescent Chosen One, Harry Potter. The resulting book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” was a satisfying summing up, full of adventure, backstory, twists and revelations.
But it also suffered from what felt, for the first time in one of Rowling’s books, like padding. As the forces of darkness rise, and the Deatheaters seek Harry’s death, Harry and his pals Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley must escape and hide, while Harry figures out how to find and destroy the remaining horcruxes – talismanic objects into which bits of Voldemort’s soul have been implanted, so that he might never completely die.
So, for roughly 200 pages, Rowling had Harry, Ron and Hermione holing up in an invisible tent in the deep woods or on the barren plains. They mostly sat around and talked. They’d get an idea, carry it out – and then return to the tent and talk and sit some more.
And that is the problem with David Yates’ “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1.” For roughly 40 minutes in the middle of the film, this trio sits in a tent and quibbles. Period. Essentially we watch them wait for something to happen. Isn’t that supposed to be the part that’s left out of the movie?
But you see the words “Part 1” in the title and know that Yates and writer Steve Kloves are determined to bring as much of Rowling’s 900-plus-page doorstopper of a book to the screen as possible – in two parts.
In attempting to do so, however, they’ve fallen prey to the same trap Rowling did: how to move past the waiting and get to the story telling. Yes, there are revelations and bits of action during the trio’s tented exile. But there’s also an awful lot of nothing that could have been condensed, streamlined, distilled – I’m looking for a nice word to say that they needed to trim this sucker down. And one way would have been to condense this all into one final three-hour blow-out of a movie – even three and a half hours, if it takes “Lord of the Rings” length to get the story told.
Instead, the franchise holders have decided to maximize the amount of book they can deliver – and the amount of box-office they can rake in – by making almost five hours of movie. This installment runs two-and-a-half hours; undoubtedly, the conclusion (due next summer) will be about the same, or perhaps longer.
It needn’t have ended this way. Somehow the “Potter” movie team has managed to contain each of the previous books in a single film. And while “Deathly Hallows” is longer than the others, it’s only a couple of hundred pages (tent time!) longer than the previous installment, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” And that book didn’t require two movies.
OK, so I’ve gone on long enough about the length of this one and how slow it is in the middle. But really, what else is there to say about a “Harry Potter” movie at this point? The technology has advanced so far since the first one that the special effects are state of the art. The acting remains consistently strong. The young actors, who have grown into these roles over the course of the past 10 years, are obviously on familiar ground. And the rest of the cast consists of the cream of British acting; about the only ones who hasn’t popped up over the years are Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
As for the story, well, why bother trying to explain it at this point? It’s like trying to explain “Lost” to someone who missed the first two seasons. Suffice to say that, after six films, the evil Voldemort has reconstituted himself and his evil cohort and taken control of the magic world. He’s out to kill Harry Potter and his followers. And they’re trying to stop him. If you haven’t been following along, that’s about as succinct as it gets.
And if you have, you don’t need me to bring you up to date. This remains a highly evolved morality tale, in which the lesson continues to be taught that good and evil are a choice, that we all have both in our makeup and that the impulse to give in to anger or frustration or hatred is one that’s difficult to resist.
Don’t worry. “HP7,” as the posters have it, eventually finds something to do with itself and builds to exciting encounters and face-offs. It’s just that, by the time we reach them, the “To Be Continued” title comes up on the screen and the movie is over. As a result, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1” is a mammoth act of magic interruptus.
Here’s one final marketing idea for a series that has been one of the most lavishly marketed of all time: Once “HP7 – Part 2” runs the course of all its platforms (theatrical, pay-per-view, DVD, TV), Warner Bros. should release both films on YouTube, along with some rudimentary editing software – and hold a contest for everyday moviegoers: See who can best reduce the overlong segments of the two-part film into one coherent final movie. Then put that one out in theaters and all the other platforms.
And include it in the inevitable completist’s box set of all the “Harry Potter” films when that becomes a stocking stuffer of the future.
