harry potter and the deathly hallows, part 1: initial reactions

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

I saw Deathly Hallows on Friday night in IMAX.  My initial reaction was along the lines of HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME.  Or possibly something like AGAIN, AGAIN!  I really wasn't surprised--Hallows is my favorite book of the series, Yates is my favorite director of the franchise, and the actors, production values and effects get better with each film.

These are some initial, loosely collected reactions from a first viewing.  I'm sure I'll see it at least once more in theaters, so I may write more as more thoughts occur to me.

LOVED IT
1. The Tale of the Three Brothers.  Beautiful, fluid and poignant, this unexpected delight of an animated sequence in the middle of two and a half hours of grim live action should win some sort of prize.

2. The Trio's acting skills.  It's sometimes easy to forget how far Dan, Rupert and Emma have come in ten years.  As late as Phoenix, they still felt like child actors with a stiff moment here and there.  Not so here.  All three deliver seamless performances without a false note among them.  They don't act; they inhabit their characters.  Most importantly, they finally capture the chemistry that's held these three friends together through what must be a very statistically unlikely number of near-death experiences even in the wizarding world.

Dan Radcliffe is the only 20-year-old I can think of who can look like a teenager one moment and an old man the next.  Some of his best moments are when he isn't doing anything at all, just sitting, feeling the weight of the wizarding world on his shoulders and knowing that is doesn't matter whether he thinks he is up to the mission he's been given, because there isn't any choice.

Emma Watson's Hermione blossoms into a quick-thinking, logical, hard-nosed survivor, proving her book learning can be put to practical use and demonstrating just as much Gryffindor courage (and considerably more emotional maturity) than the boys she heads into battle with.

Ron has been the most underwritten of the Trio in the films, and sometimes it's hard to see his appeal.  Yet here some combination of writer, director and actor magic gives his comic-relief moments enough genuine sweetness to feel like a vital asset in dark times.  In the post-Horcrux-destruction scenes, Rupert and Dan feel like real buddies in a way they haven't since Chamber of Secrets.

3. Everything in the Voldemortized Ministry of Magic.  This is when we see most clearly what a world run by Voldemort would look like, and it's a brutal, ruthless, terrifying place--a wizard police state that echoes all the worst dictatorships of the 20th century, yet somehow feels totally authentic to J.K. Rowling's world.  Add to that the fact that I wanted to pause the film every five seconds so I could look at everything--the propaganda pamphlets, the files in Umbridge's desk, the Magic Is Might statue, the emergency lockdown system you never knew the Floo Network had.  Just one of a million examples of the unbelievable production design that breezes by in an imagined world this rich.

4. Wizard combat.  I knew we were in for a treat when I saw how Yates handled the Department of Mysteries battle at the end of Phoenix.  Long gone are the ridiculously stagey duels of Chamber of Secrets days.  The filmmakers have figured out how to make wizard fights feel lightning-fast and deadly.

5. Rhys Ifans as Xenophilius Lovegood.  He's got two scenes in the whole movie and he fucking owns them.  His fear and desperation when Luna is kidnapped is heartbreaking and shows the price the whole wizarding world is paying under Voldemort.

6. Harry and Hermione's dance.  It was sweet and tender and a little silly.  It didn't seem out of character for two people who probably feel like the loneliest people in the world at that moment.  It worked.  I loved it.

NICE SAVE, DAVID YATES
1. "Hi, I'm Bill Weasley."  None of the other films bothered to introduce me, and I'm about to get married to someone you saw for five minutes in Goblet of Fire, but in my three seconds of screen time I still manage to sound like a werewolf-battling badass.

2. Dobby's reintroduction at Grimmauld Place.  I was pretty sure they were going to do something like this, since we hadn't seen Dobby at all since film #2.  They pulled it off smartly, Dobby was relatively un-annoying, and we got what we needed for an important moment later in the film.

REALLY HOPE THEY'RE SAVING THIS FOR PART 2
1. Wandlore.  Pretty sure the necessary exposition is going to be in there, but otherwise non-book-readers will sure be scratching their heads about why Harry's wand acted on its own back in that Seven Potter chase.

2. Dumbledore's backstory.  The thing is, I could see the plot working with most of Dumbledore's mysterious past omitted.  But we'd really be losing something thematically.  So I'm just going to tell myself that Harry didn't hear those tidbits about Dumbledore at the wedding and Hermione didn't pick up that copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore for no reason and hope, somehow, Yates & Co have something awesome up their sleeve on this one.

3. An explanation of Harry's magic mirror fragment.  Hey look, an important prop that was never introduced at all!  I am really curious to see how they solve this one, because I'm sure non-book-readers have no fucking clue what that business is about.

4. The Harry/Lupin parenting fight.  This could so easily be worked into the scene when Lupin drops by Shell Cottage to announce Teddy's birth...a scene I'm pretty sure they have to have...a scene I'll be really friggin' pissed if they don't have...no, what am I talking about, they have to show that.  Right?

5. Clues to what the other Horcruxes might be.  Cause right now we have none, nada, zero, zilch, and the one important clue about the Lestranges' vault didn't exactly make it into the Malfoy Manor sequence.  Which leads me to...

ABOUT THE MALFOY MANOR SEQUENCE
When I walked out of the theater last night, I really thought I had no complaints about this movie at all.  Overall it was an enormously enjoyable viewing experience.  But no complaints?  Come on, you knew that wasn't going to last.  And so we come to Malfoy Manor.

There are many, many frightening moments in Deathly Hallows, the book, but the sequence in which Harry, Ron and Hermione are held prisoner at Malfoy Manor just blows them all out of the water.  It is goddamn bloody terrifying.  Voldemort isn't even there.  It's just Bellatrix, running the show and being her batshit crazy torture-loving self.

There's a moment, when Harry and Ron are locked in the cellar, listening to Hermione being tortured in the room above them, that is one of the scariest in the whole series.  This is a moment that could have come straight out of any real-world torture survivor's testimony.  It's so horrific precisely because J.K. Rowling knows what the scariest position in this scene is: not the person who's being hurt, but the person who's trapped, helpless, while someone they love is screaming in pain.

In the film, the Malfoy Manor sequence is all right.  But it's not the drawn-out, bloodcurdling horror show that J.K. Rowling delivers for us in the book.  It goes by far too quickly and frankly, Helena Bonham Carter's ability to play a total psychopath is just not used to its full advantage.  I think one of two things happened.  Either the movie was running too long and this scene got sliced and diced for time.  Or the filmmakers put together something as spectacularly sadistic as what's in the book and decided it was too scary for the film's desired PG-13 rating.

The problem, of course, is that the Harry Potter stories left PG-13 territory some time ago.  By the time Hallows opens we are most decidedly in an adult world.  And, much as I love so many things David Yates has done with the series, there are moments when he backs away from some of the very darkest material of the series.  (Dumbledore drinking the potion in the cave at the end of Half-Blood Prince was another scene I thought could have been pushed further into creepytown.)  One thing that can't be denied about J.K. Rowling: she respects her audience enough to take us right up to the precipice of terror without backing away.  I only hope that when it comes to the final conflict coming in Part 2, the filmmakers have the guts and the wisdom to deliver.

Update, 11/23: Second viewing tonight.  Malfoy Manor seemed a bit scarier this time, perhaps because my brain wasn't completely overwhelmed by the visual onslaught coming from the giant giant IMAX screen.  And Bellatrix does mention the vault.  Once.