This is the article on the book of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which I wrote for Culturewatch. Warning: contains major plot spoilers.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2”, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures Copyright: © 2011 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter publishing rights © J.K.R. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are Trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Ent. All rights reserved

Ten years after Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone blasted onto the best-seller lists, J.K. Rowling has finally brought the series to a spectacular and moving conclusion with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It is one of the most satisfying books in the series, though not without its problems. Rowling has resolved many of the earlier mysteries and tied up many loose ends. Yet at the same time she has wisely refrained from bringing everything to a neat and tidy resolution; there are still mysteries – even some new ones introduced in the seventh book.

Since the confirmation of the final volume’s title, fans have feverishly speculated as to what the ‘Deathly Hallows’ are. I’m not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed that I didn’t spend long hours poring over the first six books and debating possible clues and theories with other fans online. Looking over some of their speculations now, I’ve seen many extremely well-thought out and accurate guesses about the nature of the horcruxes, but nothing that comes close to the identity of the Deathly Hallows. Given the sheer number of ideas on this in cyberspace, it would be surprising if someone somewhere hasn’t made a lucky guess about some aspect of the Hallows, but it’s largely a new piece of the puzzle that we haven’t been given much inkling of previously.

Although each of the three Hallows plays a vital role within the plot development (one of which we are very familiar with since the first book), we never quite see them brought together to achieve their full power. And it’s a good thing too, because we learn that they would give their bearer immense power: they would make him or her the ‘Master of Death’ (p. 333). The temptation to gain this power had proved too much even for someone as great as Dumbledore. Although Harry spends a considerable proportion of this book feeling resentful that his old headmaster had kept secrets back from him, Dumbledore’s wisdom is proved right once again. Harry needs to know about the Hallows in order to achieve his ultimate goal of destroying Voldemort, but he must not be tempted to put all his effort into acquiring the two which he doesn’t possess. It’s questionable whether or not he would beat the Dark Lord in the race to find one of them – and to lose would make finding and destroying the remaining horcruxes immeasurably more difficult. Perhaps just as seriously, Harry would find the lure of such immense power impossible to resist. Not only has Dumbledore kept Harry ignorant of their full potential, he magically locks one of them away until such time as Harry must use it, once most of the horcruxes have been destroyed.

It is interesting to compare the three strongest wizards of the series with the tale of the three brothers who first received the gifts from Death. The first brother, ‘who was a combative man, asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence: a wand that must always win duels for its owner, a wand worthy of a wizard who had conquered Death’ (p. 331). Little surprise that this is the Hallow which the violent Voldemort desires so deeply: he is determined to possess a wand that Harry cannot resist. He plans to destroy his nemesis and live for ever. The second brother has interesting echoes of Dumbledore: ‘an arrogant man [who] . . . asked for the power to recall others from Death’ (p. 331). It is a surprise to discover that Dumbledore had been an extremely arrogant young wizard, though we know he has some dark secret from the Half Blood Prince. And it seems that a little of that arrogance had stayed with him. Dumbledore acknowledges how wrong he was to desire the Hallows, describing them as, ‘a desperate man’s dream! . . . Real and dangerous, and a lure for fools. . . . And I was such a fool. . . . Master of death, Harry, master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort? . . . I, too, sought a way to conquer death, Harry’ (p. 571). Harry rightly protests that Dumbledore had not wanted to conquer death in the same way as Voldemort. He had, after all, wanted to right the terrible wrong of his sister’s death by bringing her back from death. Nevertheless, he wanted the power for his own ends, not for the good of others. And he ought to have known that what he wanted was impossible, from the story of the second brother if for no other reason. Rowling insisted years ago that one of her rules for the books was, ‘Magic cannot bring dead people back to life. . . . there is no returning once you’re properly dead.’¹

‘The youngest brother was the humblest and also the wisest of the brothers, and he did not trust Death. So he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And death, most unwillingly, handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility’ (p. 331). There is an obvious connection with Harry, the bearer of the Cloak. Harry does not consider himself to be wise – he has always looked to Dumbledore for wisdom – but, as Jesus said, ‘wisdom is proved right by all her children’ (Luke 7:35). Harry has learnt well from his mentor and now, with extremely limited information and an immense challenge, he chooses the right course of action – not the risky race for the Elder Wand but the annihilation of Voldemort’s soul fragments.

