Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One

December 17, 2010

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One (2010) **
Directed by David Yates

My tweet:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One (2010)- As an autonomous entity, this unpleasant film's narrative is bankrupt. ** out of 5

Other thoughts:

Perhaps the most impressive sequence in this seventh installment of one of the most financially profitable films series of all time occurs when the first end credits roll. The list of actors is enough to literally leave a movie lover speechless. One great British thespian after another scrolls across the screen, and this is even more significant considering that Dame Maggie Smith is nowhere to be found in this installment. The cast is so good that Oscar nominee Julie Walters, who plays Ron Weasley's mother, is relegated to having to be grouped alongside the second tier of actors who aren't worthy enough, I suppose, to have their names appear alone on screen.

This level of talent that includes Bill Nighy, Richard Griffiths, Fiona Shaw, Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Jason Isaacs, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, Robbie Coltraine, Brendan Gleeson, David Thewlis, John Hurt, Rhys Ifans, Imelda Staunton and Miranda Richardson certainly says a lot about the series, not only in terms of its profit margins, but also in terms of its quality. The Harry Potter film series is one of the best of all time, and it's also one of my very favorites. I've pretty much loved the first six entries. Even the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, really worked for me even though I went in determined to watch the film with a more critical eye than I had with the first five. Yes, I did see problems with that film, but I still absolutely loved it. This time around, I similarly was on guard against blindly allowing myself to love this seventh film even before it began simply because it had the Harry Potter moniker in its title.

Even if I went in determined to call this film the greatest ever made, I still would have walked out unbelievably disappointed and unabashedly angry over a singularly dour installment in a series that prides itself on its magical whimsy. In terms of plot, things are really grim in the wizarding world of England. Dumbledore is dead, and Voldemort has reunited a dangerous and unwashed group of Dark Wizards. No muggles or muggle-sympathizers are safe as the Ministry of Magic is also going through a pureblood purification of sorts. By the way, if a few of these words don't make sense to you, don't worry about it--or perhaps you might want to read the books or watch the previous films.

Of course, the prophecy that Harry must sacrifice himself in order to kill Voldemort weighs heavy on his mood. Add to this the grave danger he is in since Voldemort wants nothing more than to kill the Boy Wizard who Lived, and as a result Harry isn't the easiest person to be around. A dangerous escape to ensure Harry's safety maims Ron Weasley's brother. A troubled Harry thus decides that no one else is going to be hurt because of him after death eaters attack another Weasley brother's wedding. Ron, Hermoine and Harry go into hiding armed with magical spells that will protect them from their enemies.

Amid the stress and the dangers, the trio must deal with jealousies and annoyances stemming from the fact that they must rely only on each other for company. Harry and Hermoine become especially close in their singular dedication to the mission, which miffs the relatively daft Ron. Their irritations aren't helped by the magical depressants found in a horcrux necklace which one of them must wear around the clock for protection. Sure, their specific mission is ultimately about analyzing a children story to find another of seven horcruxes, but this takes a back seat when we see things like Ron imagining Harry and Hermoine in a situation that's as far removed from the PG rating of the first installment of the film series as one can imagine.

I am under the firm belief that each and every movie, even those adapted from some of the most successful and iconic books in modern history, should be judged completely autonomously. That being said, I do think the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows itself might help me articulate why, as an autonomous film, this "Part One" of what will be two films based on that book completely misses the mark.

One of the aspects of the books that the movies can't capture is the amazing prose that Rowling employs. It's just as exciting as the creativity which went into the world of magic and wizardry that came from Rowling's rich imagination. The final book in the Harry Potter series, which is an excellent read, takes us down into the depths of Harry's suffering and angst, but ultimately, it provides an exciting ending of good triumphing over evil. This film stops somewhere within the doldrums of Harry's emotional agony and fear. As such, when looking at Part One alone, we're not provided with the ultimate payoff that was intended by this material.

