Canto LI

This post is all about Harry, so if you don't want to know anything, I wouldn't read anymore. I'll even give a couple extra spaces to make sure you won't accidentally see something you didn't want.



















First up, the movie. I thought it was OK. Not great, I don't really think any of the movies are great, with Azkaban being the best so far. The problem is that the books really do fill up the world that even a well done movie can't compare to. My excitement was mostly for the two scenes where Dumbledore decides to kick ass: when he "escapes" from his office from Minister Fudge and later when he duels Voldemort in the Ministry of Magic. The office escape was highly disappointing. He just grabbed onto Fawkes and burst into flames. It didn't show him taking out a few Aurors (although one was working for the Order) and knocking out Fudge. It could have been so much cooler. And the duel with Voldermort was OK, but it lacked a lot of the extra oomph that comes through in the book. In the book, Harry is basically just tossed about as the two most powerful wizards of this age fight it out. I really didn't get that sense in the movie. But I thought Umbridge was great, and even if some things weren't the same in the book, continuity wise it won't make much of a difference. Again, OK, not great. I'll probably see it again when it plays at the cheap student "theater" this fall at MIT.

On to The Deathly Hallows. Well, it's all over. The book does a really good job of conveying the tense and desperate situation that Harry, Ron and Hermione are in, even if it goes a little long in the we're-on-the-run chapters. I think my biggest problem with this book was Dumbledore. I really felt Harry should have had something major to overcome in this book in order to defeat Voldemort. Instead, there was no Benedict Arnold in Snape. And the "errors" that Dumbledore made with Harry, even Harry agrees with in the end. If he had known very early on that he was going to have to die when facing Voldemort, he might not have been able to do it at the end. Best not to think about it too much. Instead, Dumbledore was completely exonerated for his arrogance and personal flaws. I guess one could say that he died because of this, but ultimately he was right about everything and this led to the downfall of Lord Voldemort. This is what I'm complaining about with the resolution of the book: Harry didn't have to do much but get killed once, chat with Dumbledore, then cast Expelliarmus. It was just putting together all the pieces that Dumbledore had left behind for him. And Snape, who had been the most interesting character from a whats-going-to-happen-to-him standpoint, didn't really have much going on. Again, Dumbledore was completely right about him, and he sacrificed himself for Lily. Wouldn't it have been much more interesting if Snape really had been a Death Eater? Wouldn't that have made a much more interesting side part to the final battle? Instead, he was in love with Lily the whole time, but it was really unclear what his feelings about Harry were. I guess in the end he felt he had to do the right thing for Lily, but why? It turns out that even in his private talks with Dumbledore, he doesn't much like Harry. And 16 years is a long time to hold on to that guilt. It turns out that in the art of Legilimancy, the ordering goes Dumbledore better than Snape better than Voldemort. Really, Snape is better than Voldemort? It's not like this is one of those skills that Voldemort considers beneath him.

Ah, I'm not sure I'm explaining my frustration right, but I did really enjoy the ending. I know she's said she would kill more of the main characters, but ultimately she pulled back a little bit. And I really think that a honest flaw in Dumbledore, such as trusting Snape too much because he believes in his own ability to read people too much, would have made Harry's success all the more satisfying. But Harry in suburbia with Ginny, Ron and Hermione seems so quaint that I can't help but smile a little bit.