That these three central objects are related to mastery over death is not surprising, given the preoccupation with death throughout the series. Rowling acknowledges that, ‘My books are largely about death. They open with the death of Harry’s parents. There is Voldemort’s obsession with conquering death and his quest for immortality at any price, the goal of anyone with magic. I so understand why Voldemort wants to conquer death. We’re all frightened of it.’² Harry lives because of his mother’s self-sacrifice on his behalf – a magic that was beyond Voldemort’s comprehension – and he lives in the shadow of that event; the Dark Lord will stop at nothing to achieve immortality, including murdering people like Cedric in Goblet of Fire; and significant characters die because that’s what happens in war. Rowling’s treatment of death is not callous or morbid: she deals with it as a fact of life, the most unfortunate of all facts, sometimes coming with a growing sense of inevitability and other times coming quickly and unexpectedly. Death can come as a natural end to life or as a deeply unnatural end as a consequence of great evil. It is something that J.K. Rowling has had to come to terms to in her own life, but she still considers that the death of a loved one is her greatest fear.

The most significant death is, of course, Harry’s. Not that he quite dies, as Dumbledore makes clear in their touching meeting almost-but-not-quite beyond the grave:

‘But you’re dead,’ said Harry. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dumbledore matter-of-factly. ‘Then . . . I’m dead too?’ ‘Ah,’ said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. ‘That is the question, isn’t it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not.’ They looked at each other, the old man still beaming. ‘Not?’ repeated Harry. ‘Not,’ said Dumbledore. ’But . . .’ Harry raised his hand instinctively towards the lightning scar. It did not seem to be there. ‘But I should have died – I didn’t defend myself! I meant to let him kill me!’ ’And that,’ said Dumbledore, ‘will, I think, have made all the difference.’

Harry’s offering of himself as a sacrifice in order to save others is a profoundly moving moment in the book. It has a particular resonance for Christians because of its potent echo of Jesus Christ willingly giving himself over to forces of evil which wanted to destroy him. In fact, Voldemort only destroyed the horcrux in Harry, but it nevertheless took Harry into some kind of intermediate state (an echo of Neo at Mobil Av station in The Matrix Revolutions) where that he was able to choose whether to return to life or to embrace death. His return to life (having apparently suffered no ill effects of his near death experience) can, I think, be seen as some kind of resurrection, or at least a close analogy to it. Until Rowling speaks about this in interviews, it is difficult to be sure whether or not she was deliberately making this connection with Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection (after all, death and resurrection are not unique to Christian faith). Is it simply coincidental that death’s waiting room is King’s Cross? My guess is that Rowling has been more like J.R.R. Tolkien than C.S. Lewis. Tolkien did not set out to write any Christian allegories, yet his Christian worldview shaped much of what he wrote, whereas Lewis was very deliberate in his construction of the allegories in The Chronicles of Narnia. Rowling shares the same Christian worldview, saying that she believes in God and attends church for more than weddings and christenings, though she also says, ‘like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes about if my faith will return. It’s important to me.’³

Whether deliberate or not, Rowling has created an allegory that powerfully illustrates the central truth of the Christian faith (arguably a better one than Lewis’s in some respects). ‘Greater love has no one than this,’ said Jesus, ‘to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15:13, TNIV). This is what Harry knows he must do. He packs away his wand and the invisibility cloak (remember the third brother in the tale finally took off the cloak so that he could greet Death as a friend) and steps forward, surrendering himself to Voldemort’s malevolence. By then returning to life, he has broken Voldemort’s power, not only over himself but over those for whom he died. His ‘resurrection’ encourages and empowers his followers, and enables him to finally destroy the great enemy (in fact, the enemy destroys himself because his power is reflected back at himself). It is, of course, like all analogies and allegories, imperfect. Harry himself is a very real human character, with faults and failings. He dies to rescue his friends and all good people from a great evil, but he does not die to rescue them from their sin, their rebellion against God, since God is almost entirely absent from the fictional world of Rowling’s imagination. Dumbledore recognises that he was not worthy to bear the three Hallows: ‘I was fit to possess only the meanest of them, the least extraordinary’ (p. 576). Harry also recognises that he cannot become Master of Death, and drops the resurrection stone hoping that it will not be found. But Jesus, in the real, historical world, died and rose again to become Master over death, breaking its power over those who trust him and promising, not a vague, shadowy, temporary return to the world of the living as the resurrection stone brought, but a real, physical and eternal resurrection. Rowling quotes from 1 Corinthians 15:26: ‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death.’ Harry is no longer afraid of death, the Dark Lord and the Death eaters are defeated, but Jesus Christ alone destroys death itself.

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Every year, the film critics at Christianity Today compile a list of the ten films that they consider to be the most redeeming of the year. What do they mean by that?

