In this review, I’m assuming you’re somewhat familiar with
the overall plot of The Hunger Games
series, so while I do discuss plot points, I’m not going to bother explaining
all the rules of the franchise’s milieu.
The trouble with movies like Mockingjay Part I is that they demand so little of the film medium.
They’re not interested in being good movies, merely filmed readings of the
novels, visual valentines to the devoted readers of the book series who want to
expand their excitement and their experience of the fantasy. Harry Potter wasn’t content to be a well-told
book series or even a film series. It eventually became a whole world unto
itself at Islands of Adventure. And Hunger
Games may one day have to follow in HP’s
footsteps to give the fans what they truly want. Perhaps a Hunger Games-themed paintball park? No one is interested in
adapting the series in a way that feels truly cinematic, although director
Francis Lawrence does make some efforts with Mockingjay. But the movie is ultimately tethered to the book series
in a way that ensures it will be a boring set-up for the finale. And viewers may
likely find themselves restless with disinterest, but unwilling to criticize
the movie since it’s part of a larger whole. How can we really even rate a
movie like this, when it’s incomplete?
Even the great Jennifer Lawrence isn’t enough to save this
movie. It’s partly her very quick rise as a respected actress—an ascendance
that actually started before The Hunger
Games—that has made her performance as Katniss Everdeen seem labored and
gradually too familiar, too repetitive. Jennifer Lawrence already had an
Academy Award nomination under her belt by the time she made the first Hunger Games (for the unsettling, murky
meth-noir Winter’s Bone). Off the top
of my head, I can’t think of any other actors who were Oscar nominees before they were stars of hugely popular
young adult movie franchises. Now that Lawrence has won an Oscar (for 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook) and a third
nomination (for last year’s American
Hustle), her presence in Mockingjay
Part I—the first half of the conclusion to The Hunger Games—is a little bit like a 22-year-old being stuck at
the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. The other grown-ups have legally recognized
her adulthood, but they’re still treating her like a child. Of course, Lawrence
has obligations to fulfill, and this series is her bread and butter. But Mockingjay Part I is a real yawn of a
movie, and for people who look forward to what Lawrence can do on the screen,
it represents a dull speed bump for an actress who has shown such promise.
It’s especially hard to watch an actress as good as Jennifer
Lawrence be so inactive. Katniss Everdeen never felt more passive than in this
movie. She sits, she waits, she reacts. She’s occasionally enlisted to shoot
propaganda videos to rally the districts, which are fighting a losing battle
against the Capital. She waits for news of her beloved Peeta (Josh Hutcherson),
who’s a prisoner of the Capital being used as a puppet to denounce the civil
war between the districts and the Capital as radical and self-destructive. The
alleged love triangle between Katniss and Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) has
no momentum, especially since Peeta is seen through a glass screen for most of
the film. (And how crummy is it to be Gale at this point? Always doing things
for the woman he knows will never love him back the way he wants her to.) She
chats with the leaders of her district—Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour
Hoffman—about strategy. She chats with Woody Harrelson (her alcoholic mentor).
She chats with Elizabeth Banks. But none of the conversation, none of the
characterization, adds up or amounts to much.
There’s also not much of a strong villain presence. The only
really tangible bad guy is the face of the cold, ominous President Snow (Donald
Sutherland) who’s mostly seen on big TV screens and thus needs desperately to
be petting a white cat on his lap. He’s too larger-than-life to feel very
threatening, and the movie drones on vaguely about the Capital in a way that
never make the threats of the Capital seem real or genuinely tense. Even the
big scenes—such as an air raid by Capital bombers—fails to show us the weight or
the impact of the struggle. We see lots of terrified district folks running for
shelter as the building around them shakes. But we don’t see the bombers and
the scene is rendered ineffectual. It’s stagey in the worst way, like when the
actors in a play look out the window and report on what they see since we the
audience cannot actually see it. Moore and Hoffman are stern and unfeeling and
dull as the leaders, always vaguely unaffected by the many setbacks and
tragedies going on around them, and too noble to be capable of any real
feeling.
I haven’t read any of the Hunger Games books. I saw the first film, but skipped Catching Fire. About fifteen minutes
into Mockingjay, I was wishing I had skipped
it too and waited for the finale, which is sure to be more entertaining (one
hopes). This silly trend of expanding the final entry of series into two movies
is peculiar and, I think, antithetical to movies and what they are. (Studios,
of course, cannot pass up an opportunity to squeeze as much money as they can
out of their pet franchises.) Even fans of the series seemed largely
underwhelmed by this installment. The theater wasn’t even crowded. (Granted, it
was the middle of the afternoon.) And nobody seemed excited. When I went to the
final Twilight movie on opening
night, half the fun was observing the audience. Those fans were having the time
of their lives. The movie was a bummer—although entertaining for what it
was—but the fans’ energy made it worth seeing. This latest Hunger Games entry felt lifeless.
The film is technically well-made. The director, Francis
Lawrence, makes an effort to give the movie some visual feeling. In an early
scene, we see Katniss emerging from a circular hallway into a large bunker, and
the shot is kind of elegant. Many of the scenes in Mockingjay are visually tied together in a way you don’t expect
from this kind of series. And the movie doesn’t pound you over the head with
ending after ending. (I suspect that will come with Part 2). No, this film’s problem is that it’s a place-holder, and
there’s so much being withheld that it’s hard to care. Even the one big
advancement in the film’s plot (involving Peeta’s eventual release from the
Capital) feels too little too late.
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