When Katniss destroys the games, she goes to District 13 after District 12 is destroyed. She meets President Coin who convinces her to be the symbol of rebellion, while trying to save Peeta from the Capitol. Short synopsis of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 taken from IMDb.com
Whoa. Shakey cam attacks again!
This review will be slightly longer than my short piece on Catching Fire. The question, of course, is: Did I think Mockingjay was worth the price of regular theater ticket admission? Of course that is usually the question, or some iteration of it. Was the film worth the dough shelled out? Piggy-backed on this review would be the question: "Was it as good as Catching Fire?" Stay tuned, and I'll tell you my thoughts on both those, soon enough.
This time I'm going with the good up front. I thought Mockingjay's filmmakers did a good job of keeping to the source material. Actually, I am cheating here, as I don't recall much from the third Hunger Games book, having read it years ago. But my wife, whose memory is better for such things than mine, said it was. And I'd believe her. After all, if you think this reviewer reads/watches a lot of material, you should see what his wife goes through. If I could just get her to jot down a few notes on some of the things she reads and watches... well, I've tried, and got stone-walled. So that's a big NO.
What else? The film did a good job of evoking emotion. I typically skip regurgitating the plot of the things I watch or read these days, feeling as time is always pressing. But in this instance, I will give you the briefest once-over. As our story begins, Katniss wakes up in the "lost" district of 13, which was supposedly an early source of insurrection and is said to have been nuked back to the stone age. But no. This little military-based society is surviving just well, and now they want to use her to stoke the rebellion and get the other districts to rise up and join the fight.
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| I believe that Julianne Moore had color-correcting contact lens for this role. In one scene, I thought I could pick out the line of them on her eyes. If so, I'd think the filmmakers were going for a vaguely reptilian look. That was the impression her visage often left me with. Personally, I'd say both Moore and Donald Sutherland played their roles with more subtlety and subtext than any of the other principle characters, this time around. / Source: Mockingjay.net |
At first, Katniss is averse, then she attempts it via propaganda spot filming (the movie speeds this transition from unwilling to willing pretty quick, in my opinion), and then we discover that Jennifer Lawrence can't act - errr - Katniss, I mean. They have to take her out into the field and show her in real life situations, rather than film sterilized blue-screen photo-ops in a studio. This leads to all the action the film sees, up until the semi-cliff-hanger ending, which I'll leave for those who have not yet read the books or seen this film.
Actually, I thought Lawrence's performance was pretty convincing, all things considered. I seem to recall in the book that I felt sort of annoyed that Katniss kept being all wishy-washy and teenage-girlish (OK, source material rings true, but that's a whole different story) and I thought, based on time constraints, that the filmmakers did a good job of conveying some of this angst.
But when I say the film conveys emotion, it is the instances of propaganda, starring our Miss Everdeen, used by District 13 to inspire the other districts into revolt, where I think they did especially well. There are several scenes, including a pivotal one, in which the ordinary people rise up and make tremendous sacrifices in the name of the Mockingjay. Knowing that I was being emotionally manipulated didn't lessen the impact of such scenes for me, and that speaks to decent movie making and to subject matter that rings true, in my opinion.
For example, a key suicide attack is taken up by a human-wave group, who carry explosives into the hydroelectric plant that powers the capital of all of Panem (am I spelling that right this time?). The soldiers guarding the facility fire into the oncoming rush, but are soon overwhelmed and the explosives are used to destroy the dam. It could have all been pretty gratuitous, but the author, filmmakers and actors manage to pull it off in a way that rang true to me.
Depending on which side of a conflict you happen to be, it is both harrowing or down-right scary that people, pushed to extremis, will do things like this. I say "depending on which side," because, from the terrorist's point-of-view, the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were good days work, but to those who were attacked, it is a day long to be remembered with sorrow. I suppose the difference is, Mockingjay's cast of protagonists are fighting against tyranny and not purposefully targeting innocent civilians. And I bought in. I felt the film hit it's mark well in almost all respects, in fact.
