Harry Potter and the Raiders of the Lost Horcrux, Part Un.

If a sword gets lost in the woods and no one is there to find it, can it destroy a piece of your soul?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The arrival of a new Harry Potter movie is always somewhat of a major film event.  But with the release of the latest installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, it's finally sinking in that we're approaching the end of a franchise as steadily as that train heads into Hogwarts.  Up front I should admit to not being a big Potter-head.  I have not read a single word of J.K. Rowling's original novels.  I have enjoyed every single movie and have loved a couple, but I have also not revisited any of them since their theatrical release outside of catching a scene here and there when it airs on cable.  And even after having screened the first five in a theater, I completely skipped the sixth movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and had to scramble to obtain a DVD to watch the night before having been invited by friends to watch the latest film. So while the world was awaiting with baited breath for the release of the first half of Deathly Hallows, I had a full three years of space in between my own personal Harry Potter experiences.  Needless to say, the enthusiasm had sort of fizzled like a long-distance relationship.  But after watching the sixth movie on DVD and then sitting in a sold-out theater for the seventh, I carry with me a new and rejuvenated affection for the series.

Hermione and an angry Ron in DEATHLY HALLOWS

This latest Potter flick picks up, naturally, where the previous chapter left us.  Towards the end of Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Dumbledore have discovered that Voldemort has gained immortality by storing parts of his soul in horcruxes (horcruces?)--seven to be exact--and therefore begin a journey of seek and destroy. Deathly Hallows has Harry continuing this search, with the aide of Hermione and Ron.  Voldemort, having gathered the rest of the Death Eaters, also engages on a journey of seek and destroy--of Harry. And along with those colliding plot lines, we get the requisite magic and spells and are introduced to brand new characters seemingly out of the blue.

It's the mythos of these films that have always interested me the least.  The overarching story of this world feels pretty familiar and the layering of backstory has sometimes felt awkard and tedious.  The best moments of each film, especially the more recent ones, regard the more human preoccupations of navigating the murky terrain of growing up.  In Half-Blood Prince, Harry and Hermione had to deal with their initially unrequited crushes on Ginny and Ron.  And the scene where Harry comforts Hermione when Ron goes off on a tryst with a new Quidditch groupie is particularly tender and Emma Watson's performance is unexpectedly moving.

In the woods.

In Deathly Hallows, the dynamic between the trio is put to the test again in an unusually extended middle section.  After the three are forced to abandon the rest of the Order when they are attacked by Death Eaters at a wedding, they become literally lost in the woods, trying to figure out their next move, how to find and destroy the next horcrux.  While punctuated with various actions scenes in between, including a clever bit breaking into the ministry in disguise, this section is essentially a mini chamber drama, where the three leads get to hash out whatever psychological angst and tension has been brewing between them or being caused by their isolation.

I've heard from others, including some friends who screened the movie with me, that have said that they were bored during these moments.  But they're riveting.  In particular, there is a short, wordless scene where two of the characters dance with each other to music coming out of an old transistor radio.  It is both sweet and awkward and it points to a complexity amongst the three of them that heretofore hadn't been seen.  It would be unrealistic to expect a film of this sort to explore these complexities to any real depth, but at least we know it's there.  It connects us to them as people.  It's my favorite moment of the entire series.

One of the glaringly obvious questions this series posed in terms of its screen adaptations of the books is how these kids would age from their neophyte years of the early films to young adult actors in these final ones.  And it's in these scenes and moments that you get the idea how fully they've grown into their characters.  It might be hard for them to ever come out from under the shadow of this enormous series, but with each installment, they've felt a little more lived-in, a little less like kids merely acting precocious.

From mere deduction and having heard so through the grapevine, the final film in the series will likely rely more heavily on pure action and spectacle and, fine, that seems inevitable.  Almost every fantasy/sci-fi series will eventually disintegrate into these action sequences, yet I hope at least a kernel of the humanity shown in these previous two movies will remain and shine through.  It will be a bone tossed to those of us who yearn for just a little more than lightning bolts flashing out of wooden wands.