This week I watched a movie based on a book about a heartless dystopian government that has opted to keep its citizens in line through fear and a brutal gladiatorial game in which the children of the country are pitted against each other in bloody mortal combat. Two contestants in the game struggle to survive without losing their humanity, find a way to subvert the cold unfeeling powers that be, and ultimately cheat death in hopes of bringing down the system that put them through this traumatic ordeal.
But enough about Battle Royale.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (or Mockingjay 2 as I will call it from here on out because I’m totes lazy) is the climactic finale to the Hunger Games series. Heroine Katniss Everdeen has fought through the games twice now and has been co-opted into being the propaganda leader of the rebellion against evil President Snow when she would rather keep her head down, just survive, and protect her family. In this final film she is embracing her role as a soldier, a fighter for change. Up until this movie her only true goal has been to protect her loved ones while political turmoil swirls around her. It’s only here, in the final chapter, does she truly take the fight literally to Snow’s doorstep.
Mockingjay Part 2 suffers from being only half a story. It’s a bad habit nowadays to break up the final book of a series into two separate movies. Some series pull it off better than others by framing the action in a way that lets both movies feel like complete, albeit connected, stories. The Mockingjay movies do well enough, but both halves ultimately feel incomplete and I think they would have been better served getting trimmed into a single long movie. That said, Mockingjay Part 2 still has plenty of drama, action, and OMG ENDING to keep me interested. Jennifer Lawrence is always great on screen and many of the supporting actors around her are putting forward good performances including the late great Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
The most engaging aspect of the movie is the change in Katniss. Not the change that leads her to fight, but her realization of what fighting really means. The Capitol and it’s “Peacekeppers” have zero tolerance for anyone even tangentially related to the rebellion. Public executions and bombings of non-military targets are the order of the day. When Katniss sees that members of the rebellion, even close friends, start to treat people from the Capitol with equal scorn and heartlessness she becomes unnerved. Members of the rebellion begin to make cold and callous decisions that put innocents in danger. She sees the rebels becoming just as frightening as the Capitol. Is she overthrowing one amoral system just to install another one?
Here’s an example. Say Panem, the fictional country of The Hunger Games, has declared war on Katniss’s home of District 12. Anyone in Panem who doesn’t agree with the Capitol’s point of view is executed. This results in people from Panem, innocents who have done nothing wrong, fleeing the country. Some may call them refugees. Katniss starts to wonder: if District 12 were to turn away or persecute these refugees just because they come from Panem, would that make them just as bad as the Capitol? Wouldn’t it be better for District 12 to take in the refugees realizing that they share a common enemy? Won’t meeting senseless death with more senseless death just escalate things? Shouldn’t they rise above and be better than their enemy instead of stooping to their level?
That was just a hypothetical example, mind you, not sure why it came to me. ::cough cough::
The struggle Katniss faces is timely and poignant. Lawrence delivers a performance that lets me see her conflict, determination, and loss. Mockingjay Part 2 is a thrilling and satisfying conclusion to the series that has come a long way from its first installment. The Hunger Games was a good but fairly straightforward story about surviving when you have difficult trials thrust upon you. We’ve ended up with a harrowing story about trying to defeat a monster without becoming one yourself.
Oh, and there is a tired love triangle subplot. C’mon Katniss, pick the Hemsworth and get on with it, seriously.
Other movies I watched this week (potential minor spoilers):
Battle Royale – The Japanese movie that many feel helped inspire The Hunger Games. Essentially an exploitation film, this movie is best enjoyed for the crazy gratuitous violence, crazy situation, and fun villain.
Battle Royale 2: Requiem – This sequel starts with the same fun action as the first but quickly devolves into an almost painful drama about losing yourself when you fight a war. Disturbingly, where Mockingjay claims that you shouldn’t lose your humanity, this movie actually seems to support straight up terrorism. Enjoy the first movie, forget this one exists.
Defiance – Based on a true story, after their family is killed by Nazis the Bielski brothers flee into the forests of Belarus. Daniel Craig decides to help more fleeing Jews and build a village in the woods where they can hopefully hide in safety while Liev Schreiber joins the Russians to fight head on. Despite the plot progressing pretty much by the numbers the story is still an inspiring one and worth seeing.
Moon – A quiet sci-fi movie with quality actor Sam Rockwell and…more Sam Rockwell. At the tail end of a three year stint on the moon mining for resources Sam is going a little stir crazy having had no one to talk to but himself and Kevin Spacey Bot. Dealing with corporations that see their workers as commodities to be used and discarded instead of actual human beings, Rockwell gives a good performance. The movie’s premise stretches a little thin by the end of its run time, but it’s worth checking out if you like the actor.
The Fountain – Directed by Darren Aronofsky, this film about accepting death as a necessary and even beautiful part of life borders on the abstract at times. Rife with biblical allegory and myths of the fountain of youth, this movie is…heavy. Like, it weighed on me to watch it. Hugh Jackman portrays his desperate and heartbroken character well, but that’s all he ever gets to do. It may be to others’ tastes, but this one was a little too out there to be enjoyable for me.
Would You Rather – A group of strangers are convinced to partake in a morbid game of “would you rather” with the promise of all their troubles in life being taken care of if they win. Would you rather stab that guy or electrocute yourself? Forcing presumably good people to do bad things, this movie probably should fall in the torture porn genre but it doesn’t have the budget to be effective on that level. I have to admit, I watched it WHILE writing this review and even that was probably more attention than it deserved. I mostly clicked it because it features perfect human being Enver Gjokai and Brittany Snow from the Pitch Perfect movies and I enjoy those movies SHUT UP.
Click here for a full list of all the movies I’ve watched so far.