“All Was Well”

by Chris Bodenner

Christopher Orr says The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 "serves up a satisfying finale to the Potter franchise":

The first two [films], directed by Chris Columbus (of Home Alone and Mrs. Doubtfire fame) resembled cinematic books on tape, loyal yet somehow lifeless. The third, by contrast, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who gave himself the space and latitude to inject a bit of humanity into the furiously plotted proceedings. Alas, Cuarón had other fish to fry—notably two of the best films of 2006: Children of Men, which he adapted and directed, and Pan’s Labyrinth, which he co-produced. The fourth film, Goblet of Fire, was ably but unmemorably directed by Mike Newell (who, in a truly odd coincidence, is scheduled in 2012 to become, with Cuarón, the second Potter director to release an adaptation of Great Expectations). For the final four films—the seventh book having been split in two for reasons that assuredly have no relation to the box office—BBC veteran David Yates (State of Play) took the helm, and over the course of numbers five and six, the (again, for me) diminishing returns were much as expected.

But last summer, as I steeled myself for the moderate disappointment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, I was happily confounded by what proved to be the fiercest, most grownup entrant in the series so far. Not all literary virtues are cinematic ones—and vice versa—and the sense of a world teetering toward Armageddon that had seemed largely expository on the page acquired newfound weight and immediacy onscreen.