Review of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) by David R — 28 Jun 2018

This is a good movie. It has enourmously strong aspects and also some flaws. With minor changes, it could have been a marvellous movie at the level of Catching Fire, and I am surprised that the director overlooked this. The acting of the entire cast was excellent. The book contains a huge amount of inner monologue which is absent in the movie and got replaced by Jennifer Lawrence' facial expressions and gestures. Lawrence again deliveres a phenomenal performance, allowing the audience to visually perceive Katniss' emotions and thoughts on her face.

The first flaw is that the script contains too much and too intense crying from Katniss. Katniss' level of anguish is appropriate and depicted masterfully by Lawrence when she sees what happened to district 12, but some of her reactions to Peeta are overblown. The director should have toned down the intensity of Lawrence' expression there. Another, more important flaw is that several scenes are strechted without necessity, as if to fulfill a requirement to achieve 2 hours runtime. The movie would have benefited greatly from better pacing. The third flaw is, 2 scenes were spoken with way too little volume: The opening with Katniss' mantra and Finnick's talk with Katniss in the bunker.

Josh Hutcherson positively surprised me with his display of Peeta, in both intensity and variety. I also want to urge viewers to pay close attention to Peeta's clothing since it transmits information he is forbidden to speak out. Donald Sutherland delivers a masterful performance as villain. In most of his scenes he remains calm and controlled while performing unspeakable heinous acts. Pay special attention to how his granddaughter reacts to him. Sutherland makes the audience fear and hate Snow with burning passion. Towards the end, he gives Snow an outright satanic display. The violent acts Snow performs against his various enemies are witnessed and felt by Katniss as psychological torture. But Katniss and her new friends in district 13 as well as her followers in the other districts do not succumb to Snow, instead they fight. They fight Snow's propaganda with their own propaganda, his bullets with their bullets, his bombs with their bombs. By this point, you may have guessed it: Mockingjay is an extremely dark movie. The revolution is televised, and it is extremely painful and claims a staggering human toll.

Beside the acting, my highest praise goes to this movie because it dares to dissect war propaganda in such a sophisticated way, even deconstucting the movie itself, because it shows the making of propaganda videos, and the advertisement for the movie is nearly identical to this in-movie propaganda, causing the audience to rethink real life political advertisment and news on television, especially news about war.

Katniss has again to submit to political forces that are using her to their advantage. When Katniss meets the other people who fight to the death because of her inspiration, she has to decide her own future and identity: Does she want to stay a pawn in a chess game of thrones, or grow beyond her own borders. Snow and Katniss' new overlord Coin do their best to subdue Katniss' true self which even Katniss does not know at the begin of the movie. Mockingjay part 1 is a coming-of-age story, a love story, as well as one about propaganda and war. This leads this franchise towards is final destination: war is hell on earth. Being in this hell, everybody has to decide who he wants to be: annihilated physically or mental or both, or consumed by hate and violence, or grown to a personal strength that allows to love and protect your fellow men under unimaginable pressure.

Mockingjay Part 2 will put everybody in front of this decision, this is why I mention part 2 here as an integral part of the Mockingjay story. Viewers should see both parts in direct succession.