Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Directed by: David Yates
Written by: Steve Kloves
Full credits at IMDb

Just two weeks ago I was saying that all American disaster movies exploit 9/11 imagery because it's our most visceral shared-iconography? Well, it's telling how very British the Harry Potter series is, that when it comes time for its own war to define a generation—equivalent to Autobots vs. Decepticons—it doesn't play off of pictures from the coalition wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or 7/7, but those of W.W. II! I guess that over there, the war on terror has a moral ambiguity it doesn't share on our shores, and so to find an example of unimpeachably righteous violence, the English have to go back to the fight against the Nazis. And so you have here students at wizardry school marching in Riefenstahlian lockstep, wearing the colorless uniforms villains have worn since the American Civil War, and Snape hissing like the emperor in Star Wars. (Which played on a Nazi aesthetic, too, right?) When Hogwarts is attacked by Voldemort's army, it looked like The Blitz, the skies all lit up with the swirling lights of exploded munitions, like van Gogh's "Starry Night" gone martial...

Keep reading my conversation with Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine


Watch the trailer: