![\"Harry](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.flovalleynews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Harry-Potter-300x205.jpg?resize=300%2C205\" "\\"Harry")
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Harry Porter<\/strong> (Daniel Radcliffe) , Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) are all back in the latest Harry Potter film now playing. <\/strong><\/p>\n By Sandra Olmsted<\/strong><\/p>\n While the essence of the story in <\/strong>Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: <\/em> remains the struggle between good and evil, the problem of adapting the beloved books to the big screen remains the bigger struggle, especially as the novels have grown darker and more complex.\u00a0 That being said, director David Yates\u2019 style makes for neither a cinematically interesting film nor a good adaptation.<\/p>\n Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), aka the Dark Lord, in all his snakelike grandness, now openly holds court and tortures muggles and mudbloods.\u00a0 The Ministry of Magic is firmly in Voldemort\u2019s control and has declared Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), aka the Chosen One, an enemy of the state because he is the only one with the power to defeat Voldemort.\u00a0 Harry, Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) are on the run in the wilderness with a dangerous quest ahead of them.<\/p>\n However, Yates has lost the essential goodness of Harry, Ron, and Hermione\u2019s magic, of their faith in the magic, and of their idealism.\u00a0 This is not a reflection on the acting, which for those playing the young wizards, and for the rest of the topnotch cast, is still superb.\u00a0 It is Yates style of direction and his choices of what to show and how to portray it that are problematic.\u00a0 Despite big action scenes with splashy special effects, the big moments are diminished, thrown away, and the boring bits extended and focused on, as if Yates believes this will create suspense.<\/p>\n Consequently, he is left with teen angst to drive the actions of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and that\u2019s a poor substitute for the complexities of their motivations in the book.\u00a0 And teen angst is not suspense; in fact, it is not even interesting.\u00a0 If I wanted to see moping teenagers, I\u2019d watch a Twilight movie, and if I wanted to see a good movie about moping teenagers, I\u2019d watch Rebel Without A Cause.<\/em> In the book, Harry, Ron, and Hermione struggle against the usual teenage melancholy and melodrama in order to save the world.\u00a0 In Yates version, they wallow in it and seem not challenged, but inept.\u00a0 The lack of believable motivation for\u00a0the characters is not limited to the young heroes either, and, cinematically, characters whose emotions and motivations aren\u2019t clear and believable are less interesting and sympathetic, or even believably evil.<\/p>\n What conflict there is between Harry, Ron, and Hermione for the first half of the film is because of the Horcrux which one of them must wear at all time.\u00a0 They must figure out how to destroy this one as the first step in their quest to destroy all the Horcruxes where Voldemort has stored bits of his soul.\u00a0 Why one of them must wear the evil Horcrux is not adequately explained, but one of them must, and the wearer is then more moody and surlier than usual.\u00a0 Delightful.\u00a0 Harry, Ron, and Hermione should have Hogwarts in their hearts and actions because it is both in reality and symbolically what they are fighting for.<\/p>\n While Yates\u2019 main characters lack genuine motivation for their actions, the rest of the characters, and there are way too many of them, lack any motivation at all.\u00a0 For example, what is at stake for the Malfoys, and what has caused the tension between Draco (Tom Felton) and his father, Lucius (Jason Isaacs)?\u00a0 Having read the books, I think I remember, but Yates must think that knowing isn\u2019t important if one hasn\u2019t read the books.\u00a0 Unfortunately, those details, when reaffirmed in subsequent books and films, make the story richer and the characters more real.<\/p>\n There is also the problem of too many characters, a virtual role call, and catching a mere glimpse of a topnotch star is nothing special.\u00a0 I want to see them act and interact and react! \u00a0The book makes all the characters live and breathe and makes the reader grieve when one is killed.\u00a0 No such emotion exists in Yates\u2019 film.\u00a0 For example, the death of one important character happens off-screen and merits only a one line mention.\u00a0 When another beloved character dies, on screen, Yates makes it less compelling then it should be.\u00a0 Film is about emotion, and Yates avoids both emotion and the conflicts related to it.<\/p>\n The acting is good, the cinematography beautifully bleak, the music okay, and the special effects good in the big action scenes.<\/p>\n However, I think the reason that this film is not in 3D, as promised, is because Voldemort\u2019s digital nose job didn\u2019t work with the 3D conversion process.\u00a0 In fact, it does not even work in 2D.<\/p>\n Voldemort\u2019s flat, snakelike nose, which is a computer-generated enhancement, gets fuzzy in his closeups.\u00a0 It is very distracting, or worse, it is more interesting to spend time looking at such details than to watch the film.<\/p>\n The screenwriter Steve Kloves probably deserves some blame for the adaptation, or the lack there of, but I am going with the director is responsible for everything on the film.\u00a0 While it may seem unfair to compare Yates\u2019 film to the book, it is he, himself, who makes the comparison valid because he expects the audience to fill in the gaps in his film with their knowledge of the books.\u00a0 He wants it both ways.<\/p>\n The film cannot stands on its own, and Yates has not had the courage to cut the unnecessary and un-cinematic, to combine characters, to trim the story instead of expanding it into two films, and to use the film medium to tell the story and to convey its rich complexities, emotions, and conflicts.\u00a0 He has not been a good director.<\/p>\n Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part<\/em> 1 is a Warner Brothers release and is rated PG-13 for some sequences of intense action violence, frightening images, and brief sensuality.\u00a0 Half of Yates\u2019 disappointing adaptation of J.K. Rowling\u2019s last Harry Potter book part runs 146 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Harry Porter (Daniel Radcliffe) , Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) are all back in the latest Harry Potter film now playing. By Sandra Olmsted While the essence of the story in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: remains the struggle between good and evil, the problem of adapting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n