dh 2 reaction post
My feelings about the film are more than mixed. What follows is an extremely subjective summary of my opinions. If that's a problem for you, please stop reading now.
I wasn't as bowled over by this as I thought I would be, given the glowing qualities of nearly every review and my surprisingly positive memory of DH 1. Unlike that film, this one began with an odd lack of momentum that somehow ended up pervading the entire script. To be fair, the lack of momentum can probably be overcome by watching both movies back to back, but I found it an uninspiring way to begin that boded ill for the ultimate ending.
The film picks up almost directly where the last one left off. (There is, I believe, a brief interspersed moment where we see Snape observing the Hogwarts students marching under the grim direction of the Carrows from one of the windows he favoured in the HBP movie -- symbolic, non? It's interesting that the filmmakers decided to portray Snape as a kind of higher power, as a puppet-master in his own limited way.) The Trio is at Shell cottage seeking information from the Goblin and Ollivander. Not much to say there. The trio and Goblin hastened to proceed to Gringotts, all of which proceeded as could be expected - I will always have a problem with the in my view implicitly antisemitic portrayal of the bank and its bankers. Anyway, I enjoyed Ron's ridiculous disguise and watching Hermione fail at portraying Bellatrix, and the tortured white dragon sparked a sense of wonder - it is perhaps one of the most realistically beautiful and sad CGI creations I have seen.
The resulting scenes (flying out of London on the dragon, falling in a lake, witnessing Voldemort's fury at discovering his Horcruxes gone) did very little to stick in my brain, although I did have to snort at Harry's self reflective line: something about how the Trio's plans never work and always cause hell to break loose. I remember perking up at the sight of Ariana's portrait/picture (out of curiosity) and Aberforth's impassioned speech against his brother (in hopes there would be more). There was a woeful lack of Albus backstory.
Neville and the DA made me smile, although I could have lived without the rather forced Neville/Luna subplot. The sudden appearance of Ginny I could have also done without - Harry and Ginny have an obscene lack of chemistry even in the films - but fortunately Ron's quips distracted me. Ron was great - I never much cared for him in the books, but one sees why he was an essential part of the Trio here.
If I remember correctly, the film then proceeded to the Great Hall, where Snape gave a speech about how Harry should be directly given over into his care. The audience laughed at Rickman's tortured, overdrawn pronunciation of this declaration, but in a good way. I have to say, it was rather obvious from his facial tics that he was lying through his teeth. I'm not so sure that this is a good thing; how is Snape supposed to have fooled Minerva, let alone Voldemort with that act . . . ?
This is probably the place to fully disclose that I have never really been able to warm up to Rickman - not because he is not a talented actor, but simply because he's too noble and old and clean and good-looking and buttoned-up and classically tragic and not nearly thin enough to really embody Snape for me. I like me a twitchy, nervous, alternatively whispering and shouting, scruffy, greasy, dubious Snape, a Snape clearly from a poor Muggle background - the Snape who spits on the ground after a lost Quidditch match and casually references matchboxes and has horrible teeth and bad breath and is kind of a mad scientist who actually stood for the Death Eaters and so on. Rickman implies money and a noble soul and I have no idea how his character could have ever taken the Mark. This problem will characterise my feelings for the rest of the movie, I fear, so here's another good place to stop reading if you like.
In any case, while I didn't really like the Snape-Harry confrontation here, the ensuing Minerva-Snape duel was fabulous, if much too short. I adore Maggie Smith - unlike Rickman, she really conveys the essence of the sharp wit and courage and sheer brilliance of the character to me. The immediately cheerful atmosphere after Snape's dramatic departure through the window seemed unrealistic, though - aren't there still Dementors all over the place, and cronies as well? Whatever; Voldemort soon killed the mood with one of his hissing loudspeaker monologues.