We mean movies that include stories of redemption—sometimes blatantly, sometimes less so. Several of our films have characters who are redeemers themselves; all of them have characters who experience redemption to some degree—some quite clearly, some more subtly. Some are “feel-good” movies that leave a smile on your face; some are a bit more uncomfortable to watch. But the redemptive element is there in all of these films.

I don’t know all the reviewers, but I have engaged with several of them at Arts & Faith and think they’re great. I just wish I could spend more time there like I used to. Anyway, I think it’s quite a good list. There are a couple of films I would have left out in favour of films from their ‘One that got away’ list – the one film that each of the critics wish had made the final, collective list.

From CT’s ‘Ones That Got Away’ list, I would possibly have included in my top ten:

However, I haven’t yet seen most of the films in the “Ones That Got Away” list, so I might later want to include some of the others. I confess that I’m surprised by one omission:

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This article was first published on Damaris’s Culturewatch website.
© Tony Watkins, 2009

Hugh Jackman’s return to the role which transformed him into a superstar is a shrewd way of continuing the X-Men franchise. His portrayal of the rage-filled mutant was a key factor in the success of the earlier trilogy of films, so going back to look at the origins of his character is a sure-fire way of creating a film with huge appeal for X-Men fans. Jackman is a fine actor who takes all his roles seriously, but none more so than that of Wolverine. For this film, Jackman also became one of the producers and insisted that they should exceed all expectations. He certainly threw himself into very strenuous physical preparation. ‘I wanted Logan to look animalistic, veins popping out, and coiled like a spring,’ he says. ‘I wanted audiences to say, “Okay, this guy is frightening; this guy could easily rip someone’s head off.”’

To create a truly compelling film, however, requires more than a strong lead; it also needs a good plot and a good director. Wolverine scores well on both counts. It’s an emotionally engaging story of Logan’s violent past, his attempt to discover solace in love and his quest for revenge after experiencing immense tragedy. All of which is put together extremely well by South African director Gavin Hood, who made his name with the brilliant, Oscar-winning Tsotsi (2005). It was seeing this film that convinced Jackman that Hood was the right man for the job, because ‘The character Tsotsi was at war with himself, just like Wolverine is. I got carried away by Tsotsi’s story, and by Gavin’s instinct for character and story.’ Hood uses the same metaphor when he talks about the heart of Wolverine: ‘The core idea of the film is that it’s about someone who is not comfortable with who he is, who’s at war with his own nature. That’s an interesting character to explore. The theme of being at war with one’s own nature, fuels and energizes the film so it becomes more than just action for its own sake.’

We first meet Wolverine as a young boy, James, in 1845. When the man he believes to be his father is shot, his grief and anger trigger the first appearance of his amazing retracting claws. He hurls himself at the murderer and drives the claws deep into his chest, but with his last words the man tells James that he is his real father. James flees into the night, but is quickly caught by Victor, who James now realises is his older half-brother. Victor, who is also a mutant, tells James that, ‘He deserved it,’ and that the two of them should keep on running and not look back.

The two brothers never do look back, but stay together and go on to fight side by side in the American Civil War, both World Wars and Vietnam. By now, Victor (Liev Schreiber) has developed a blood lust, which leads to both men facing a firing squad. But the brothers are near indestructible, and a short time later they are visited by Major William Stryker (Danny Huston) who asks them ‘Are you boys tired of running? Tired of denying your true nature?’ He offers them the chance to join a special unit and ‘really serve’ their country. The unit is composed of mutants under the command of Stryker. But before long, James (now also known as Logan) has had enough of Stryker’s methods and Victor’s bloodlust, and he leaves the unit, later settling in a remote part of Canada with Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). Eventually his past catches up with him, and he exchanges tranquility for trauma, romance for rage – and his bone skeleton for one of adamantium in Stryker’s hideous ‘Weapon X’ experiment.

Central to the character of Logan/Wolverine is, as Hugh Jackman and Gavin Hood say, the ‘war within his own nature’. His past is a violent one, from the time he killed his father and on through four major wars, and the early part of the film shows him beginning to struggle with this. After some years of being settled with Kayla Stryker turns up unexpectedly. Kayla asks Logan why Stryker has found him after so long. ‘I’m the best at what I do,’ he replies. ‘But what I do isn’t very nice.’ Kayla insists, ‘You’re not an animal, Logan. What you have is a gift.’ Violence is an integral part of him, but he’s not comfortable with it. It’s not a gift he wants because of what it leads to. ‘You can give a gift back,’ he complains, but Kayla seems to believe he can choose how he uses it. Jackman remarks, ‘She leads him to think differently about the conflict of being human and being a mutant. Their relationship leads him to try and heal old wounds, and experience the consequences and risks of love.’

