KM's long awaited review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Wiki summaries: Harry has finally come of age, and finally started on his final journey to defeat Voldemort for good. The Durselys are forced to go into hiding so that Voldemort’s Death Eaters will not torture them for information, and Harry sets off with Ron and Hermione on a difficult quest to find and destroy the last of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Only once those have been destroyed, Harry knows, can Voldemort truly be killed.
Deathly Hallows is the final tie binding my heart to JK Rowling's characters; and locking me in as a fan of this world she created. It's phenomenal what she has done for this generation and I just wonder if the giganticness of the Harry Potter empire is larger than Tolkien or Lewis or Jane Austin. That remains to be seen. I guess it is up to the generations that come next.
It is in Deathly Hallows that the egocentric Harry [whom I adore even tho] is finally, truly, part of the family. He humbly and gladly accepts his place among them -- Ron, Hermione, The Weasleys, even Luna -- and Harry's 'family', in turn, realizes that war with Voldemort is not exclusively Harry's war.
Voldemort's Hitler-like hunger to weed out the undesirables and breed a perfect race of witches becomes unstoppable, and the lightning shaped scar on Harry's head fades to the background.
This is summed up in my favorite quote from this movie:
‘
You may be the Chosen One, mate,’ Ron says to Harry
[as he catches up to him swishing through in a cornfield in the middle of the night.],
‘
but this is a whole lot bigger than you.’
The action sequences and special effects in this movie are amazing. The visual interpretation of HP book 7 is more than I could have imagined. Brighter than the picture I conjured in my own head as I tore through the pages a year or two ago. Superior job.
The creators really made me feel like Harry and Hermione were on the road, moving from place to place for a long, long time. And their dance stole my heart. The true Eros love or Philia love -- friends that genuinely care for one another. My favorite moment in the movie.
HOWEVER, there is one moment that got mucked up. My favorite part of Deathly Hallows (book) is when Ron helps Harry find the Sword of Godric Gryffindor. I will never forget that moment. It shook the ground beneath me when I read it from the pages. These friends that I have watch grow over the years in friendship, in stature, in bond. And, in the movie, they skimmed over the 'finding of the sword' like a boring chapter of a book you find in a thrift store. I am still grinding my teeth over that one.
All in all, Deathly Hallows is a class act, a huge hit and I say, "Get to the theater already, would ya?"