Slughorn and Minerva and Flitwicks' preparations for the battle were lovely to watch - one of the few moments where 3D actually paid off. (The movie doesn't really need the 3D effects.) If I remember correctly, Harry went off at this point in search of the Ravenclaw common room, only to be stopped by Luna - another actress whom I adore. Luna in the books never quite came across to me, but Luna onscreen is wonderful, my favourite female character aside from Minerva. There followed an interesting encounter with the ghost of Helena Ravenclaw, who managed to be appealingly ephemeral and distant at the one moment and suddenly deranged at the next.
Harry's exploration of the Room of Requirement wasn't uninteresting, especially once Draco showed up - his inner conflict was well portrayed, as was, by contrast, Crabbe's? Goyle's? utter stupidity. Blaise, sadly, didn't get to do much; I'm not exactly sure why he was even there. Ron's disbelief over Harry's decision to rescue Draco and Blaise was as amusing as Ron's moments ever get, and the Fiendfyre was certainly frightening.
The battle didn't do much for me, aside from Neville's moments - we get to see the Snatchers die a horrible death when Neville collapses the bridge and just barely manages to hang on himself while the rest of the DA just stands there and watches? - by this point, I was too stressed by the idea of Snape's upcoming demise. Which soon came, of course.
I have deeply mixed feelings about the way Snape's death was portrayed. First of all, it was set in a boathouse. Look filmmakers, I understand the symbolism - the boat you kept on showing represents the journey of life, and once it sinks (which it does), said journey is to an end. The glass wall through which Harry witnesses the rather gruesome death also presumably stands for the sudden clarity with which Harry sees Snape. Quite deep. But the Shrieking Shack was even more symbolic! and horrendous! and shocking, for what it reveals about how little anyone cares about Snape and how capricious Voldemort is and . . . argh.
Second, they changed the dialogue a fair bit. Snape was no longer desperate to 'find the boy' (that was Lucius) - he also apparently knew that Voldemort had the Elder Wand. The altered dialogue was probably meant to convey Voldemort's doubt that Snape was a completely loyal servant and to justify the fact that he kills him in such an awful and thorough way - Voldemort no longer 'regrets' killing Snape, for example. I was not thrilled by, but able to live with these changes. What I found nearly unforgivable, however, was the addition of this line to Snape's last exchange with Harry: "You have your mother's eyes." Just . . . no! I found "Look . . . at . . . me" interesting precisely because it left ambivalent whom or what Snape was actually seeing. The whole Lily business was further overdetermined by the fact that the soundtrack introduced during this scene a presumably haunting, yet weirdly Irish/James Horner-esque theme that I soon figured out was meant to convey Lily (it played whenever Lily was shown). Also, since when does Snape cry? and why was he crying his memories? Harry actually lost one of the tears, though, which is interesting for what it implies about just how much Snape intended on showing Harry but never managed to.
There were some good moments, of course. Rickman acted beautifully, for starters. And Harry - Harry nearly broke my heart with his clumsy efforts to staunch the blood and the almost exquisite look of pain and understanding and compassion on his face. This conveyed Harry to me as I have often imagined him, and it was wonderful to finally see that aspect come to life, even if it made little sense for Harry to give a damn about Snape at this point in the narrative.
My stupid cinema chose to interrupt the narrative here with a twenty-minute intermission . . . gah. When the film resumed with Snape's memories, a significant emotional arc had been broken, so my reaction to the scene may have been determined by this fact.
