Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Things get serious in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1,” for better or worse, and you find yourself in deeper and darker territory. Gone is Chris Columbus’s whimsical vision of J.K. Rowling’s much beloved books. Director David Yates is going for full-fledged opera here and so it seems almost criminal that he’s let his work be chopped in half. However, there’s still enough Potter movie magic to keep audiences coming back for more.

The movie concerns the first half of the novel on which it’s based. It begins with a now Voldemort-fearing magical world. Our heroes, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) have skipped out on their last year at Hogwarts, a school for wizardry and magic. Instead, they’re intent on finding and destroying the rest of the seven horcruxes that dark lord Voldemort (Ralph Feinnes), put his soul into.

Their quest is complicated by the Ministry of Magic, which has gone corrupt in wake of Dumbledore’s death. It soon becomes hard to distinguish which force is worse: the Ministry of Magic drones or Voldemort’s disciples, the Death Eaters.

The movie, which clocks in at an impressive 146 minutes, is perhaps too faithful to its source material and is slow at times. If some of Rowling’s novel was a tad tedious, we forgave it. She had earned the right to any material we found needless. For cinematic purposes, however, there’s no need to witness the camping segment of the plot in its entirety. The benefit of condensing the books into films was the need to edit for time and relevance. That’s not evident here.

That being said, “Harry Potter” is still an entertaining and exciting rollick. The special effects are big and bold, and the film doesn’t make them the focal point either. But one can’t help get lost in the dizzyingly, wonderfully realized chase scene that has not one, but a multitude of Potters making their way overhead London. The camerawork alternates between sweeping and intimate and the animated segment is unusual and gorgeous. The settings are also painstakingly realized. The black tiled, futuristic interiors of the Ministry of Magic dungeon are fascinating in their cold beauty.

It’s also comforting to see Yates trust his movie enough to get dark. Among the many of its scary pleasures, a run in with an old woman who might be the key to finding a horcrux is perhaps the most intense and the mostly absurdly exhilarating.

Acting has never been a concern of mine in Potter films, and there’s nothing here that should make this inclination any different. However, I did find myself beginning to miss the movie veterans that usually surround our young heroes. Alan Rickman is appropriately menacing but underutilized. Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall is not present whatsoever, which is something of a disappointment.

There’s some splendid moviemaking here, and the last image is strong enough to make you almost forget that you’re watching half of a film.