The Boy Who Lived

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.  Directed by David Yates.  2010.

My brother and I went to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 on Thanksgiving night.  It's funny to think that we began reading the books as tweens, and are now we are going to see the movies as adults.

I've always felt that the movies would be hard to follow if a viewer had not read the books.  However, there are no books for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the amount of story depth is about equal, however reading the Harry Potter books and then viewing the movies creates a type of experience (you could round it out by going to the The Wizarding World of Harry Potter).

There is more of a nature theme in this movie in contrast to the other films that took place at the Gothic Hogwarts.  It's a bleak type of nature symbolizing Harry, Ron and Hermione fighting against the elements of evil, that could resemble a dreary world.  In the film it was interesting to see the representation of Ron's psychological battle with the horcrux.  I wondered if this new dimension to his personality (in contrast to Harry and Hermione who are not as affected) was inspired by Rowling's work at Amnesty International as a young person, hearing the stories of how political refugees dealt with the horrors they had endured, something she discusses in her Commencement speech at Harvard.



The film is rated PG-13, however I feel that the film would be fine for sixth graders who have read the book and are familiar with the storyline.