Film Review | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part II

Some films inspire genuine love in the populace at large. More than just being a crass churn of mediocre rubbish, they break through boundaries of age, race and creed, and soften the hearts and minds of even the harshest cynic or the most aloof of snobs. Perhaps they would never be classed as masterpieces of the art of cinema – but it is highly unlikely that they would be referred to as guilty pleasures either. The Godfather comes to mind for example. But perhaps sci-fi fantasy, for all its implications of geekiness and lack of cool, appears to have the upper hand here. Save for those with an automatic reflex against the genre at large, the Star Wars saga remains nestled in a warm embrace by many film lovers (disappointing prequels notwithstanding) and more recently, the Lord of the Rings saga enjoyed a similarly wide-ranging mass of fans (among them your truly), made up of both old-time fans of the books and recent converts. And it’s no controversial claim to state that Harry Potter is yet another iteration of the same class of cinematic phenomenon. Watching the final instalment of the film adaptations made in parallel to J.K. Rowling’s international bestsellers, I could hear shameless sobs emanating from the corners of the darkened cinema. Tears like that don’t come cheap. These people were not just crying because their relationship with these characters – and spanning seven books and eight films, how can it not be a relationship in nearly every sense of the word? – is now coming to some sort of official end. More than anything, David Yeats’s film deserves their tears because it simply is a perfectly honed, action-packed conclusion to an epic saga. The film picks up immediately where its previous counterpart left off. Our heroes continue on their beleaguered quest to eliminate parts of Voldermort’s soul, as the dark lord of the piece had pulled a Sauron and segmented his soul into Horcruxes – various artefacts scattered across the magical plane. And this is not the only thing Rowling borrowed from Tolkien’s legendary saga. Daniel Radcliffe’s Harry Potter is as pale and haggard as Elijah Wood’s Frodo and just as the heroic Hobbit, he is privy to visions and voices related to his nemesis, played, as usual, with snaky aplomb by a noseless Ralph Fiennes. If the film starts off at too quiet a pace to generate any real atmosphere – with the fatigued trademark trio of Harry, Hermonie (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) – it quickly catapults into a thundering showdown as the previously elusive Voldermort finally gets down and dirty: leading his dark army into an assault on Hogwarts and finally going head-to-head with Harry himself. It is here were Yeats’s artistry shines through. True, there is a cynical motivation in splitting the final book in two, so as to make two blockbusters out of a single source. But done well as it is here, the second act, despite being essentially one big battle scene, is all the richer – and more exciting – for it. Even if I didn’t form part of the weeping masses this time around, I could certainly understand where they were coming from as the end credits finally rolled.