Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (PG13)

I'm over a month late reviewing this, but here it goes.

Watching this movie just reminds me that the era of my life that started back when I was six or seven is finally drawing to a close. Not to be dramatic, but these books were my life when I was a kid. I would read them over and over and over again, so now that the last few movies are now being released I'm a bit sad.

I rode to the movie theater with one of my teachers (her blog is here). She was dressed like Trelawney, a sharp contast to my own muggle attire. I think we drew some weird looks on the walk into the theater, but we were among our own kind when we stepped into the theater. There were about 20 of us there together, stretched out over a row and a half. We had Tonks, Hermione, Darren Criss' Harry Potter (from A Very Potter Musical), Rowena Ravenclaw, George Weasley sans ear, Draco Malfoy, a Slytherin girl, plus many more. As I settled into my seat, I took to watched the other costumed people walking in. There was a woman dressed as Umbridge who had her outfit spot-on. The costumes are always my favorite part of midnight premieres.

When the movie itself started, I noticed immediately that this was going to be unlike all of the previous ones. The mood was darker, and not in the teenaged-angsty way of the sixth movie.

The movie was over two hours long, but I think the pacing wasn't too bad. There weren't parts that I felt like just getting up out of boredom like there had been in the previous movie.

It's been nearly three years since I last read the final book, but aside from a couple of scenes it stayed pretty true to the original. Now, I'm not one of those book purists (at least, not anymore) who cries foul if it strays even the littlest bit away from the source material. I've come to realize that the novel and the movie are two completely different media and what works in one doesn't always work in the other. I think Deathly Hallows part 1 successfully avoided the pitfalls that come with adaptations. They succeeded in making a movie (albeit a bit long-winded) that didn't completely alienate the fans of the books.

I'll definitely be staying up past midnight for the premiere of the last movie. It's the definitive end of an era in my life, and I think that justifies an all-nighter.

Harry Potter and World-Building

The Harry Potter series will always hold a special place in my heart. I've read the first five books more times than I can count on two hands and a foot, and the last two a handful of times each. In my (relatively short) lifetime, I've only come across one other series that even made me want to reread all of them. Something tells me this is a phenomenon that happens only rarely, and only with those books that really mean something to us.

There are many amazing things about these books that people have written whole books (and theses!) on. But there's one aspect that I've been thinking about recently that I want to talk about. The Harry Potter series exhibits some of the best world-building that I've ever read.

I have had an unusual first encounter with this series. I was around six years old. I had been reading fairly well since kindergarten, and the reading level of the first book was simple enough so that I could read it on my own. Of course, my mom was reading the book to me so that she could explain and edit the story if needed (My memory is fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure she glossed over the "dueling" scene that had Harry wandering out at night to fight Malfoy. That scene scared me when I read it on my own later).

I remember looking at the cover, staring at this kid so much older than me in this magical world. I wanted to see this magic, but so far all we had seen was a rude cousin and a zoo that only hinted at anything magical. I wanted to read about the amazing things. So one day I picked up the book on my own and started reading in the middle of the book (awful of me, I know). It was a scene that had Harry and Ron talking. But strangely enough, I imagined them as these two young boys, talking on a playground next to the brick wall of the school. Where was the magical world?

I had skipped right over it. What I had missed were the chapters that so wonderfully and quickly set up this whole new world right in our own. Because I skipped over this, all I saw were two little boys barely older than me talking on the playground, the best setting I could come up with on my own with my first grader mind. But when my mom read it to me that night, and I got the story properly, I was taken to a world I never would have been able to imagine. And there was no going back after that.

I think it's because this magical world does have clear ties with the normal world that make it all the more believable. Who hasn't seen a locked, unmarked door and wondered what was behind it? Who hasn't seen something ordinary and imagined some fantastic idea behind it? Or the train station through the solid brick wall? This series fueled my imagination for my entire childhood.

I think it's time for a rereading.