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| I was impressed with how they managed to make Josh Hutcherson look more and more emaciated and stripped down. My wife quipped as we were leaving the theater that she wondered if it was CGI or actual weight loss that gave him that "Concentration camp"-look. / Source: bustle.com |
As for any complaints I had? Well as I alluded, shakey cam resurfaces in this film. I don't remember it featuring so much in Catching Fire, which in my opinion was a good thing. There was one moment when it almost seemed as if the camera operator almost dropped the camera, so jarring was the movement, and they just kept it in and would probably defend it as "stylistic." But it annoyed me greatly. I happen to think that, when you have the budget to avoid it, shakey cam is often just lazy filmmaking. But that is my way of seeing it.
Also, there were a few places where the film is obviously stretching itself out to fit a two-parter. Now I am not the sort who usually thinks they should stop yapping and get to another action sequence. I think films of the modern age tend to sacrifice plot for action. But once or twice in Mockingjay, I wanted the film to pick up the pace a tad. The sequences of deliberation and character interaction sometimes seemed a wee bit on the Byzantine side to me. Having said that, I'll say that Mockingjay wasn't dull. Just that it might have trimmed in a few spots, seeing as this is a two-parter.
The re-used camera angle of the massacre of burned bodies in District 12 annoyed me a bit as well. First off, the forensics side of me said: "these are not real bones, as the victims postmortem posture is wrong." Corpses curl up to a certain degree when they burn. It has to do with what heat does to the fluids in our bodies, and how our muscles react. Gross, but true.
From a more pedestrian point-of-view, I thought the camera angle used in the highway of burnt death scenes was very limited. Up the street and down the street, but not from the side, as if perhaps the filmmakers were very carefully showing us what they wanted us to see - if we panned a quarter turn, we'd see it was set-dressing stretched to its limits, perhaps? The impact of the scene was lessened to me, because the way it was shot made me feel boxed in visually, and therefore I was thinking outside of the story, instead of being moved by it. That was the same problem I had when I found myself wondering if they could have trimmed a few bits for pacing, by the way. It can be either a large or a small detraction from a film, for me. In the case of this movie, fairly small. But they effect is still there.
I am surprisingly impressed with Ms. Lawrence's ability to sing. She does a more than adequate job of conveying emotion, as well as a touch of Appalachian accent, to this song. The song's cadence itself is a touch repetitive to me, but I can't help but wonder about its backstory. The tune seems very much like one that might have been adapted from a pre-Civil War negro folk/spiritual, or a backwoods ballad.
Any other complaints about Mockingjay? Well I thought Jennifer Lawrence suffered from what I coined on the spot as "Pantene hair" in a few scenes. For someone whose character has supposedly lived off the glamor train for so long and resents when they try to glitz her up, she sure seems to have neatly coiffed hair. But this is a small quibble, as many of my quibbles are.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I was a fun night at the movies. I'd have paid to see it in the big box theater if at all possible, simply because it is the continuation of a story that genuinely interests me (unlike say, Twilight, which I have still not seen the last chapters of, and have zero desire to). The film itself was worth the price paid, but not without a few faults, in my view. I recommend it to those who are fans of the book, as it won't highly disappoint in that regard. And if you haven't read the associated books, and liked the movies, this one will hold up well, I think. If you haven't read or seen either, then I wouldn't recommend until you do some catch up, film-wise. It will be a bit disjointed, if you started at this point.
As for whether it was better, the same, or worse than Catching Fire? Well my review of Catching Fire was short and to the point. I liked it. And to be honest, I still prefer that one, as a whole, over Mockingjay. I thought the second film in this series was superior in conception and execution (for one thing, much less shakey cam, or well camouflaged at least). For what that is worth.
The parting comment:
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| Source: smosh.com |
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| Source: allhungergames.com |
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| Source: letmestartbysayingblog.com |
A bit of Hunger Games humor. I especially like "Words are weapons, but weapons are also weapons." and "Doesn't want to be the bad guy, but does it quite well."
Shakey cam, yuck.
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