WEB SPECIAL! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 Review

"These are dark times, there is no denying that."

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I" premieres today across the nation and proves to be, arguably, the best movie in the HP series yet. Finally, one of the movies balances the details of the story that the first three movies portrayed, with the artistic, personal interpretation of the Half Blood Prince.

The movie opens with a shot of each Ron, Harry, and Hermione preparing to say good-bye to their families by pitching the tent for Bill and Fleur's wedding; sending the Dursleys out to the country; or by using the Obliviate charm on Mr. and Mrs. Granger. From there, the story is plucked up and thrown into full swing as Harry, Ron, and Hermione apparate from isolated place to isolated place to find the Horcruxes, destroy them, all the while on the run for their lives away from the Dark Lord. Woven into the broader  plot, Harry and Ginny's, and of course, Ron and Hermione's relationships develop more and more until the sexual tension mounts so high, it would take two days to cross. And though, the movie captures only the first part of the seventh book, the more boring of the two halves, director David Yates, is able to cherry-pick the most important parts of the chapters and mold them into a smoothed string of a storyline.  

The filming of the movie as a whole was pure quality. Scene after scene, painted in nuances of grey, the CG and special effects melted into the live action shots just as if Harry were really holding Dobby's dying body in his arms. From the beginning scenes with the members of the Order drinking the polyjuice potion filling the room with six or seven Harrys, and the deatheaters silkily soaring through the twilight skies; to back and forth movement of the woods and Harry, Hermione, and Ron, running, while in fast-forward, and the ability of Yates to truly depict the sunken-in solitude of Draco that transcended the sixth and seventh movies; the cinematography blew me away.

One of the most unusual scenes is the depiction of the re-telling of the tale of the Deathly Hallows, which is unlike anything else in the first six movies. It is almost a sickening "Nightmare Before Christmas"-esque animation if it were illustrated on tea-stained paper. Also, brace yourself for the scene when Harry and Hermione go to Godric's Hollow. It has been a mystery since the first reading of the book as to what the interaction with the supposed Bathilda Bagshot, turned Nagini would look like, but it isn't until you see Harry being slowly strangled and entangled by this behemoth of a snake that it will truly make sense.

Though the fervor of dressing up in a Gryffindor house uniform, complete with cloak, tie, and scarf, all with iron-on Godric Gryffindor seals attached, may have died down since we first started attending school with Harry back in our first year at Hogwarts, seeing the film in the theater, even if purely for aesthetics, will take your second-rate Thanksgiving Break, to being a chart-topper.