Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

Warner Bros.

This is the first Harry Potter movie I have seen where I knew exactly what was going to happen. Reason? I finally read all of the books about a year ago which probably seems like a crime to some of you that I hadn't read them till then. And I am by no means a die-hard Potter fan, even though I saw it at midnight and again today. So although I did enjoy the books quite a lot,  I feel like I'm in a good position to judge whether the changes made for the story on screen were necessary and worked. Because as many people DON'T understand and refuse to accept, adaptations NEED to be changed for the screen. There are some things you just can't translate from the page to film. People just can't seem to get that through their head...

That said, I think this is the best movie AND adaptation of the entire series so far. A major reason behind this being that David Yates, director of the Goblet of Fire and the rest of the films to date, has obviously found the environment and type of story in the HP series that fits his style best. From the Goblet of Fire on it became more and more clear that Yates was trying to make the Wizarding world something real that didn't rely on the tricks of special effects and interesting/crazy magic a means to attract an audience. Of course, an audience was going to come no matter what, and that audience expected the Potter world to come alive. But how? I think Yates' Deathly Hallows captures the reality of the 7th book and a vision that focuses more on the characters and their relationships/struggles more than any other movie. The magic and sparse effects only serve as entertainment on the side that fun to watch, but it's not the focus like it was in the other movies. 

Warner Bros.

The fact that Harry and his friends are forced out into the real world, outside of Hogwarts, definitely helps. Because of this, it's essential that Yates captured the desperate and dangerous feeling of the characters and the setting. Thankfully, these actors have been working in this Potter world (and with acting) long enough to have come a long way from where they were before and this makes a lot of the personal tension and struggles more real than the last films. But most of all, I was really impressed and happy with the cinematography. So many of shots directed my attention so well and communicated everything I need to know about that scene without any of the dialogue. This is definitely the most beautifully shot movie of the series and that's always something that can make or break a movie for me.

So as far as the 'movie' qualities go, everything was solid and complimented the Potter world very well. But what about the application of the source material itself. I think "application" is the best word to describe the adaptation process because it really is a process of 'applying' the story to film and smoothing out the edges to make the story work in a cinematic sense. No doubt J.K. Rowling had cinema in mind when she wrote this last book because everything works much better for film. Hallows is obviously a book made up of acts. Unlike the other books take more smaller details and actions to get to the climax and larger actions, Hallows has a whole lot more larger actions that take place frequently throughout the story which is much closer to how an exciting movie works. 

With this in mind, I never thought once in the movie 'hey, they forgot this or that or this detail.' Enough of everything was covered that I didn't miss anything and the movement of the plot from each of these dramatic moments to the next kept me to focused on the action that I didn't fret the small stuff. This makes for a good movie and not a movie that sacrifices the elements that make a 'good movie' in an attempt to please fans of the book which, in the end, probably won't because people like that are impossible to please. Instead, it's clear Yates knows exactly what he's doing unlike Half-Blood Prince where it felt like there were too many distractions and pains taken to try and develop parts of the plot that didn't exist in the first place and ended up just being awkward and stupid. 

Warner Bros.

If there's one thing you're going to take away from this film it is that this is not a nice world Harry lives in any more. This is the darkest a Potter film has been yet, and anyone who has read the books expected as much. Still, it's thanks to Yates and crew who did such a good job in the first place. It's not the source material that made this a good movie, that was all up to the people involved. Always remember that you book nerds!