November 18th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
I always thought the whole point of the camping trip was to involve the reader in the feelings of isolation, ennui, and sheer frustration that the trio themselves were feeling. Isn’t the best function of literature to make us feel what the characters are feeling? Also, I just like spending time with those characters, and the emotional journey that section takes us on was very powerful to me. In a way it’s a very necessary prelude to the eventual fireworks of the last 300 pages. It is bookended and punctuated with periods of intense action and suspense, after all. Personally I never found it boring at all (although I know people often complain about this section of the book). I’ve read much more boring books!
Probably the reason people find this section irritating is that it prevents us from reaching the conclusion of the story as quickly as we would like, and it’s time spent purely with the characters rather than with the gimmickery around them.
November 19th, 2010 at 2:29 am
Hi, Marshal.
I’m also a great fan of Harry Potter and agree, lot, stock and barrel, with your opinion about the last book. Therefore, I’m debating if I just escape the movie and save myself from some hours of boredom, or go to the movies to watch just the last half hour of it to find the “to be continued”, as you hinted it would be wise.
Glad to “talk” to you. I’ve heard a lot about you, through Joey, these past ten years.
Bye, Christina.
November 20th, 2010 at 7:59 am
I agree with Joe G. My two favorite books of the series were 5 and 7 because of the interactions among the characters and the depth shown in their relationships. Most characters in the HP books are 3 dimensional but books 5 and especially 7 did a great job of showing the many dimensions in the RELATIONSHIPS between the main characters. Book 7 was written so well that the despair and hopelessness were palpable. I can understand if many directors find it difficult to recreate this kind of emotional atmosphere in a movie, especially if they are action movie directors or are stuck with actors who can’t carry it off (or just under pressure to dumb down the story for all those action oriented movie goers who didn’t like the book because it didn’t meet their expectations of a run-of-the-mill hero worship type fantasy), but to imply that the endless “talk and bickering” was a big flaw of the BOOK as well as the movie gives me hope that Yates at least tried to do it. I’ve been disappointed with every HP movie because, while I know films cannot follow their source to the letter, there ARE parts of the HP books that could have been made BETTER in the movies (such as Dumbledore’s death, which was instead horribly rushed in the film and then it was on to the next scene!).
November 23rd, 2010 at 1:53 am
Frances, I know plenty of readers who didn’t like the final book precisely BECAUSE it followed run-of-the-mill hero stories, particularly involving Harry’s choice near the end of the story. I am not at all an “action movie goer” and usually enjoy the type of films that your casual moviegoer would find boring, but my issues with Deathly Hallows (film and book) have to do with Rowling’s faults as a storyteller and, more importantly, how flawed her overall plotting really turned out to be in the end. The infamous camping section is unnecessary not because it is slow and character-oriented (that’s perfectly fine) but that everyone and everything is so incredibly passive throughout the whole section. If the characters TRIED to do something, if they didn’t just have all the important information simply handed to them out of plot convenience, the book would be so much better.
November 26th, 2010 at 7:45 am
Corey, I didn’t mean to accuse you specifically (or anyone who didn’t like any of the HP books for that matter) of being in any way deficient. Also, I’m not much of a fantasy book reader or fantasy movie goer so I don’t have the ability to compare the HP books to classics such as LotR (I only saw the movie trilogy which I considered impressive but also kind of silly, simplistic, and very long). One reason I never got into fantasy that much (though I did love The Phantom Tollbooth when I was young) was the inability to suspend my disbelief for the very contrivances you seem to find in the last HP book, along with 1 dimensional characters and simplistic views of good and evil. In the 7th HP book I don’t view everything as just handed to them. Dumbledore knew and planned a lot of it for them. Harry was just a very resourceful, brave, and big-hearted regular kid who also happened to be The Chosen One in a magical world where all the things handed to him held symbolic meaning and whose main advantage was a sociopath who didn’t have the ability to see the meaning of any of it. I did feel the way you do when I read the 2nd book however. When the phoenix and sword just popped up out of nowhere and the diary came to “life” I thought every book was going to end with some contrived battle against some form of Voldemort. I also found the mudblood/racist angle a little too simplistic. But so much of HP goes back to that 2nd book and it all gets considerably darker. I thought the series couldn’t have ended better. It took reading the last few chapters a couple of times to understand exactly what happened though. I admit when I first read it I thought “Hey, wait a minute. How…???” but what happened actually followed very logically JKR’s set up for Voldemort’s defeat.