J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter saga began as a series of children's books and evolved into young-adult ones: The series grew up right in step with that first group of readers, even though, of course, people of all ages continue to love them today. The movies based on those books have offered a concurrent, dovetailing kind of pleasure: The joy of watching young actors grow up on-screen, learning as they go and, quite surprisingly, finding new dimensions in their characters each time out. Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint -- as Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley -- haven't become worn out by their roles, as the admittedly older Twilight stars have. Who knows what their post-Harry Potter careers will bring? The body of work they've already amassed -- up to and including this almost-final installment in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 -- can stand by itself. Over the years, the magic in their bones has only grown stronger.
That's a good thing, because David Yates' Deathly Hallows: Part 1 requires them to work harder than ever. With the series rounding to a close, there's less magic and more brooding in the air, further complicated by the extremely intricate plot mechanics of Rowling's seventh and final Harry Potter book. Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is as fleet and as skillful a movie as it can be, given that Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves are pretty much dancing as fast as they can. They do a great deal of condensing, eliding and tweaking as they try to cram 759 pages worth of doorstop into two big-event movies.
It's a testament to their skills that Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is, in the span of its two-and-a-half hours, rarely boring. The movie opens, literally and figuratively, with gathering storm clouds. Dumbledore is dead (played by Michael Gambon, he appears here only in very brief flashbacks), and his demise has further strengthened the powers of the reptilian, unnervingly noseless Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Voldemort has called a meeting of his cronies, where he lays out a plan for the vanquishing of Harry Potter, complete with human sacrifice: A semi-conscious woman is suspended above the meeting table, whimpering in fear. She's a Hogwarts teacher -- her subject is Muggle Studies -- who is not just pro-Muggle but who also believes it's a good thing for Muggles and Wizards to mate. This teacher's convictions gravely offend Voldemort's ideas of racial purity, and as a symbolic prelude to his regime of ethnic cleansing -- the goal is to destroy all Muggles -- he murders her, offering the remains (off-screen) to his snake familiar, Nagini.
That's quite an opener, Yates' straightforward signaling of how much is at stake. And as the story's three heroes prepare to leave their homes -- ostensibly to start the new school year at Hogwarts -- wispy but ominous clouds hang over the twilight streets of their respective neighborhoods. As it turns out, Harry, Hermione and Ron never reach Hogwarts: After an increasingly ominous turn of events -- including a wedding celebration invaded by Death Eaters, and the trio's infiltration of the Ministry of Magic, where they snatch one of the precious, powerful Horcruxes from the neck of Imelda Staunton's supercilious, power-mad Dolores Umbridge -- they find themselves on the run in the countryside, a landscape of foreboding misty, gray-green hills and trees. Their nerves frayed, they pick at one another, slicing through the air not with magic but with cutting remarks, until Ron, who has simply had enough, stalks off.
Much of Deathly Hallows: Part 1 takes place against this backdrop of isolation and desolation: These three characters have never felt more alone in their togetherness. After Ron disappears, Hermione is ill-tempered and distracted, and Harry, knowing he's on the run for his life, doesn't have much patience with her. But in one of the movie's loveliest scenes, which takes place at one of the temporary camps the two have set up, Harry sees how fragile the normally invincible Hermione has become. He steps forward and takes her hand, inviting her to take part in an at-first exceedingly awkward dance. Harry isn't the most graceful sort, and his limbs move as if they belong to a stick figure. But these two characters find another kind of grace as they hold each other, wrapped in a strictly platonic cocoon of temporary consolation from their troubles.
I wouldn't want to watch mediocre actors in a scene like this. But Radcliffe and Watson have settled so comfortably -- though not numbly -- into these roles that this particular moment of closeness feels unstudied and unrehearsed. Radcliffe's Potter is a somber presence here, which makes his occasional cracked-eggshell smile feel like welcome relief. Grint becomes more appealing with each successive picture: He knows just what to do with Ron's glum wisecracks and offhanded "Who, me?" modesty. And Watson plays Hermione as a sturdy girl who nonetheless isn't always sure of her footing. At one point, when Harry praises her brilliance, she assures him -- accepting the compliment but also stretching out the moment, the better to bask in its glow -- that she's really just extremely logical, and good at winnowing through extraneous details that most other mere mortals get hung up on. Harry's eyes glaze over as she chatters away, but the charm of the moment is that she's so marvelously clear at defining what makes her special, as if she were only just figuring it out for herself.
Deathly Hallows: Part 1 has too much stacked against it to be the perfect -- if there is such a thing -- Harry Potter movie. Although Yates (who directed the previous installment, the superb 2009 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, as well as the more sprawling 2007 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) does his best to keep the action moving smoothly, the picture still suffers from a fair amount of "part one of two" ennui. It's a semi-finished entity, which is why it's only partly satisfying. There's less layering of visual details and more just getting on with things, although cinematographer Eduardo Serra does give the picture the right satiny, burnished-gray look.
And still, there are a number of touches that aren't just magical but also deeply moving: At the beginning of the film Hermione, fearing dark troubles ahead, erases herself from her parents' memories. With a wave of her wand, her image vanishes not just from their heads but from the framed family photographs lining the mantel. It's a piercing end-of-childhood metaphor, a young girl's way of reckoning that from now on, her parents will have to see her in a different way -- or not see her at all.
One of the things I love about the Harry Potter movies, this one included, is their evocation of late '60s, early '70s England -- they look the way Fairport Convention sounds. Production designer Stuart Craig and costumer Jany Temime know just how far to go with the characters' crazy-cozy hippie cottages and velvety waistcoats -- these touches never come off as kitschy. That extends even to the movies' hippier-dippier characters, in this case Rhys Ifans' Xenophilius Lovegood, father of Luna Lovegood (played, once again, by the fabulously wraithlike Evanna Lynch).
Xenophilius has a small but crucial role in this story, linked to the strange medallion he wears around his neck. When Harry, Ron and Hermione seek him out to learn the exact significance of this odd little talisman, he tells them a haunting fairy story, rendered in a gorgeous animation sequence (designed by Ben Hibon) that riffs on Indonesian shadow puppetry. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 is probably about as good a movie as you can make from just half of a rather complicated book. But then, it's not just a movie but a promise: When Part 2 arrives, next summer, a cloud of desolation is likely to descend upon us. There will be no more Harry Potter movies to look forward to. That's why we need to savor this in-between moment while it lasts.