Potter Week+: The Sorcerer’s Stone | The Chamber of Secrets | The Prisoner of Azkaban | The Goblet of Fire | The Order of the Phoenix | The Half-Blood Prince | The Deathly Hallows: Part 1
“Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.”
The Harry Potter saga comes to a conclusion with the final installment: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. As I’ve stated earlier this week, the decision to split the final book in JK Rowling’s series into two different films may well have been motivated by crass commercial concerns, (a studio used to collecting large box-office returns for the better part of a decade had plenty of interest in cashing squeezing one more film out of the series), and it has lead to a certain amount of immitation, but I think that it really was the best creative decision that could have been made.
The first Deathly Hallows film is deliberately paced and is really about seeing the film’s three main protagonists where they need to be for the final act, while the second installment is where this series finally takes on a bit of epic flare, all the characters we’ve met along the way are back in one form or another and ready for the final battle. This final battle is fantastically portrayed on the big screen. I especially appreciated the beauty that director David Yates and his effects team maintained throughout the broad final battle.
Of course, epic collisions of opposing sides and all considered, the story remains an individual story. As it has been from the beginning Deathly Hallows 2 remains Harry Potter’s story, and as such it winds up being a unique and personal confrontation that we see in the end. We see some fantastic crowning moments of bad-assery from a wide range of supporting characters, but at the end this is Harry’s story.
The really does strike an excellent balance between quiet, personal moments, and magic and dragon filled action sequences. I really enjoyed this movie greatly, I’d like to call it a “must see” but this movie judged strictly on its own, wouldn’t be all that great. It’s a fantastic series finale, but to appreciate it fully you’d really have to have seen the series from the beginning. That said, the film is, absolutely Worth Seeing.
[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 - Director: David Yates - Rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense action violence and frightening images]
