It's about 11:45 p.m. on a Thursday night at a megaplex somewhere on the East side of Madison, and the crowd is getting antsy. By day, one can only assume they are upright citizens and dedicated scholars, but tonight they don capes, wield wands and etch lightning bolts on their foreheads with eyeliner. One would-be wizard, who in the not-so-distant-future will be more concerned with his mortgage than with what exactly a Hippogriff is, runs wildly around the aisles with a broom between his legs screaming ""Wee!"" at the top of his lungs. No, this is not Halloween, this night is much holier. It is, dear readers, the beginning of the end.
As a beginning, ""Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I"" is a two-and-half hour prelude to the real thing. Like other installments in the franchise, the latest film is darker than its predecessor, but this time without the triumphant payoff in the end. The seventh installment is somber, unsettling and unsatisfactory. However, this is everything it must be. It sets the tone and spells out the dangers Harry, Hermione and Ron will face in the finale, and though it is a transition film, David Yates (who directed the last two films) and his cast do the best they can with a story cut off at the middle.
We find our three heroes preparing to leave their lives and families behind as they set out on a quest to recover and destroy the six remaining horcuxes, items containing pieces of the evil Lord Voldemort's (Ralph Fiennes) mangled soul. Meanwhile Voldemort and his cronies, now including the nasty but ambiguous Severus Snape (played by the incomparable Alan Rickman), infiltrate the Ministry of Magic and begin a reign of terror not-so-subtly resembling Nazism. The new Ministry conducts their very own muggle-hunt for those who are not of magical blood, and deems Harry, who has curiously managed to save the wizarding world only 8,000 times, ""Undesireable No. 1."" Although the audience is afforded glimpses into this situation, the focus of the film always remains on the core three.
The audience spends literally hours in the woods hiding out with the three amigos at the expense of almost anything else, and this isolation serves as both the film's greatest strength and weakness. On one hand, with the limited or non-existant presence of Hogwarts and some of the best supporting characters (Snape? Lupin? Neville?), the film lacks the magical fun of its predecessors. However, the laser-like focus on our protagonists allows for greater character development and for Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione and Rupert Grint as Ron to shine in what are undoubtedly their best performances to date.
Taking a page out of the ""Twilight"" playbook, the film highlights, if undeservedly, the love triangle between Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Although distracting at times and accentuated far more so than in the book, it provides a lighter side to this otherwise gloomy installment. In the footsteps of ""Twilight,"" this is perhaps the nakedest Harry Potter yet. Whether for practical reasons or not, you see the boy who lived down to his skivvies a lot.
Although it is skillfully crafted and a long way from the mediocre first films, ""Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1"" is undoubtedly a film for the fans. If you missed out on the last six or can't tell a Gryffindor from a Slytherin, you should probably sit this one out. fans will be pleased with this new film, or at least appeased until the final installment comes out in summer of 2011.
It is a more mature film for an aging fanbase, with Harry & co. leaving the nurturing towers of Hogwarts behind to take on the tyranny of the adult world––and that may actually be the most unnerving aspect of the movie for the legion of college kids sitting at the Eastgate Cinema and the hundreds of thousands like them elsewhere. As this cultural phenomenon comes to an end, one thing becomes painfully clear: Harry Potter is growing up, and so are you.
