Small-scale surprises in finale

Film reviews: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II

MANILA, Philippines - The challenge for any director of a successful movie franchise is how to sustain the momentum; and if the franchise happens to be ending, the onus becomes doubly heavy. That is what Peter Yates faces in directing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II, the final installment of the Harry Potter movies. The first Harry Potter movie came out a full decade ago. Will the magic hold up in this eighth and final film?

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) continue in their quest to find and destroy the “horcruxes,” objects into which the dark wizard Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has put bits of his soul. In the process Harry makes a discovery about himself, and he must make a decision that would ultimately affect the course of the war between Voldemort’s followers and the defenders of the good. 

Deathly Hallows, Part I, shown last year, bogged down after about 45 minutes of playing time. It is up to this final movie to pick up the pace and whip up an ending commensurate to the hype and hours of viewing time that audiences have invested in the earlier movies. For the most part, Yates succeeds. After about 10 or 15 minutes of somewhat bland exposition about wands and wizards, we are given a sequence involving disguise, theft, and flight (and by dragon, no less). After another bit of exposition comes what is supposed to be the movie’s pièce de résistance: The battle of Hogwarts. 

Yates deserves credit for his deft handling of the narrative pace. The tension ebbs and rises in turns, with pieces of comedy popping up to prevent the descent into over-earnestness. Even more to his credit, he overcomes many of the difficulties inherent in the source material; in some cases, he even improves on J. K. Rowling’s involved narrative. Thus, he cuts away from scenes that, already either maudlin or implausible on the page, would be embarrassingly so on the screen.

Yates adds touches of his own — a smart move, given that he assumes that most of the viewers already know how the story ends. (Those unacquainted with the books should beware that the movie does little to prep its audience.) Suspense may be out of the equation, but that does not prevent him from enlarging on his original where he can. And when he does, by and large he delivers nice small-scale surprises. Thus, when Voldemort is finally defeated he becomes like a giant jigsaw puzzle, fragments of his flesh floating away like puzzle pieces — the visual correlative to the disintegration of his soul. The pixies and the chocolate frogs make a return: As reminders of the “primal innocence” of the first two installments, they heighten the tone of near desperation of the finale.

There are, it must be admitted, a few bummers, some owing to the book (how convenient that Ron, who was never shown to be a quick learner, should suddenly speak Parseltongue!) and others owing to directorial departures. The final showdown between Harry and Voldemort amid the ruins of the castle courtyard, for instance, looks like something from out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western (one half-expects Ennio Morricone background music).

But such infelicities are perhaps a small price to pay for a (not too bumpy) joyride and, some might even add, for the moral point. After all, the Harry Potter series has something to “say” (no matter the debate whether it says it poorly or well): About the responsible use of power, the value of personal choice and commitment, the perils of selfishness, the power of love and self-sacrifice, the reality of hope and redemption, et cetera — all abiding concerns certainly, which transcend the popular form in which they are rendered and which bear repeating. Scholars of early Philippine drama may even see the connection between the movie and the “seditious” play Hindi aco patay (1903) and the uses that the — for that’s what “Harry Potter” rehearses in great measure, wand-waving and incantations notwithstanding—can be put to even today. 

“It all ends,” declares the poster for this Harry Potter movie. Best to catch it, then, before it does.