The tension he feels is expressed as a conflict between animal nature and some higher nature. The animal part is the ferocity which is unleashed when his anger is given free reign. But after some years of living in the wilderness, it is clear that he wants to embrace a life of peace. He is woken in the night by terrible memories, but he wants his savagery to be in the past. Stryker and Victor don’t think he can turn his back on it: Stryker because he wants Logan to become the indestructible Weapon X; Victor because he has so wholeheartedly embraced the brutishness of his animal nature that he believes Logan is denying his true self. ‘When are you going to figure it out?’ Victor asks his brother. ‘You’re nothing like them.’ ‘I’m nothing like you,’ Logan retorts, but Victor replies, ‘Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet.’ Later, when Logan has vowed to take revenge on Victor for destroying his happiness, Stryker tells him, ‘To beat Victor, you’re going to have to embrace the other side of you. Become the animal.’ Logan is so consumed with lust for revenge that he does exactly this, and it’s not long before he threatens Stryker with the words, ‘You wanted the animal, Colonel. You got it.’

Before he embraces the feral side of his nature, while he and Kayla are still enjoying their rural idyll, she tells him an old myth about how the moon’s lover in the spirit realm was tricked into going to earth where he was trapped. ‘When you leave the spirit world,’ she explains, ‘you can never go back.’ It seems that she is telling Logan about his own fate, not just telling a story. And indeed, it is not long before his peace is shattered forever, along with his chance for finding some redemption. This is the second explicit reference to the impossibility of going back. Certainly there is no return to an earlier state of affairs, but that is not to say that future is wholly determined by the past. The most positive characters in the film clearly believe that Logan has a choice. After escaping from Stryker’s base, Logan takes refuge in a barn where is found and helped by the farmer and his wife. ‘You like a man fixing to do a bad thing,’ says the old man. ‘You know what happens to people who go looking for blood? They find it. We all got a choice.’ ‘Yeah, well mine got taken,’ replied Logan. But he does still have a choice, and much later we see him exercise it. He is immensely strong, virtually indestructible and able to unleash astonishing violence, but he is not condemned to kill. Kayla, too, despite telling her tale about not going back, is insistent that he is not an animal, which implies he can choose how to use his abilities. Towards the end of the film, he is again told, ‘You’re not an animal,’ and at last it seems that he begins to realise that, while he cannot go back, he does not need to go on in the same way. His final words in the film are, ‘I’ll find my own way,’ perhaps suggesting that he is choosing his destiny.

We all have the same kind of choice as Logan: we can allow ourselves to become consumed with anger towards others or we can show mercy. Once we give in to violence, it begins to overpower us and consume us until, as Victor has found, the patterns of behaviour become so ingrained that escaping them is unthinkable. Physical violence is not the issue for the vast majority of us, but we still must choose how we relate to those around us. Do we respond with anger when someone hurts us, or pushes ahead of us? Do we have sharp tongues, expressing the bitterness that drives us? Or do we hold back, pursuing peace and working at harmony? By the end of the film, Logan is still far from the latter approach, but he has discovered that the first doesn’t resolve anything. Seeking revenge makes us as bad as the person who first wronged us. This is why Jesus taught the importance of turning the other cheek and going the extra mile: the way to deal with evil behaviour is not by meeting it on its own terms, but by transcending it and embracing the way of peace. Jesus, the Son of God, is the ultimate example of this, even going to his death meekly, without summoning the legions of angels who could have rescued him and wreaked vengeance on those who were out to kill him. Stryker tells Logan that, to make him an indestructible killing machine, ‘we first have to destroy you.’ It is similar, in one sense, but diametrically opposite in another, to what happened at the cross: Jesus allowed himself to be destroyed, taking on himself the destruction that his enemies (and all of us) deserved. He returned from death so that death no longer has any power over him. But not so that he could, in turn, destroy those who had used violence against him, but, in part, as a demonstration that the way of peace, his self-sacrifice, had triumphed over violence. God’s way is not the way of revenge, though there will come a day when those who persist in opposing him will face his judgment. Logan tells his friend John Wraith (Will.I.Am) that, ‘There’s no redemption where I’m going.’ By the end, there is a glimmer of hope that he could one day find it. But the death and resurrection of Jesus is precisely what makes redemption possible in the real world. Once we have embraced it, we still feel the struggle within us – if anything we feel the war between two natures in a new way – but the difference is now that God is at work within us, empowering us to choose the right and gradually transforming us to be more and more like his Son. And from that, there is no way back.

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