Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Review

"This is the end.../My only friend, the end..."
            - The Doors, "The End"

In the case that you will state your current residential address as "under a rock" in the upcoming census, you will not have realised that the film to end all films (no, seriously, it's the last film in the series) just came out - therefore you should all go out and watch it, making the bosses of Werribee Plaza - oh, and those people that made the film as well, I guess - a bucketload of money.

As Harry Potter 7 Part 2 (I distinctly recall seeing it referred to as Harry Potter 7.5 - or maybe it's just my imagination running away, to quote The Rolling Stones) got underway, I felt a weird parallel with my own drawn-out conclusion to schooling life. Well, without the Death Eaters roaming around (or maybe...nah...) and the Horcruxes to find and the stone guards to defend the school in case of an existential crisis (how cool are they?!!!) and whatnot. But, it is a poignant reminder of how little time I have left.

...And the movie started. What I actually didn't like about this film is that the expectation surrounding it outweighed its quality. In this day and age, where we can watch people do heinous things with a cup with each other on YouTube and troll classmates for the immediate shock reaction, we don't hold out for the big things anymore. This idea is essentially known among boffins as the decline of social capital and has gained prominence since it was first raised in the 1990s - maybe this film has more to do with our social environment than we think.

But then, why did I see the movie? No, it wasn't to rant and rave about our crumbling society and compare the apparent decline of the West to the fall of the Roman Empire, which is an interesting idea in itself but probably kindling for another fire. I saw it because I was curious, something that mastermind JK Rowling has been able to exploit since she published the first book in 1997. And there probably is a joy in finishing something that you started - something that teachers should tell more to procrastinating students.

This movie is probably one of the few that you can do a Jim Schembri -  a former St. Paul's collegian, I am reliably informed - and give away the ending to a movie but get away with it. Instead, it is worth celebrating the actors that make this film memorable: Alan Rickman, for one, as the severe Professor Snape makes his swansong in a remarkable manner. His performance was emotionally raw and I finally saw his true character. It was sort of like reading Great Expectations by Dickens but finding that it actually wasn't that good - it's nice that the audience sees a new side of a character but it's a bit futile given it's in the final half of a film series totalling about 20 hours. I guess Rowling and Warner Bros. are having the last laugh.

What amounted to a cameo by Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) was also enjoyable. She reminded me, in this film especially, of someone who appears to be haughty and aloof but is actually quite caring when the chips are down; it was a nice touch from director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves.

Any last word on this film must go to Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis). Even as he is tormented by Voldemort - not in a physical sense as per usual, but because of his rather unfortunate name - he is able to justify and vindicate his existence in the most helpful way possible. Imagine walking out of the exams at the end of the year and intuitively knowing that you did all you could and you got what you needed for your career pathway - it's something like that here, except the imagery is more striking.

All in all, a touching film and one that will be remembered for a long time - it may be watched only once or twice at mose by many but that's no reason for studio execs to be dismayed. And if they somehow feel that this hurts the lining of their back pocket, they could always persuade Channel 9 to show the series every couple of months. It's not like they would be increasing its frequency that much, anyway.         

Once Upon a Time in the West

"Go west, young man"
                           - Horace Greeley

Used in an 1865 editorial by the New York Tribune editor and "self-appointed chief of staff of the New York newspaper generals" (according to Wikipedia, but what would they know?) in perhaps another context, it is the quote that came to mind when I had the idea for this post.

****

Over the past few years, I have been lucky enough to savour and taste the full gamut of flavours that are the western suburbs. It is this love affair, then, that, like a bipolar Jack, keeps the stroke betwixt my moues of apathy and my wild, passionate sentiments. Who can blame me? The western suburbs is at once a vivacious organism and a slow, dying red giant. Perhaps it would be best to let me explain.

After a busy day biwinning at school (I am the lucky recipient of both tiger blood and Adonis DNA, naturally), I observe the comings and goings of other Western Melburnians while listening to the back catalogues of Talking Heads and The Clash. It seems to me that people born and bred, or just living, this side of the Yarra are imbued with a special sense of optimism, one forged in the fire of adversity. I first came across this thought, believe it not, on election day last year, when I was forced to take a 40-minute bus trip home after Metro decided to fix up some signal box, or something - I don't remember the vagaries. Some people remember their first kiss, others their first solo drive. Weird, neurotic people like me remember irrelevant thoughts. Anywho, I must press on, as I know the ECLJ IT Department will kill me for spoiling their tea binge-drinking days and making them do a scrap of work.

As I was saying, optimism. Ah yes! Whether it be in the store retailer who knows anyone in their semi-sane mind will not purchase their wares but keeps en garde looking for customers, or in the ex-druggie pleading with the bus driver that he has no change/lost his wallet &c, it is heartwarming to see that the "little Aussie battler" still lives, long after Ernie Siegley passed on. As the days become cooler, as the nights become longer, there is a fire, an intensity in people's eyes that shows their conviction, their desire (perhaps a common trait among all of us) to make a good thing better - from the anonymous man who runs the awesome donut van next to Footscray Station to the various administrators of sport in the West who wake up before the cock crows for a pure love of the game. As a general rule, perhaps, I have found, in my own dealings, that people on this side of the Yarra just seem more genuine in their behaviour - maybe because, in the words of Bob Dylan and probably many others, "if you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose". However, the outliers that I know - whose fortune has granted them not only a reputable birthplace but, more importantly, an extremely personable character - preclude me from declaring "quad erat demonstrandum" and making this theorem a law.

What disenheartens me when I think of the West is the fatal flaws in its character, which are often the same that make it so great. One example is a visceral fear of not grandiloquence, but greatness. I feel we are right to shun the excesses of the former but we take it too far when we avoid the latter. I see that we, collectively, are too happy to embrace the status quo, which in part explains the rise of conservatism. Our atypical life experiences should provide a springboard for alternative ideas and practices, but too often we ignore our uniqueness to return to safe, stale ideas. It is the real-life equivalent of slipping on a Snuggie as soon as you get home from school or wake up on the weekend. Imagine a society in which we ridicule conservatism as much as we do the Snuggie. Imagine if one of us were to come up with a set of ideas, a worldview, that shook the West from its slumber of apathy. Perhaps that was the true spirit of Horace Greeley's dictum