Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 Review

Splitting the finale was a commercial decision that accidentally produced the strangest film in the series. There is no Hogwarts, no term, no rhythm of lessons and holidays, just three teenagers camping in bad weather while a country falls to a takeover happening offscreen. Eduardo Serra shoots the wilderness with real desolation, and the opening twenty minutes are the best sustained filmmaking in the run, Hermione erasing herself from her parents' memories in silence and then a motorway chase that finally makes the wizarding war feel lethal.

The animated telling of the Three Brothers, done in shadow puppetry, is the single most beautiful sequence the franchise produced, and it works because it stops looking like the rest of the film. The cost is the middle hour. The tent section plays the same argument three times with different scenery, and the picture has no third act because it does not own one, closing instead on Voldemort robbing a grave.

Dobby's death earns its tears, and Malfoy Manor is genuinely tense in a way the series rarely managed. It is a good film that cannot stand alone, which is precisely the bargain the studio struck when it cut the book in half.