“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” broke a few box-office records over its first weekend—for domestic theatres (a hundred and sixty-eight million dollars worth—although, the Los Angeles Times notes, “Gone with the Wind” did better, adjusted for inflation), for a 3-D movie (even though that was a fraction of the total), and for the whole wide world—and I was glad to do my part. It was a very good movie, and even did a couple of things better than the book, like the Ron-Hermione kiss (there will be spoilers in this post, but I trust everyone saw that one coming). However, I do have a couple of complaints. One has to do with mothers; the other with children, consent, and war.
There is a moment in the final book, that, to my mind, serves as a reward for parents who have not only read the Harry Potter novels, but read them aloud—partial compensation for having tried to hiss in Parseltongue. That is Molly Weasley’s showdown with Bellatrix Lestrange, and the movie version, although it brought on cheers in the theatre I was in, is disappointing. It gets one of Molly’s key lines (“not my daughter, you bitch”) but doesn’t communicate what Rowling does so well: Molly’s fierceness and unexpectedly raw power. In the book, it’s clear that Hermione, Ginny, and Luna have all been duelling Bellatrix, and that, even three-on-one, they are no match for her. Molly brushes them aside, pulls back her sleeves, and, after an intense skirmish, kills her with a flashing bolt of a curse that hits Bellatrix above the heart. In the movie, it’s played more for comedy: Molly’s key move is a spell that contracts Bellatrix’s corset, shrinking her waist before she disappears in a black puff—as though it served her right for dressing in such a shameless way. The glimpse of a Molly not fretting about propriety, who might have worn all sorts of dresses herself, is not given. (Yes, I am arguing that, as a parent, I would have liked to see a less cartoonish, more ruthless killing.)
So much of Harry Potter is about how parents protect children, or fail to. Harry’s mother protects him by dying for him. (He is also saved, at a key juncture, by Narcissa Malfoy’s desire to protect her own son.) By beating Bellatrix in her fussy way, the movie Molly confirms that mothers tend to things. That’s nice. We don’t get the jarring reminder of something we ought to have known all along: Molly is a witch, and witches have strange powers.
My larger problem, though, has to do with what happens after Voldemort, in the movie and the book, tells the students in the main hall at Hogwarts that he’ll spare them if they hand over Harry. In both versions, Pansy Parkinson, the mean girl of Slytherin House, shouts, “What are you waiting for? Someone grab him.” In the movie, after other students move around him, Professor McGonagall sends Pansy and all the other Slytherins to the dungeon. Everyone else cheers and gets ready to fight. In the book, after Harry is shielded, the Slytherins are simply told to leave, and the students from the other three houses (Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff) are given the same option, too—and many take it. In other words, the movie discards one of the signature moral moments in the book. If not standing with Harry gets you sent to the dungeon—remembering that these are children—then Voldemort has a tiny bit of a point about Harry asking his friends to die for him. They are captivated by the oldest (McGonagall) and most famous (Harry) people in the room; either that, or they have just been drafted. It’s not said exactly why the children who left in the book did so; given the situation, some may have hated Harry, and more hated the idea of being hurt or dying, or thought that there might be a better plan. But without at least the possibility of conscientious objectors, it becomes harder to credit conscience. (See Louisa Thomas’s new book about that.)
That is my rational discomfort with the scene. The emotional one has to do with the poor Hufflepuffs. Their house is the one with the least glamour and the most solid character—Slytherins are cunning aristocrats, Gryffindors are brave, Ravenclaws are clever, Hufflepuffs are “just and loyal”—I am quoting a hat here—good friends, hard workers. Hufflepuff comes in for a lot of mockery as a result. It is my favorite house. It’s a given, before the battle with Voldemort, that most Gryffindors will turn down the offer to get while the getting is good; but it’s a slight surprise, and a good move on Rowling’s part, that more Hufflepuffs than anyone else choose to stay, and rally around Harry; one misses that in the movie. Like Molly, they get their moment—as all children should.
