The last Harry Potter film deviates frustratingly too frequently from the book.
Hallows or horcruxes? That is the choice Harry Potter faces in the seventh book in a series that has captivated people for almost ten years now. He chooses horcruxes which will help defeat the evil Lord Voldermort instead of the three deathly hallows which could make him the ‘master of death’.
Why does Potter do that? How does it impact the final battle between Voldermort and him? These and other questions are hardly explained in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2, the Warner Brothers film that brings the bestselling story to screen. In fact the final battle between Voldermort and Potter, etched nail-bitingly in JK Rowling’s book, is the biggest disappointment in the film. It deviates completely from the book where Potter and Voldermort fight each other in front of the staff and students of Hogwarts and Voldermort’s followers. The action in the book is punctuated by dialogue which explains why Potter is about to win. The film just shows Potter and Voldermort wrestling with each other muggle-style, some fancy wand work and then Potter kills him.
It is such a pathetic end to such a wonderful story. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 is upsetting because of such deviations from the plot. There are entire scenes and plot twists that were never there in the book. Like the one where Severus Snape asks the whole school to assemble because Potter has been spotted in Hogsmeade. It never happened.
This is not to say it is a bad film. It is well made, well shot and every one of the actors has done a brilliant job, especially Mathew Lewis and Alan Rickman. Lewis plays Neville Longbottom. His journey from the plump, hesitant loser in the first film to the man who gets the rebellion going against the death eaters at Hogwarts in the last one is wonderful to watch. You wish he got a little more screen time. Rickman, an English theatre veteran, has got Snape spot on from day one. Daniel
Radcliffe as Potter, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger and Rupert Grint as Ronald Weasly are amazing. Not just because they do a good job, but because they do not seem to be making the effort. They are Harry, Ron and Hermione.
More From This Section
But the film leaves you thirsty and discontented. One part of the reason is that you don’t want the series to end. If like me, you have lived with the Potter saga for ten years, you are loath to let go. The second part is that the film is not really true to the story.
* * *
To be fair, it is very difficult to convert Rowling’s books into a script and then screenplay. The setting is a world where wizards and witches exist as regular people. They learn wizardry and witchcraft at a school called Hogwarts and then go on to become healers, aurors, teachers and other things. You will never appreciate or enjoy the world and the characters Rowling creates unless you have read the books.
However, when any story gets translated from a book to a film, cutting out stuff becomes imperative for two reasons. One, the film can only be so long. Two, a lot of people watching the film may not have read the book. So some changes, plot deviations, throwing out characters and context in the interest of a crisper screen version are expected. Too much of that however seems to have happened to the last four Harry Potter films, all directed by David Yates. You can actually divide the whole series into the Yates and the non-Yates films.
The first four were all remarkably true to the original. Also, they were made by directors who brought out the charm and wonder of living in the magical world of Potter. The first two, made by Chris Columbus of Home Alone fame, had a light touch. The third film, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (directed by Alfonso Cuaron), is by far the best in the series. It captures the adventure, magic and the world of Hogwarts without losing any of the contextual details of a complicated tale.
The last four, starting from Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, have been much too dark. That is because the story gets more serious once Voldermort returns from his near-dead status in book four, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In book five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, he gathers followers. In book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, he tries to get Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts and Potter’s protector and guide, killed. He succeeds, and book seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, begins from Potter’s quest for the seven horcruxes that contain pieces of Voldermort’s soul. Once the horcruxes are destroyed, killing him will become easier.
The last four films do a competent job of showing that journey. But Yates takes far too many liberties in his quest to convert what is anyway a good story into high art. Some of the more redeeming moments, like right after the trio break into Gringotts, the wizarding bank, are completely ignored. Though he does a good job with the battles, Yates has a tendency to focus on the sad parts of the story. Also a lot of the context is simply battered into one-liners. This makes watching the final chapter very frustrating.
If a brilliant, but detailed trilogy like The Lord of Rings could become an equally brilliant and accurate film trilogy (also by Warner Brothers), why can’t the Harry Potter series? For true blue fans, like yours truly, that is the really upsetting thing about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2. It lets down its fans.
