OF A GOLDEN AGE

The high price of movie tickets and inconsistency of even the most well reviewed movies drove me out of regular movie attendance years ago. THAT SAID, the Harry Potter books and movies totally suck me in for a lot of reasons. J.K. Rowling’s books feature some of the best storycraft ever aimed at young people, and the movies build over Rowling’s basic frame with a strong cast and even stronger photography and visual effects.

After this I might include some spoilers, so tread lightly.

I liked Deathly Hallows 1 the best before seeing Deathly Hallows 2, and while the second doesn’t exactly work on its own (even to the standard set by previous installments: the horcrux plotline has roots and its anchor in Deathly Hallows 1, while the Dumbledore/Snape saga begins and lives mostly in Half-Blood Prince), I really hope they edit Deathly Hallows 1 down a bit and issue a combined edition. How could they not?

Deathly Hallows 2 excels visually to the same magnitude Deathly Hallows 1 excelled at character development. It also brings back Harry’s secondary circle of friends (NEVILLE, Seamus, McGonagall) and Hogwarts, although the latter takes a beating so severe that it may never recover. As the Hogwarts faculty and the Order of the Phoenix combine their powers to protect the castle, and McGonagall looses the castle’s stone soldiers (!!!), I realized just how much the movies established Hogwarts as a character itself. It expanded, visually, on the workmanlike Rowling prose. The first few installments waved CGI effects around like a showpiece at a graphic-design convention, demonstrating every possible spell, showing us every flashing light and twirling everyday object; the last few installments learned to use those effects sparingly but flesh out the settings into photoreal palpability.

As CGI technology advances (revisit Jurassic Park then consider the Gringotts dragon flying through and destroying parts of wizard-tinged London), it gets easier to suspend disbelief when watching a movie like this. The margin between our collective literary imagination and what we can see on the screen narrows day by day, although, still, a movie draws a specific vision to replace each reader’s vision, each of dozens of millions of readers’ individual visions.

I admire the choices made by the HP filmmakers. They kept the universe clear, canon, and distinctive, blending it near-seamlessly into Rowling’s original texts and advancing the maturity with each installment. The characters grow more complex, the visuals more elaborate and complete, the emotions heightened and anchored in so-called real life. By the end of this installment, Harry earnestly offers himself up as a necessary sacrifice; Dumbledore clouds his own moral standing almost beyond recognition; and everyone Harry knows offers themselves up to fight and die on his behalf too.

Each book pulled young readers further and further into serious adult territory, culminating in this, the most high-stakes, majestic, Arthurian climax imaginable. Love and honor. Empowerment and troubling dilemmae. Loyalty, above all. Very good, very good.

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