On the whole, it's a fun ride and time well spent. Unfortunately, there are two reasons why Hallows was split into two, and neither of them is "storytelling."
The outer reason is obviously that getting two films out of one shoot is a fairly sure double-your-money bet. Half-Blood Prince had a budget of $250M -- the same as the last two films combined; for the same price, you get punters to buy two tickets (not even counting those who fell for the 3D racket). Consider also that the one film of Order of the Phoenix had a budget of $150M and brought in almost $938M worldwide.
[More after the jump!]
The inner reason is that, for whatever reason, they don't make epic films any more. Gone are the days of Lawrence of Arabia (217 minutes), Cleopatra (192') and Ben Hur (212').
The two installments of Deathly Hallows run to a combined 276' (4h36m, 146' and 130' respectively). Is there really that much more story to tell from this one novel? Probably not. But I do remember being squeezed into a packed theatre for 201' -- 3h21 -- of LotR: Return of the King's opening weekend; the end was a leg-cramped, bladder-stretching nightmare, without the intermission thrown in by Lawrence et al.
In fine, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (ol' Number 8) is precisely what you would imagine it should be: padded, but not overstuffed; moody with touches of humour; it dabbles lightly in philosophical deepness between grand effects-clad action set pieces.
The heart-rending moral ambiguity of the book is swept away. Aberforth Dumbledore (played by the great Ciaran Hinds) ridicules Potter as being his brother's patsy; Snape likens Harry as a pig being fattened for slaughter. Harry's only clear reaction to this is that he is Doing The Right Thing, and he "trusts the man he knew."
By contrast, one of the most vivid examples of character drama in the book series is Harry's wrenching realization that he never really knew Dumbledore at all, and his decision to trust him anyway.
Film can do this -- Oliver Stone's Alexander (the Revisited cut in particular) presents a very morally ambiguous character in a notoriously muddled and confusing way. Not because it is a bad film -- in my opinion touches on some of the controversies of Alexander's life in a very clever and astute way. If you know the history, you can see Stone attempting to show how two interpretations can spring up at once out of one event.
Most films are not this interested in complexity, and forego the entire debate by dividing the world into cowboys with white hats and cowboys with black hats. (George Lucas also failed miserably at moral ambiguity by having his white hats and black hats tell us that the world is ambiguous.)
Number 8 does not fall into this "ambiguity" trap. Harry is Good; Snape is Good Deep Down; Voldemort is Oh So Bad. Harry's decision to steal from Griphook is mitigated; the meaning of Voldemort's appearance in King's Cross is not discussed; and Snape-- well, he's shown as pure evil in 6, and pure good in 8, and the viewer can kind of just work it out himself. Harry names his kid after Snape, but it's only the middle name, so there's that.
The films are good, and this is a good conclusion to a good series. As films, they have amazing actors doing fun and exciting things. Special effects are now breathtakingly convincing. I recommend the movie without reservation.
What I find so fascinating, however, is that the early movies were flawed in staying too close to their simple stories. The latter movies departed freely from the increasingly complicated books, I think only to their detriment.
In small ways: My wife pointed out that Luna Lovegood was in the middle of the Room of Requirement when Harry returned to Hogwarts. But wasn't she just at the cottage? How did she get to school before Harry? In the book she doesn't, but the movie cut all that out, so...
In big ways: The book had Neville make a clumsy, awkward, humiliating stand against Voldemort that becomes incredibly heroic and covers him in glory. The movie messes with this and completely steals his moment; he is literally upstaged by Harry. When he finally has his chance again, what he does is good, but not so clearly great.
Finally, because of the way the series has developed, I don't think it can really stand on its own. Other series, like Godfather, Star Wars, make a solid attempt at keeping the same visual style. The Potter series completely abandoned that. Personally, though, I find it conforms nicely with a pet reading I have kept of the books, and I would like to end with that.
Harry Potter books 6 and 7 are the only ones that happened as told. They are so obsessed with the prisms of perception and memory that I find it more convincing to think of all the books 1-4 as glossy golden memories, distorted by repeated varnishing. What was simple for kids -- work out the puzzle (which has one right answer) and beat the monster -- becomes intricately difficult as they grow to adulthood. 5 has the fresh, anxious sting of middle adolescence and recent painful memories, and so sits astride the two.
Movies 1-4 have a lot of gold, bright colours, music with ringing themes. 5, still glossy, turns dark -- and stays dark. The series from that point becomes grey and overcast. Stones splinter under hexes; grit accrues around the edges. The characters, so clean-cut in Sorcerer's Stone, are dirty, bloody, and suffering in the last three films. The dragon, so majestic, otherworldly in 4, such a formidable adversary, is abused, covered in sores and limps along in 8.
Coming back to ambiguity: it is only in our memories where we can see definite boundaries between good and evil. No one thinks of himself as evil; we all cast ourselves as the hero as far back as we can remember. In the thick tangle of the present moment, where dappled light falls here and there indiscriminately, we can only follow our best judgement to constantly hew toward the Good. Like Harry, sometimes we make terrible mistakes; and like Harry, we can only trust that somehow, impossibly, it will all work out in the end.
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