Harry is jogged along by helpful visions revealing the whereabouts and mood of his opponent, as well as hints as to where to head next. But on the whole, the tone’s fraught and, if you’ll excuse the pun, deathly serious.īack to the plot. Neville gets a couple of smart lines, and caretaker Filch is still camping around in the background. Former jesters Fred and George don’t have a lot to smile about, and erstwhile face puller Ron grew out of screaming like a girl a couple of films back. In fact, there’s little room for comedy at all in this one. Yates and Rowling wisely sent the Dursleys packing early on in the last film, so there’s no room for the seventies sitcom farce which opened the first three instalments. Unlike the exciting broomstick flight opening to Part 1, this time around, things are much quieter and more contemplative.
Picking up where Part 1 left off, Part 2 opens with the adventure magnet trio recovering at Shell Cottage, before taking the next step in their plan to defeat Voldemort. A fluid tracking shot following Harry, Ron and Hermione across the battlefield is used to good effect, as are shots of the teaming hordes of baddies congregating on a rocky outcrop and a fairly special bridge collapse. It’s no real disservice to Part 2 to say it doesn’t quite capture the scale of battle achieved in, say, Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, despite hitting a few of the same marks. It’s a fitting war palette for the war film of the series. Instead of gaily tripping through the courtyard with Quidditch and chocolate frogs on their minds, the students are now being marched around their dismal surroundings in formation under the watchful eyes (do Dementors have eyes?) of Dementors and Death Eaters.Įduardo Serra, director of photography on these last two pictures, renders the once jolly castle in austere greys and muted tones, splashing the screen with danger red when battle commences. Without revealing too much, it’s safe to say that the Hogwarts of the two Deathly Hallows films is a very different place from the site of childish rivalries and comedy curses with which Chris Columbus began the series. Some will, no doubt, enjoy the extra dimension (just as Warner Bros will, no doubt, enjoy the extra moolah it generates), but I wouldn’t have thought you’d be missing out should you prompt to go for a glasses-free 2D screening. You might question the logic of converting a film with such a sombre palette into 3D, but a colour-saturated childhood flashback sequence and some mightily impressive cursed fire came across a treat. The talented David Yates, as we suspected he might, resisted any urge to have wands jutting out in the audience’s faces every five minutes. I’ll say now that the 3D wasn’t overplayed either.
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