If last year's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" marked the beginning of the end with a gripping feeling of doom and gloom, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" wraps things up once and for all on a note of melancholy.

Oh, it's dramatic, to be sure: gorgeous, somber and startling as the young wizard faces his destiny and fights the evil Lord Voldemort. But the end of this staggeringly successful movie franchise, an epic fantasy saga spanning eight films over the past decade, provides a necessary emotional catharsis for Harry and for us. Even those who aren't ardent Potterphiles might find themselves getting unexpectedly choked up a couple of times.

That's always been the real magic of the series, based on J.K. Rowling's novels: that mixture of the exotic and the everyday, the otherworldly and the utterly relatable. No longer the innocent children they were when they entered Hogwarts, Harry, Ron and Hermione are growing up and moving on, and so must we. That the future of the wizard world hangs in the balance in this final installment is only part of the tale.

Still, director David Yates has accomplished the difficult task of bringing it all to a close in satisfying fashion. Having directed the last four of the eight films, Yates has provided a momentum and cohesion to the "Harry Potter" canon, which has gotten progressively darker and more mature. And Steve Kloves, who's written all but one of the screenplays in the series, has once again risen to the challenge of trying to please purists and casual viewers alike in adapting Rowling's revered writing.

It's hard to imagine how complicated this must have been, given the density of the mythology, even though the final book was divided into two films. (Although the epilogue, which features some of the main characters decked out in grown-up makeup, does seem a bit cheesy and hasty.)

At the same time, because it took two films to depict the action in the last installment, this second half doesn't feel overstuffed or overlong. It moves with great urgency toward the final showdown between Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, deeply disturbing as usual); danger infuses every moment, and it never overstays its welcome.

Much of that has to do with the look of the film, both in its attention to inventive detail and to the sweeping, elaborate set pieces. The cinematography from Eduardo Serra, who also shot "Deathly Hallows: Part 1," is once again richly ominous and beautifully bleak. Here, Hogwarts isn't a warm, bustling place full of possibilities but rather a fearsome fortress swarming with Death Eaters, where Professor Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) rules as if leading his own fascist regime.

Yes, "Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is in 3D - it's the only installment in the series to be presented that way - and as usual, that was unnecessary. The technical elements all looked flawless and immersive in the previous film. (Warner Bros. wisely chose not to rush the conversion from 2D on "Deathly Hallows: Part 1," and instead took more time for the process here.) But the addition of a third dimension does allow some details to pop, and it's never a distraction.

Although the "Potter" films have always been about the escape of the spectacle, the kids and their struggle to navigate both good and evil provides some much-needed rooting in reality. Radcliffe has never been better, and brief flashbacks to the earliest images of him in the role only serve as a reminder of how far he's come. The character has long since been cemented into his identity, but more is required of him physically and emotionally than ever before, and he's more than up for it all.

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