Just let me write this one and I promise it’ll be the last (for now)
I just got back from seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II again, and I’m not sure I really did it justice the first time I spoke about it on this blog. You’re going to have to forgive me; I’m going to repeat a lot of things that I’ve said before, and I’m probably going to contradict myself numerous times, but I’ll never live with myself or this blog if I don’t get this all out.
The first time I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was an accident. I’ve always had a reading habit when I’m blow-drying my hair. It’s a little silly, because it takes all of fifteen minutes (at MOST) to dry it, but I always need to read something. I’m not too picky — it can be a great book or a celebrity magazine. Sometimes it’s been labels on different canisters of food or an invitation. On this particular day (I can’t completely recall, but it’s likely it was in the morning), I picked up this book. At the time, I was always drying my hair in the dining area of my mom’s apartment because there wasn’t a lot of room in the bathroom. This is important because my younger brother (who was around nine at time) had left his book out on the table.
I had largely ignored this book while he was reading it — the cover, with its cartoon kid on a broomstick, looked like all the other stuff he always. He has always been a gigantic fantasy geek. But I was out of reading material and had a wet head, so I picked it up.
I don’t remember my initial reaction, I just remember that I stowed the book away in my bag and took it with me the rest of the day. I don’t remember what I did at school, I just remember anxiously waiting to finish class or speeding through assignments so I could pull out the book and read. Admittedly, it was a little on the kid-lit side, but I’ve also always been a fantasy geek, so I stuck with it. When I finished it the first time, I read it again. As a new kid in a school that was gigantic (at least compared to my last), these kids became my kids. They even became, I do believe, my friends. Luckily, my first reading coincided with the release of The Chamber of Secrets in the U.S., so I didn’t yet have to endure the pure agony of waiting for J.K. Rowling to release another Potter book. Not yet.
I dove into the second book, and became rabid for a third. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban did not disappoint me. I loved the darker tone, the obvious growing maturity of the trio, and the introduction of Sirius Black, who immediately became my favorite. Harry Potter the Goblet of Fire followed, and then came word of the impending release date of the first Harry Potter movie.
My attitude toward the films has always been one of great joy. I’ve never expected the films to be the same as the books — on the contrary, I relished the differences. To me, books and the films they inspire are part of the same glorious family tree — and this is particular true with the Potter franchise. I was so excited to see someone else’s idea of this magical world, and to get to share the love I had for the series with so many other people in this way. I’ve always loved reading and I’ve always loved going to the movies, so having a series of movies designed to accompany this series of books I was already so enchanted sounded perfect to me. I feel like expecting the movies to match the books is too much. When you read, you have the luxury of creating a world just for yourself. You take the author’s most spectacular words and you weave your own tapestry in your mind. You get to decide the exact shade of Ron’s hair and just how crazy Hermione’s own head of hair really is. You get to decide if Harry’s eyes should be green or if they’re nicer blue. You get to picture what Hogwarts looks like, what Hogsmeade is like, and just how tall Hagrid really is.
When you watch a movie based on a book, you have to relinquish this to the creator of the film. You have to give way to your own ideas about who looks like what, or how someone acts, or what someone would and wouldn’t say, and let me say this: it’s never going to live up to it. Instead of expecting the films to match my imagination, I’ve always celebrated them for what they are: masterpieces in their own right.
After the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone the film, we Pottermaniacs began living in a world in which Harry Potter books and Harry Potter movies were being created simultaneously. If you were agonizing over the next literary installment it was kind of ok, because you knew a film would be out soon and you could get your fix that way. Sure, maybe the first thirty or so minutes (at least) of the film version of Goblet of Fire are a little choppy, and it may also be true that if you hadn’t read the book you might have no idea what’s going on, but it didn’t matter. It still doesn’t.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix brought the series into a much more realistic light. While it had always kind of been, at least I think so, the real-world comparisons of that world and the one we live in began to be highlighted. The death of Sirius Black was one that caught me completely off-guard. It was one that I mourned, silently, for days. I remember my friend Kim was out in the parking lot of my mom’s apartment, waiting to pick me up for something or another, and I was inside, hurrying through the final moments of his life, terrified at what I suspected would be his fate.
