I enjoyed the lat­est Harry Pot­ter film last night — and it is the first in the series I am gen­uinely able to say that about. The rest have been frus­trat­ing for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Some are tech­ni­cally poor, oth­ers are merely vic­tims of ter­ri­ble direc­tion and script work.

The lat­est, how­ever, has been remarked upon by var­i­ous review­ers as tak­ing a sig­nif­i­cantly darker turn — reflected both in (gen­er­ally) well-done dig­i­tal colour grad­ing as well as the­mat­i­cally. The idea of “dark­ness” in this film is intrigu­ing, par­tic­u­larly in light of the acknowl­edge­ment of Dum­b­le­dore as one of the great­est wiz­ards of all time and the con­tin­u­ing strug­gle and dichotomy between forces of good and evil in the film.

The demise of Dum­b­le­dore (oh, yeah, spoiler alert — but you’ve already read the books, right?), that great force for good, rep­re­sents a notable set­back for this cause. I men­tion him par­tic­u­larly because he is, until this moment in the saga, the char­ac­ter with the most com­plete view of the sit­u­a­tion. He is wis­est and most pow­er­ful. How­ever, as he enters the cave con­tain­ing a hor­crux with Harry, I was frus­trated with their col­lec­tive inabil­ity to illu­mi­nate the room.

Cry lumos as loudly as they may, even Dumbledore’s cast­ing of bea­cons of light across the cave fails to sig­nif­i­cantly brighten the envi­ron­ment. I was reminded of the tri­umph over dark­ness that God has given us in Jesus, so absolute that fic­tion does not even approach its con­quest. The Bible speaks of a future, renewed cre­ation where God’s holy city has no need of a moon, or a sun, for it is so illu­mi­nated by the glory of His pres­ence. (Rev­e­la­tion 21:23 – 24)

This is not fic­tion, and there is no bat­tle that has not already been won by Jesus Christ the liv­ing king of all.

God has deliv­ered us from the domain of dark­ness and trans­ferred us to the king­dom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemp­tion, the for­give­ness of sins.
 – Colos­sians 1:13 – 14

…that you may pro­claim the excel­len­cies of Him who called you out of dark­ness into His mar­velous light.
 – 1 Peter 2:9

Tags: 1 Peter, Colossians, darkness, film, Harry Potter, jesus, light, movie