As with the death scene, I had problems with the memories - to the point of being ultimately disappointed despite the many tears I undoubtedly shed. I missed the playground - the heat and Snape's ridiculous get-up and creepily sudden appearance and his uncomfortable, stammering manner. Instead, we got an early view into Petunia's bigotry (a shame, I find, as she's much more complex than that!) when she rejects Lily as a freak for nothing less than animating a flower. As Petunia runs home to mummy, leaving Lily devastated, Snape steps out of an alcove in a tree (the whole setting is rather beautiful, by the way, and Snape is wearing relatively normal clothes and is clean and cute - where is Cokeworth, where is the social tension?) and animates a leaf to flutter into her hand. The symbolism isn't lost on me, but I desperately missed the problematic, angular, dirty little boy of the books whom Lily initially rejects. The memories proceeded to swirl in an un-Pensieve like fashion to a scene where young Severus tells Lily she's special and Petunia merely ordinary; Lily's sorting follows afterward. Young Snape's soulful look of disappointment at this fact was not unmemorable. Young James soon appeared as a brunette without glasses, which made him hard to pinpoint; the extent of his rivalry with Snape was subsequently reduced to his unconsciously pushing Snape's books to the ground while rushing through a hallway, which did absolutely nothing to explain anything except to imply that Snape is overly touchy and proud.
At this point, Snape's discussions with Dumbledore and his interactions with Harry in earlier films were montaged together with his entering the house at Godric's Hollow in the aftermath of Voldemort's attack. A Rickman CGIed to look thinner played Snape for all of these scenes. The effect looked realistic at some points and completely artifical at others . . . My problems with these scenes had less to do with Rickman, in any case, than with the significant changes made to the dialogue and Michael Gambon, the actor who plays Dumbledore.
Remember that charged scene on the hillside, where Dumbledore tells Snape he disgusts him? That was cut down and neutralised; Dumbledore says nothing of the sort, first of all. Secondly, the range of emotions Snape showed in the original scene - desperation and fear and astonishment and resignation - are reduced to plain desperation. That disappointed me for reasons I cannot even begin to explain. Dumbledore, especially, merely appeared weary and distant and uninterested in every single scene he was shown; one had no true sense of the inequality between himself and Snape or of any of the things he felt for Snape or Snape for him, for that matter. In short, everything was about Lily. The scene where Snape casts his Patronus was changed so that Snape no longer yells, "For him?" but merely casts the doe - only to have Dumbledore then overdetermine everything by saying, "Lily?", to which Snape naturally responds, "Always." Though you could of course argue that the dialogue was made more ambivalent by the fact that it's Dumbledore who puts Lily's name in Snape's mouth, I didn't feel that was the intended point. What was wrong with the original dialogue, pray tell?
When Rickman discovers Lily's body and breaks down, I began to cry, of course. It was moving. But I felt I was watching Wuthering Heights, not the story of Severus Snape.
The rest of the movie was fine. King's Cross was dull, except for the one moment where Dumbledore twinkles and tells Harry it isn't curious at all that Snape's patronus matches his mother's and his own, which slightly made up for all of the disambiguation beforehand. I thought the scene with the resurrection stone especially lovely, despite the out-of-place mention of Teddy. Lily was wonderful in her intensity and love for her son; James, on the other hand, was rather uninspiring and dull. I enjoyed Narcissa's little lie, but everything with Voldemort bored me, particularly the gratuitous scenes involving him and Harry jumping off towers and wrestling together on weird suspended bridges and so on. I had to laugh out loud when Voldemort hugged Draco -- WTF??? -- and when the Malfoys just walked away from the battle . . . *shakes head, although with a measure of respect for Narcissa*. And Harry's decision to snap the Elder Wand in half and send it hurtling over a bridge? Insane. But it would have made a better ending than the horrible epilogue from HELL, which was also just not well-made. No-one looked nineteen years older, not even Ron in his fat suit and Draco with his receding hairline, but especially not Ginny and Hermione in their Burburry business suits (at least so the people around me whispered. That's a real Burburry, they said, you can be sure! LOL). Admittedly, the kids were cute, particularly Albus Severus, but I winced when I heard his name on Harry's lips, I have to say. I would have loved to see more of Scorpius and Teddy, though, if only out of plain curiosity.
All in all: An entertaining experience, but one that left me more frustrated and longing than fulfilled. Which is perhaps a good thing. It means, in any case, that my interest in writing for this fandom has been stoked.