This leads me to ask, "What's the point?" Other than the fact that this is a utilitarian gateway into the final film, Deathly Hallows Part One has no reason for existing and also no reason to be so damn ugly and sadistic. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One belongs alongside such unapologetically bleak movies as The Road and The White Ribbon. There's no Quidditch or Triwizard competitions or school dances to allow us to revel in the mirth of the world of witchcraft and wizardry. Harry Potter simply shouldn't merit being appropriately uttered in the same sentence as anything having to do with Cormac McCarthy or Michael Haneke. Also, it's not just that the material is unrelenting, but Yates ratchets up the savagery with the most blatantly ugly cinematography and brutal suspense which makes the admittedly naive and childish joy of the first few Harry Potter movies completely unrecognizable as precursors to this story.

Rowling never intended this half of the final chapter to be told on its own. I'm not advocating that the film be six hours long so we can achieve the catharsis alongside the brutality. To be honest, I don't have a solution concerning how this movie may have worked. All I know is that the final sequence involving a CGI character from previous films is among the worst endings of any film in recent memory. The character has only one brief scene this time around before he reappears to die. He's barely a character until he instantly becomes the pivotal emotional center. That right there is a perfect example of lazy storytelling. Rowling could have ended a book with this story, making the series eight entries long, but she's way too smart a writer to allow this kind of manipulative idiocy to be the final word.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One will only prove a valuable entry as part of the sure to be released eight-volume Harry Potter movie box set. If one decides to spend a weekend watching all eight films in a row, then the seventh film might make sense as part of the whole. That being said, completely on its own, this seventh film is awfully trivial. That simply can't be said about any of the first six films, and knowing where the story is going, I will bet money that the final entry will treat us to the glorious payoff so dearly lacking in what is, for now, a complete waste of time.

Black Swan

December 15, 2010

Black Swan (2010) ***1/2
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

My tweet:

Black Swan (2010)- Not as much burrowing under the surface as under Ms Portman's skin. Impressive telling of a preposterous tale ***1/2 of 5

Other thoughts:

Aronofsky is so very talented, and this is never clearer than when he pushes the limits of visual flourishes in hopes of enriching and enhancing his storytelling. He's audacious and unapologetic, and match that with the results he puts out there on screen, and Aronofsky earns my respect completely. He has the potential to be one of the great filmmakers of his generation.

However, when I see a film like Black Swan with its pseudo-cleverness and its moments of downright lunacy, I have to say that, despite his unlimited promise, Aronofsky still has a long way to go in terms of his decisions and his focus. Out of the three Aronofsky films I've seen--Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler being the other two--his best film by far is The Wrestler. Not only does he strip down his gimmickry to tell a grounded story, but he also has a performance for the ages in Mickey Rourke which provides the extra push needed to elevate the film to greatness. Black Swan, on the other hand, is filled with contrivances and the lead role has neither the writing nor the consistently transcendent acting necessary to bolster everything else that surrounds it.

The plot is eerily similar to the Powell/Pressburger film The Red Shoes, which I just saw and reviewed recently, except that film is much less of a carnival side show. In Black Swan, Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers, a late-20s professional ballet dancer who is an icy perfectionist, always knowing every dance move perfectly, but lacking the true emotional depth to elevate her performance to the level necessary to play the dual roles of The Swan Queen and The Black Swan in the staple ballet Swan Lake. When the lead dancer in the company, played by Winona Ryder, is pushed aside because of her age, Nina gets the role despite rejecting the sexual advances of the ballet company's director Thomas Leroy, played by Vincent Cassel.

Nina's overbearing, unstable, former ballet dancer mother Erica, played by Barbara Hershey, clings to her daughter's successes, still treating her like a child which is clearly seen by the stuffed animals and the pink satin bed linens donning Nina's bedroom. There are boundary issues between the two, which causes a huge stir once a rabble-rousing dancer from San Francisco named Lily, played by Mila Kunis, befriends Nina and introduces her to a world of sex and drugs that shatters both her naivety and her innocence.

