I went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 after reading an interesting review by Dave Thier on the Atlantic, praising the movies for helping Rowling do what she wants but fails to do in her books, which characteristicly focus on detail and silliness. The movies develop the sense of gravity and severity equal to the hefty moral issues her plot juggles. Thier aptly captures what the movies do through their focus on plot and the actors’ well-developed personas:
Rowling’s writing had that endlessly obsessive quality required of a true world builder, but her storytelling couldn’t stack up to her setting. With every book from three on, she talked about how the stories were getting “darker.” But while “darker” things happened—some characters died, terrible monsters appeared, and schoolyard quarrels evolved into wars of racial purification—the tone could never quite catch up to the circumstances. […]
Hollywood knows nothing better than the old stories, and the boy of destiny is a favorite: We’ve seen it everywhere from Star Wars to Rookie of the Year to The Matrix. Rowling seemed somehow resistant to telling that story directly, but the movies have shown no such trepidation. And they’ve given the tale the kind of narrative drive and attention to tone that the books lacked.
It’s true that the movies do a better job of setting the darker, more serious tone that Rowling’s playful and intricate writing doesn’t quite capture. But while we now understand very well that things are serious, the development of that classic story of good and evil, love and sacrifice is neglected in Deathly Hollows: Part 2 by the whirlwind narrative drive and flat characterization of our protagonist. In fact, the reason the movie manages to win our hearts at all comes from the emotional attachment we have already developed to the world, characters, and ideals through Rowlings’ words. In other words, for someone never having read Harry Potter, Deathly Hollows Part 2 is a kid-friendly horror-action thriller starring an angsty adolescent.
The viewer is shuffled from urgent task to urgent task in a whirl of motion, quick escapes, and torn clothes. It’s hard to get the sense that “this is it” or to truly understand what this epic struggle is all about when there is a wild multiplicity of things grabbing at our attention. We do have moments when we feel the weight of the situation, like when Neville stumps forward and declares that Harry lives still in their hearts, and the cries of the wounded amidst the rubble reminiscent of some post-war scene. However, the moments are not connected to a convincing meaning of what all the gravity is about. And perhaps that is because the persona through which we are supposed to comprehend all of this fails to live up to this task.
Daniel Radcliffe seems to mope around most of the movie in a self-absorbed, hormone-driven way, barking commands at his friends, issuing vindictive statements at those who have failed him in some way, and going off on his own so he can find out where the crew must go next. The moments when we get to see how noble he is, such as when he breaks the Elder Wand and holds Snape’s face, are pretty unconvincing, as that is what they are—choice snippets that stand out in an otherwise depressing characterization. Even when willingly facing his death—the moment when we should have our hearts tugging and our souls uplifted by Harry’s acceptance—Harry seems to skip over the painful grappling, the plot moves on, and we are not that impressed. Moreover, given the awkward relationship he seems to have with his friends, the sacrifices made by those around him provoke more emotion in us for their character, rather than for Harry’s ability to inspire.
We still cheer at the end though, because despite the fact that the movie has not left us with moral lessons we will remember the next morning, we already know them from Rowling’s books. They’ve been taught to us in the way that this final movie could not, in a kind of slow romancing as we were caught in by this fully developed world, became familiar with the boy we understood more and more, and felt the emotional weight of the questions he struggled with because we already believed. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2 manages as an addendum, but fails to inspire.