It became quite clear to me that the series would really, truly end when the book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released. The bookstore celebration was tinged with a bit of emotion that hadn’t been at others — while everyone was still ecstatic about the book, there was also a slightly grey cloud of “it’ll be over soon” hanging over our heads. We all busied ourselves with reading, many right there in store after purchasing, and carried on.
It was obvious in the books as well. These kids who had amused and enthralled all of us for so long, the kids that I absolutely loved, were growing up. Gone were the days of “There’s a bit of dirt on your nose, did you know?” and instead we had relationships and teen angst — on top of the very real threat of Voldemort and all the evil he contained.
Something I have always loved about the movies is that what I have always considered the be the central core of the books — love wins over all, love unites, love is the most powerful force — is very obvious in each film. Maybe they distract us a little with visual representations we don’t like, or entire scenes that “never really happened” (but didn’t it all? Really?), but this message of love is abundant.
I remember waiting all day for my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to arrive to Sean’s mom’s house. We were living with her for a month while we were between places, and I was worried that somehow the addresses would be confused — even though the place we had been living was only one mailbox over. When it came, I tore into it, anxious and excited and totally scared out of my mind. How would she wrap it up? What would happen? Who would die? Who would live?
I read the final book in a little under four hours. I left the bedroom for water and to go to the restroom, but that was it. Each time I came out into the kitchen for something, Sean and his mother would look at me and grin, scanning my face for hints at what was happening, what kind of havoc was being wreaked on this world we were all so attached to. They well knew at this point that for me to go into Potter’s world was nearly akin to physically leaving and visiting that very wonderful place — that my mind took me as far as it could without teleporting me into the pages I held.
I was exhausted when I finished. I felt like I had been through so much in such a small amount of time. I came out and told Sean’s mom who dies and how it happens (she asked), and just shook my head, totally not believing that I had just read everything I had read.
I also had this incredible feeling of closure, of peace. I knew that for me, J.K. Rowling had done it. She had wrapped it up the way it needed to be done. She had made it perfect.
When I heard Deathly Hallows would be split into two parts I was thrilled. I glossed over the suspicion that it might have been more for the benefit of the production company and less for the fans, because it was still a win-win — I didn’t care if they made more money if it meant that this, the final and possibly most important film, would be treated with the respect I felt it deserved.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I had me wrecked. Nothing about that movie was light, nothing was care-free. There were little joke, a few moments of fun or witty banter, but nothing like the other films had seen. It was exactly as it should have been.
Several times in the months leading up to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II I’d find myself in the company of fellow Potterites and shaking with anticipation. When you’ve loved a series for so long you lose any feelings of embarrassment you might have over being twenty-six and this wrapped up in a “kid’s series,” and everyone I knew felt the same way. We all felt so deeply for these people we had come to know — people who had ceased being characters and become human beings who really are living somewhere we can’t get to.
I was terrified they’d somehow ruin it. I was scared that some characters wouldn’t get the glory they deserve, or scared that they’d make changes I couldn’t reconcile my imagination with. I was worried that my opinion about films inspired by books would change, and that I’d leave the movie broken because it didn’t live up to what I created when I read the book.
I was, clearly, quite wrong.
There are definite differences between this film and the last half of the book, but you knew there were going to be. What is different is the degree of respect that everyone involved in the film, from David Yates to Daniel Radcliffe to numerous stage hands that will never be named, holds for the books, the films, and the fans. They changed some stuff up, but I love the way they changed it. I cried when I knew I would, cried when things happened or were said that I never could have predicted, and absolutely celebrated the fact that Harry never had to utter the killing curse to Voldemort to defeat him: it made Harry even more human this way.
I left the theater Friday morning with the same sense of peace, closure, and happiness. I went again today with friends who were seeing it for the first time and enjoyed their reactions, and had even stronger reactions this time than I did last time.
I’m just so incredibly happy that these books and films exist. I’m so happy that I can share them, that you can share them, that anyone who picks one up and gets into it can share them. I’m so happy that I’ve had these experiences in my life. I’m not mournful that it’s “over” because I don’t think it is.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II is tremendous. It is, in fact, perfect.
