In the late 1940s, the German Protestant theologian Rudolf Bultmann became famous for "demythologisation", the process of eliminating the myth and miracle from the Bible and bringing about a rational understanding of religion and the world. When, in the first half of The Deadly Hallows, the shifty Rufus Scrimgeour, minister of magic, says: "These are dark times", he could be any member of the coalition stepping up to the dispatch box.
I am readily prepared to concede that the films and the books have become for many young people and their parents a crucial part of their experience of this century.
There are moments of wit, fear, imagination and grace that one remembers over the years, but they are scattered among the long drawn-out, meandering narrative.
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The brilliant production designer Stuart Craig, who is to the Harry Potter series what Ken Adam was to the Bond movies (which is to say co-auteur), has done a consistently impressive job. They stand dirty, dishevelled and triumphant among the battle-torn wreckage of Hogwarts, which resembles London after the Blitz or Berlin on VE Day. I now have to say I feel as weary as the film's characters look after the final defeat of Voldemort. In that initial review in 2001, I admitted that I entered the cinema prejudiced by the hype and emerged having greatly enjoyed the film and admiring the skill that had gone into the making. "It's complicated," replies a desperately tired, unwashed Harry, who rapidly dispenses with anything that might be described as a synopsis of preceding events, leaving people who don't know their Horcruxes from their Dementors to muggle through. There is a tentative attempt at the beginning of The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 at clarification, when a goblin asks: "How did you come by the sword?", referring to the Excalibur-like weapon retrieved from the bottom of a lake in The Deathly Hallows: Part 1. A generation of readers and filmgoers has grown up with the bespectacled, wand-waving wizard and saviour of the world from Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, and the appearance of the final film coincides with the birth of a fourth Beckham child, suitably given the middle name "Seven" which could as easily be the number of books in the sacred text as her father's former Man Utd shirt. Seven Rowling novels have been turned into eight films which take around 20 hours to see (or 36 hours if you watch the DVD extras), and the phenomenon is infinitely greater.
O n 18 November 2001, I began my review of the first Harry Potter movie: "It's difficult to separate the film of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone from Harry Potter the phenomenon – that astronomical budget the producers' worldwide deal with Coca-Cola the billion dollars-worth of associated merchandise the actors' complaints of being exploited by Hollywood the declaration by its director, Chris Columbus, that JK Rowling's novel merited the respect accorded to Shakespeare the endless opinions on its significance ranging from world premiere guest Brooklyn Beckham to newspaper moralist Melanie Phillips."Ī decade on, we have reached the end of what we now call "the journey".
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