‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1’ features the best scene

• It’s been 10 years since “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” hit theaters.
• Potter’s penultimate film features the best scenes in the entire franchise – the moment Harry and Hermione silently dance together.
• The scene is the most grown-up and mature in the series, and packed with emotion and melancholy thanks to the acting of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson and the song by Nick Cave, “O Children”.
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The ‘Harry Potter’ film series features some of the most iconic movie slices of the past 20 years. From magical moments like the first arrival at Hogwarts, to kinetic fight scenes like Dumbledore vs Voldemort at the Ministry of Magic, to tense sets like Gringotts’ escape, the series is packed with memorable scenes.

But with “The Deathly Hallows Part 1” celebrating its 10th anniversary, one particular scene from this penultimate “Potter” film stands out from the rest.

When I was a kid I thought it was awkward and slow, but now Harry and Hermione’s dance scene is my favorite in the whole series. Here’s why.

Harry and Hermione’s dance scene is the series’ most moving

While there may be more obviously emotional and tearful scenes in the ‘Harry Potter’ cinematic saga, like Dobby’s death or Harry bringing Cedric’s corpse back to his father, it was this scene that stuck with me on. longer after a recent review of the series.

Harry and Hermione, during their search for Voldemort’s Horcruxes, have just been abandoned by Ron. This is one of the lowest, emotionally, the three characters have ever been.

In an attempt to cheer his friend up, Harry decides to take action. While Hermione listens to the radio, Harry stands up, removes the locket from her and leads her to the center of the tent where they begin to dance slowly. Harry’s mission to cheer on his friend is accomplished when the dancing gets more awkward and the burden of their mission – their lives – is lightened for a brief moment.

You can feel the weight of their daily routine – tirelessly roaming the country for months, desperately looking for clues, sleeping on the streets and still in danger – overwhelming them. Before this scene, we see a montage of Harry, Ron and Hermione walking away on their grueling and perilous mission, so we know the importance of their “Lord of the Rings” style journey.

As an audience, you can physically see these worries and woes disappear as Harry and Hermione dance together in their first carefree moment in months.

Daniel Radcliffe said in behind-the-scenes footage: “You forget these guys are kids. That’s a lot to ask of two 17-year-olds.”

In the same video, director David Yates said, “Harry and Hermione’s relationship is a true friendship. We wanted to make a scene without words that captivates this relationship. There is just something really tender and touching about seeing them. try to alleviate the pain. by dancing. “

The acting is excellent and it’s not a ‘happily ever after’

The scene features some of Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson’s best actors. Radcliffe’s wacky dance in this scene is actually his own, and the friendship he and Watson have off-screen radiates through the camera and onto the screen, emboldening Harry and Hermione’s relationship.

Emma Watson said they initially choreographed a dance routine for the stage, but when it came to filming, it seemed more natural to allow the dance to go without choreography. This gives the scene the kind of improvised authenticity that is typically found in independent dramas rather than big budget studio footage.

However, what really makes this scene work isn’t that it’s a happy moment in an otherwise dark movie, but that it ends on a dark note as well.

After Harry and Hermione dance and laugh together, the two go their separate ways and it seems for a moment that they could kiss before Hermione walks away and the reality of their dark lives returns. Again, that makes the story and this scene all the more real.

It’s not just a blindingly happy streak, the whole thing is saturated with a deep, dark melancholy.

Photos of Warner Bros.

The song choice was perfect

Nick Cave’s “O Children” was the perfect, gospel-tinged song to accompany this scene. The song sounds like it could be a Church hymn and has a slightly haunting feel to it.

The meaning of the choir-like song is slightly ambiguous, but the lyrics describe a feeling of regret when people realize that what they once hoped for is in fact a nightmare. It fits perfectly with what Harry and Hermione are going through.

There is even a theory that the song is about the Nazi movement during WWII with lines like “forgive us now for what we did” applying to German soldiers. Again, this ties into “Potter”, too, as Voldemort’s fascist regime, where some people are deemed “unclean” or even not really people, has been compared to that of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

This not only shows how Harry and Hermione’s friendship matured, but how the films themselves matured.

It’s also the scene that cements Harry and Hermione’s status as friends. JK Rowling herself may have said that Hermione should have gone with Harry rather than Ron, but this scene from the movie shows how much Hermione loves Ron.

Behind the scenes, Yates commented, “In the middle of this dance they come closer and it starts to get complicated in a way. It’s friendship but it almost becomes something else. You can almost feel when they are alone together that it could slip into something that was more just friendship and that tension is really interesting. “

Photos of Warner Bros.

However, when Hermione steps down at the end, it solidifies her love for Ron, and it’s refreshing to see a platonic friendship between the main male and female characters in a mainstream movie rather than a romantic one.

It also shows how the film matured with its audience. The films naturally got darker as they progressed. “The Sorcerer’s Stone” and “The Chamber of Secret” are fun films more akin to the children’s adventure films for which director Christopher Columbus is known. They are not without their scraps of fear, but it is only “The Prisoner of Azkaban” and “The Goblet of Fire” where “Potter” begins to head down a dark trajectory.

Through “Deathly Hallows Part 1”, the films have evolved to explore how the main characters deal with their circumstances in a much more thoughtful way than the previous Potter films.

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As such, we are treated to this dance – a moment of what Hayao Makazaki describes as “ma”, which means void in Japanese. Makazaki describes these moments as the silence between applause – small segments that he uses in a lot of his animated films where the characters do something small or mundane, or nothing at all. This gives the characters and the audience time to breathe and creates tension for viewers for the larger action to come.

Just as the Potter films have matured over time, so have its audiences.

“Potter” is and always will be loved by many different generations, but there is a specific generation who grew up with Harry at around the same age, with each film reflecting our growing maturity in real life.

I might not have quite enjoyed this scene when I first saw it in theaters in 2010, but now that I’ve grown older and matured, it’s given me a better appreciation of the Harry’s story and allows me to enjoy the movies on a different level than I have before.

As I get older and hopefully wiser, I do the same for the “Potter” movies, proving that no matter how old you are or the movies, or whatever might happen in the larger “Potter” community, Hogwarts will be. always be there to welcome you home.

Read more:

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