In this film, there’s a problem in Panem, and it’s not
coming from the Capitol. Mockingjay - Part
1 is half of one volume of a trilogy, a situation that’s set up to dilute
narrative drive. Worse still, the film is based on the last book of a trilogy that sinks
deeper into angst as it moves from the first volume to the third. No surprise that director Francis Lawrence can only deliver us a film with little-to-no story and an emotionally one-note
heroine in a world of only one emotional shading.
And we don’t get to spend enough time with the
characters we know, either. We hardly deal with
Haymitch, Peeta or Finn, and the one old friend we see often, Gale, is as
monotonous here as Katniss.
Even the man we love to hate, President Snow, shows little more than
perfunctory evil. With so little to
pique our interest in this Mockingjay, it’s easy to agree with Effie and lament
the absence of some of the visual excess of the Capitol. But we don’t go to the Capitol here, and the film
even keeps the ebullient talk show host, Caesar, under control, draining the
energy that his performances brought to the series from this installment.
Despite all this flatness, there is some worthwhile
continuity between the first two Hunger Games installments and this third one. For example, the critique of media continues. The first two films show us media as empty entertainment; here, it is more sinister, and we see media as a tool of propaganda that leaders use to promote their agenda. And
there’s a similar attitude towards authority in all the films. District 13’s President Coin in this film
smells a bit like the absolutist President Snow; in fact, we get the feeling that the
difference between the two is more one of degree that essence.
But Mockingjay - Part 1 spends most of its length spinning its
wheels as we watch competing propaganda.
It’s the flattest of the series, and we can only hope that the action
picks up a bit in the last film and that our characters are allowed to breathe
and feel again.
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