It seems obvious to describe the final chapter of this series as "magical", but that's the sort of emotion Yates' skillful direction drummed up, with an occasional, graceful touch that previous entries just didn't accomplish (not to slight the perennially underrated Azkaban, or the finale's sweeping, moody Part 1). Moments such as an urgent interview with the Grey Lady's ghost (Kelly MacDonald, a woman who seems almost unbearably earnest in every role) with the capacity to seem completely earnest in every role) have a greater gravity than in prior installments, the camera lingering on her blue, translucent face as she imparts the necessary information for Harry to locate Voldemort's prized MacGuffin. Unfortunately, the film still contains needless slapstick and daffy humor that serves only to undermine Yates' fantastically executed action setpieces; does every moment of resolved tension need a quip or punchline to lighten the mood before plunging into the next harrowing scene? These tonal oddities are thankfully overshadowed by an increased visual emphasis on the faces of the characters, their long, harrowing histories visible on their features as previous events take front and center stage. Perhaps the most immaculate bit of filmmaking in the whole affair is the much-anticipated revelation of Snape's character, which transcends mere exposition by assembling a montage of dreamy flashbacks, shot for the first time, new interpretations of footage from the previous films, and in one notable case, the addition of a new perspective on a frequently-revisited scene. One of the series' major weaknesses has always been the individual scripts which too often failed to emphasize seemingly trivial yet crucial moments that would gain significance in the plot's later episodes, choosing instead music montages and sandbox play within Hogwarts; the editing here is skillful enough to make you think the scripts have been subject to meticulous oversight from the beginning.
The final ten minutes or so offer a bizarre dichotomy of quality that can be directly traced to attitudes about the necessity of strict adaptation. The showdown between Harry and Voldemort is extended to a breathless, high-intensity duel that ranges across the ruin of Hogwarts and shifts between several perspectives. This was a wise and necessary choice, since the anticlimactic final duel in the book took all of a paragraph, preceded by about five pages of stilted, expositional dialogue between the two archenemies. After the duel, and a wonderfully understated moment between the three leads, we're treated to a dreadful visualization of the novel's lame "19 years later..." epilogue, which offers nothing crucial to the plot or characters, except that, yes, everyone got married and had kids and gave them awful names and sent them packing off to boarding school, how sweet. Am I supposed to continue liking Harry with the knowledge that he named his kid Albus Severus? Doesn't he realized what awful adolescents the men with only one of those names turned out to be? The aging job done on everyone is abysmally terrible (did they do anything to Rupert Grint besides give him a beer gut? Sound off in the comments!), and it's a sad, mawkish note on which to end the series, though not bad enough to negate the impact of the last two films, and the series as a whole, which won't disappear from public consciousness for many years.
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