Sin #81: Where's the Magic?

So, there I am on the line for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Part I” discussing with some friends the other installments on the Harry Potter franchise. One friend said he hated the third one, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, because it didn’t remain faithful enough to its original source; I claimed to have loved it because it finally made Harry Potter a true cinematic venture filled with wonderful sights and terrific performances. While the Chris Columbus movies were clearly family-friendly flicks, they still retained a certain appeal even though they sometimes felt a bit clunky and over developed. My favorite is still the fourth one, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” directed by Mike Newell, a movie that is fun, exciting and brooding with unbearable suspense (it also marks the arrival of Lord Voldemort in the physical shape of a bizarre and noseless Ralph Fiennes). The first four stories had a clear narrative arc; the first one introduced the characters and their magical world, the second delved into the back-story of its villain and the relationship with the hero, the third expanded the universe of characters giving weight to the conflict and the fourth gave a reality to the enormous threat that was Voldemort. In the fifth I expected a powerful confrontation but the movie stalled to the point of frustration and Voldemort once again remained inactive throughout; the same of the sixth movie. By this point I stopped caring.

So, I sat down on the first part of the last movie with some hope that they would turn the final story into a rousing spectacle but I must confess I was quite disturbed by “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Part 1”. First of all, the tone of the film is so bleak one would think Cormac McCarthy himself adapted the story and then, since the movie is divided into two parts, scenes drag on beyond belief. There’s a curious feeling that the filmmakers gathered a lot of deleted scenes and made a movie out of them. The result is a miasma of lethargy, all tease and no release.

“HP and the Deathly Hallows. Part 1” bears no similarity in tone to the rest of the movies (and it’s virtually the antithesis of the first movie). It also represents the first time where a movie in the series is so enclosed in its own literary universe and its fans that the casual viewers are left stranded in a muddled and insipid tale that adds irrelevant characters willy-nilly and doesn’t even give a proper ending to the important ones. The result is an emotionally shallow experience, which only sheds light on the financial issue of dividing the final movie into two parts (as a business-marketing plan its absolutely brilliant, but there’s no artistic merit for it).

I fully understand this last movie wasn’t made for me; it was made for the millions of people who read the book and analyzed every single detail in it. But every movie in the series was clear to non-Potter fans. For this movie you need a guide before entering the theater and still you would be confused at all the “padding” in order to make it 2 and a half hours long. The film is so clumsy in its editing that it’s not even structured to have a climax, it just sort of stops and presents the end-credits which is puzzling (the first “LOTR” finished with Frodo and Sam leaving the Fellowship but at least there was an exciting build-up to it).

Harry Potter was all about the magic but there is no magic here to be found (just the sad faces of its protagonists on the brink of doomsday). Maybe part 2 will all be about action, but after so much unnecessary foreplay I’m not interested anymore.