Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Something wicked this way has finally ended. After a period of ten years and $6.3 billion dollars, one of the world's most successful and well-made franchises has come to a conclusion. Happy I am that despite the trajectory of the recent Harry Potter films becoming less and less interesting with each movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is truly exceptional, the most exciting since the second ("The Chamber of Secrets") and the third ("The Prisoner of Azkaban").

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends (Rupert Grint as Ron and Emma Watson as Hermione) are still on the run. They have not returned for another year at Hogwarts, their beloved school, now taken over by a new headmaster, Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), the puppet of the Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). There were all sorts of details I should explain but I had forgotten about them from previous films. There's something about a horcrux, whatever the hell that is, that they have to gather and destroy before Voldemort finds them, but he's not really looking for them, or he's waiting, or something. Wasn't there a prisoner of Afghanistan, or somewhere? He was a bad guy, too, right? But then he became good, and all the professors who we thought were good--ah, to hell with it. Who cares? By this point, there's no need for it to be "Harry Potter and the Exposition." Harry and his friends are going to fight Voldemort and the bad guys. That's all you need to know.

This film series has never failed to look terrific. Even if the story lags or becomes too repetitive or crowded, you can still tell that the producers have found the most talented directors, composers, editors, visual effects creators, makeup artists, cinematographers, and costumer designers in town. It looks so good that even though I did not view it in 3-D, I can confidently recommend that (unless you have a bizarre attraction to hurting your eyes, insulting your brain, and lightening your wallet) you can skip viewing it in 3-D. I suppose that one of the faults is that in this film everything is so dark and morbid and depressing that I have to remind myself it's a children's story. The cinematography of John Seale and then Roger Pratt in the earlier films looked quite brighter than the cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel and then Eduardo Serra in the most recent ones. One character's throat is slit, and another falls into a ball of fire. Young girls scream terrible screams. Yes, I understand that in the tradition of Brothers Grimm all children's stories should have some darkness to them, but instead of "Snow White" this film at times becomes "Harry Potter and the All Quiet on the Western Front."

Another disappointment is that yet again, because there's so many characters, some of them just sort of show up and stand there. Helena Bonham Carter just snickers a bit, while Jason Isaacs looks drunk and sleep-deprived (for a reason I'm sure explained at one point). Jim Broadbent's bumbling about in "The Half-Blood Prince" is hardly ever found in this one. But fortunately some characters are given more. Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall takes over the school, and even gets to use a spell she's been aching to give a try. And Rickman as Snape, after practically a cameo in "Part 1," is given better treatment here, allowing him to once again portray everything that is appealing about the character, the pathetic yet sympathetic flawed and deeply ambiguous witch. Finally, Fiennes, as always, looks as if he is having an absolutely terrific time as one of cinema's greatest villains.

The series has been about a school for witchcraft and wizardry, but in reality it has been an actor's studio for its young stars. They--especially Radcliffe, Grint and Watson--have acted with practically every famous British actor working today. By now the list is quite high and certainly impressive: Richard Harris, Michael Gambon, Warwick Davis, Robbie Coltrane, Kenneth Branagh, Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Walters, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Jason Isaacs, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Richard Griffiths, John Hurt, Rhys Ifans, Toby Jones, Julian Glover. And so Radcliffe, Grint and Watson and the others have profited greatly from such education, and I'm sure the world looks forward to their next great performances.

I couldn't help but notice at the midnight showing on opening night/morning that the vast, vast majority of viewers were young people--people my age, some slightly younger and some slightly older. These young people have grown up with these books and movies. It was ten years ago that the very first Harry Potter film was released, about one month after 9/11. I was a freshman in high school then. About two months before the release of this final Harry Potter film, bin Laden was finally killed. If my generation is to be known as the "9/11 Generation" as USA Today called us, then we have known a great deal--the rise of the internet, the return of "Star Wars," social networking, Y2K. Some have called us the Peter Pan generation for obvious reason--a sense of entitlement and stubbornness, youthful idealism, and not growing up (how many of us still live with our parents?). But we in a sense grew up on 9/11. We lived through the day and its aftermath, the Great Recession, global warming and a whole host of other problems. It's nice to be able to escape from all that with films like these Harry Potter movies, perhaps the last film series to consistently capture a sense of wonderment in the escapism of movies.