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A colleague of mine summed it up: The “Harry Potter” films have been a mammoth presence in all of our lives for a decade now, and when it comes down to it, we’ve all grown a whopping 10 years older since the first one cast its youthful spell. So whether you speak Parseltongue or don’t know your Malfoys from your McGonagalls, odds are “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” is gonna hit you square in the heart. Such is why we can easily forgive this epic — and, indeed, biblical — closing chapter for its oft-perfunctory comic relief (sorry, Neville Longbottom), its ever-awkward juggling of footnote romances, and its stance as an inevitably choppy laundry list of tie-ups. Its years-in-the-brewing heft makes it just about nitpick-proof.
We’ve fallen in love with “Harry” as a magical institution, so what better way to represent it onscreen than as a hallowed wizard’s academy? In the film’s most thrilling and metaphorical set piece (and there are many of those), we’re taken into the dusty attic of Hogwarts, where Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his canoodling confidants, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson), literally dig through their past before the whole jam-packed memory bank is spectacularly incinerated. It’s with sadness and catharsis that such is where we are in our journey, and it’s in this mode that charmed director David Yates operates — scanning the faces of the story’s dusty, resurrected ghosts while shrewdly conducting a systematic burning down of a bygone era.
Of course, there’s also the revelatory cracking open of yesteryear, the upending of what we think we know. As he tracks down the final Horcruxes that’ll help him vanquish Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), Harry comes to redefine his path, and it’s in the twisty, climactic dot-connecting that we marvel at the seemingly indefatigable prowess of a storyteller like J.K. Rowling. On film, her opus has been an anomaly among franchises: A fluid, ever-evolving entity. And in its moving, riveting last act, it conjures the right sensation: The final, sweeping stroke of a magic wand.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
PG-13
Three-and-a-half reels out of four
Now playing in area theaters
Source Code
PG-13
Available Tuesday
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a high-tech body snatcher in “Source Code,” the heady, accomplished sophomore feature from “Moon” director Duncan Jones.
Thinking too hard about the film’s warped physics isn’t worth the headache (it’s no “Inception”), but an ace cast, and the director’s ability to go mainstream without losing his career course, help make this one of the year’s better action movies. SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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