Lance Schaubert

Tears, laughter, fearful trembling and awkward silence all rambled out of me during my first viewing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.  If you have not seen it, go see it – but if you have not read it, go read it… then see it.

I hope to analyze the movie – both gushing over emotional moments and critically thinking through details – for all who have seen it.  If you do not want any spoilers, you’ve been warned.  For the rest…My first thought came two seconds into the movie when they broke through the clouds.  I felt absolute terror, and as my dad pointed out I knew it was coming! The moment Hagrid barreled Harry through that cloud bank on the bike, dozens of flying witches and wizards collided in shades of lightning and counter-curses too great and terrible to imagine.  The last time I trembled like that in a theatre seat happened at the start of Mission Impossible 3.  The despair of the Negredo worked well with the movement.  It felt like a holocaust film, and rightly so.  I’m sure the other boys are proud (haven’t checked hog’s head or Hogwarts Professor yet). The laughter came in the beautiful awkwardness of British humor from the silent tea-sipping in Lovegood’s house to Dobby on the chandelier to George spying on Harry and Ginny snoggin’ in the kitchen (he’s got a head-trauma bandage on with his toothbrush sticking out the hole that used to house his ear).

Half of me like that Dobby’s grave was shallow – it felt like burying a child and surged emotion into the moment.  I still need to cry, but haven’t yet for whatever reason.  The deep grave in the books, however, gave Harry that transformative moment, that moment of cathartic-destiny-paving where he decided his path.  Hallows or Horcruxes?  Can we trust Dumbledore?  Remember that moment?

The Nagini/Bathilda Bagshot scene threw me out of my chair.

Hagrid stunned?  Didn’t like that.  He’s half-giant.  I’m okay with changing scenes, details, whatever to build conflict for the screenplay – it’s a different medium, people.  Screenwriters have a hard job ahead that take time and effort.  But the stunned-Hagrid weakened the core of his character – and of what he represents as a guide.  That one’s a no fly zone for me.

Speaking of scene writing, there were some great scenes – some of the greatest in years – where conflict drove every moment.  There were also scenes in which exposition ruled out, where I wanted to yell, “WE DON’T NEED A FOOTNOTE!”  Both great and not-so-great moments in the realm of conflict – one of the better ones came in the intro scenes.  GORGEOUS!

As for analysis, the only things I noticed seemed like a conversation between two people: J.K. Rowling and John Granger.  John makes two weighty claims at the end of The Deathly Hallows Lectures that, if true, explain the series.  One concerns his understanding of the word Nous, Latin for “mind”.  The other concerns his understanding of the Deathly Hallows symbol.

As for Nous in summary, Harry in the King’s Cross chapter actually goes somewhere inside or communing with the mind of Christ (correct me if I misrepresent you, John).  He reaches intimacy with Jesus’s Divine Mind, and now knowing how to conquer death, is free to become master over it.  THIS IS IMPORTANT because of Albus Dumbledore’s signature at the bottom of his personal letter to Grindewald inside Hermione’s copy of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.  If you write the word Albus without a bar on the letter “a” and in script (Albus), the line on the “b” and the “l” can combine with the capital “A” to make a capital “N“.  If that happens, the rounded “b” becomes an “o” and the u.s. stays the same.  All together now?  Nous. To my knowledge, no one else made this claim (though easily supported with a quick-read of Burckhardt’s Alchemy).  I think, in this scene Jo says you are right, John.  But if not, this next one definitely is…

John thinks the deathly hallows symbol combines the world axis with the all-seeing eye and the mirror.  If that’s true, the easiest way to make a pendant that represents the collision of these three (the cross, nous, and the mirror) is to make a Deathly Hallows pendant where the circle (representing the res. stone) spins on the line (representing the elder wand). In this way, you can spin it to make a globe and, with the help of a strobe light, make an eye.  It’s rather subtle when Harry touches the pendant in the movie, but it moves on an axis! It’s a fabulous little detail, and I think she’s winking at those of us that take the time to analyze the symbol itself – especially you John.

So, all in all, I loved the experience and hope to see it again to give a fuller review.  My wife right after the baptism scene said, “LOOK!  WHITE SNOW!”  She loved the Albedo roses.