As Nina buckles under the pressure to be perfect, she begins to see her stress and anxiety manifest in some truly alarming ways. She starts to have deeply disturbing hallucinations, and the torture being inflicted on her body goes way beyond what is expected for a professional ballet dancer. As Nina actively works to lose herself in the character of The Black Swan, she may end up losing more than she ever imagined she would.

Granted, we're dealing with the melodramatic world of ballet, specifically one where humans play animals who transform into other animals. This does logically allow the film to enter into sequences of body horror that are so over the top that at times they come across downright campy. These monstrosities exist in Nina's subconscious, and yet they play out in graphic detail right in front of our eyes. Yet, these gotcha and gory moments feel recycled out of any number of supernatural horror films, which is too bad since Aronofsky could have really used them to deliver something truly novel rather than provide tired cliches meant to nauseate and titillate at the same time.

Another problem is the fact that early on, it's clear that what we're seeing on screen may not be literal reality. In many ways, we experience this world through Nina's eyes, which Aronofsky often emphasizes with over the shoulder, first person camera shots which he also used effectively in The Wrestler. Once I'm told that I ought not to trust what I'm seeing on screen, then I begin to question everything from there on in. As such, the surprises at the end don't prove surprising at all. After Nina starts to lose her grasp on reality, never once did a scene play out that I thought was real which then turned out to be fantasy. With its trickery foreshadowed so clearly, it's not the audience's fault if it's always two steps ahead of the material.

Yet, despite its many flaws, Black Swan is actually quite a good film. Visually, it's so textured and rich that it's impossible to look away, even during the most extreme moments of suspense and violence. There's a frenetic energy, similar to Requiem for a Dream, that never lets up, and the sound design of the film especially transports the viewer into an almost disorienting nightmare. Yet, unlike the visual dalliances, the aural flourishes never draw attention to themselves, despite being executed with an almost arresting aggression. The final ballet sequence has a character go through some admittedly laughable physical transformations in front of our eyes, but the sound accompaniment is executed so well that it does accomplish what Aronofsky set out to do which is to literally take one's breath away.

None of the performances in the film are bad, but with such a heightened reality as this one, some actors do give into the temptation to go too far, losing the nuance of their characters and almost turning them into cartoons. Barbara Hershey as Nina's mother and Vincent Cassel as the director both deliver huge performances, but in many ways, especially with Cassel, they don't quite command the screen as intended. Mila Kunis, on the other hand, has the opposite problem. She underplays the role of the femme fatale, which is not the sort of role that merits understatement. There's little difference between Kunis' performance here from the sort of vapid disengaged delivery we saw week after week on That 70's Show.

Of course, as far as on screen talent goes, Black Swan belongs to Natalie Portman. The only gripe I have is that she introduces Nina's innocence and perfectionism with a performance that's just a bit too on the nose. Portman speaks with the pitch of a prepubescent girl, which comes across as a manufactured crutch when really she should communicate the subtext in how she delivers her lines, not how childish she can sound. That being said, Portman is asked to do a lot in this film, and she's clearly up to the task. As a dancer, she's maybe a little too stiff and dull at first, which again may be her choice of blatantly literal acting early on, but, by the end, when she gives a performance that results in a standing ovation from the ballet audience within the film, she's fantastic and completely believable as a dancer. Like Leo DiCaprio, Portman is one of those actors who is at her best when asked to do the heavy lifting. She might want to work more on believability during her moments of normalcy.

Black Swan is gross and messy, and not all of it works, which is understandable when one considers Aronofsky's ambitions. Yet, it's undeniably powerful and beautiful. Only a director of the highest creative caliber could produce something so devastatingly rich. Here's hoping Aronofsky continues to challenge and focus that creativity in his future endeavors.