I said back in my Catching Fire review that they should have done the trilogy as a pentalogy (that goes for the books as well), and Mockingjay, Pt. 1, confirms my opinion on it. It splits the narrative very neatly, at exactly the point where the second story in the novel begins. The rhythm is exactly right.
Not everything is exactly right. Or wrong. I'm left with some concerns about the set-up for Mockingjay, pt. 2, but on the whole, this is a strong entry in the series. Of course it doesn't stand alone -- it ends on a cliffhanger -- but if you go to something where "Part One" is in the title, you don't really have much ground to stand on if you complain about that. ;p
Before I start going through the elements, I'll mention the change of having Effie in District Thirteen. For all their talk about how they had to have Elizabeth Banks, they didn't end up using her all that much. They used her reasonably well (taking the place of both the prep team and, oddly, Fulvia Cardew), but really, she could as easily have been in her cell in the Capitol, ramping up the worry with the others.
As always, SPOILERS. If you don't want spoilers for the books or movie, this would be a good stopping point.
Theme
Of all the books, Mockingjay is the one most clearly centered on the power of the media, one of Collins' best themes. The movie is able to amplify it by actually showing the direct effects of Katniss's propos, going to the district and seeing the way they're used by the rebels, both as a recruitment tool and as a signal. (I'm on the fence with them actually singing "The Hanging Tree" in District Five while storming the power plant, because, well... kind of bad tactics. Wouldn't it have made more sense for a small group to infiltrate and plant the explosives than to have a huge crowd singing and chanting as they storm the place? But I see what the script was going for.) The scene where the District Seven lumberjacks use the mockingjay call to signal their attack on the Peacekeepers is excellent, and the attack on the dam in Five, using "The Hanging Tree," was thematically and cinematically terrific (despite my questioning of the tactics). Making them run directly after we see the propos gives a sense of how powerful Katniss's voice has become. This is a real strength of the movies, being able to move outside of Katniss's head and see all of this. We also get to see the rescue of the captured victors, at least in part.
There's some play with how absurd the actual concept is -- Katniss dressed up in a costume, and the director Cressida seeing every event in terms of how to film it. Most hilarious is the failed first propo, where Katniss is supposed to act, and the whole scene plays like actors making fun of directors giving them bizarre orders, with Jennifer Lawrence getting increasingly frustrated alone in front of a bluescreen while she's told to imagine that she's storming the Capitol with her brothers and sisters at her side, while she waves an invisible flag and says a melodramatic line. Of course, the propo turns out hilariously bad, and Haymitch takes over, to get her to be herself for the cameras, leading to the main thrust of this part of the story: The conflicting narratives being driven by the rebellion and the Capitol, using their respective proxies of Katniss and Peeta. And while we spot the absurdity and laugh at Katniss's bad performance, the script (like the book) immediately contrasts it with the reality of the war they're fighting.
It also doesn't diminish what Katniss is doing -- she's providing a face and a voice to the feelings of the country. When she goes into the hospital and the wounded see that she's alive and strong, it makes a difference... well, until Snow bombs them, anyway.
Plot
Takes the story from just before the beginning of the book to the rescue of the victors and the discovery of what was really done to Peeta in captivity, which was pretty much where it had to go. We see Katniss choose to become the Mockingjay, the symbol of the rebellion, after setting certain conditions, including the rescue of the rebel victors and the right for the family cat to stay put. She begins to rally the districts, which are now in full-scale war on the Capitol, and deals with the fact that Peeta, captured by the Capitol, is showing up on television and calling for a ceasefire, claiming that the rebels are using her. She finally breaks down, unable to deal with what's happening to him because of her, and this prompts District Thirteen to launch a rescue... after which she learns what really happened to him. Then, "To be continued."
While I like Donald Sutherland a lot as Snow, I think most of his added scenes were kind of a waste here. Screen time is precious, and some things seem to have been skipped to keep those in. I don't think it was a good trade-off. More on that in other sections.
This act of the series is mostly moving pieces into place for the final confrontation, so there's a lot of workaday plotting going on. Nothing wrong with that, but of course it's not as exciting as some of the other sections.
Character/Acting
Katniss, appropriately, gets the lion's share of character work here. It's her story, and she should. I have no gripe there. Jennifer Lawrence continues to do very well as Katniss's mental state whipsaws around under incredible amounts of pressure. She really sells the "If we burn, you burn with us!" propo. I wanted to go rebel against something. :D
The rest of the cast continues to act well, but isn't given much to do. I mentioned Elizabeth Banks's Effie, here doing the part of the prep team. Good? Yes. Sure. In a couple of scenes. Woody Harrelson's Haymitch (for some reason played throughout in what appears to be a wool cap with hair extensions stitched to it) is in several scenes, but doesn't have much to say in them after he redirects the propos. (Skipped entirely is his job as Katniss's handler, and her refusal to listen to him.) Liam Hemsworth's Gale gets a little more screen time, but his difference of opinion with Katniss seems to be limited to Peeta's actions, and how they should be received. For some reason, Sam Claflin's scenes as Finnick come off flat. It's not his acting. It's the pace or the direction, I think. It's too bad. I like him in the role, and it should have been good.
Julianne Moore's Coin is a bit of a misplay. It's not a bad performance, but the choices she and the director made seem odd in the context of the character she's playing. They're certainly deliberate choices, for both the actress and the writer, not bad acting. I'm just not sure how they're going to play out in the remainder of the story. For instance, she doesn't have to be convinced that Peeta is telling the truth about the coming bombing, and she voluntarily acknowledges that he saved the district, rather than having to grudgingly admit it under prodding.
I'm not sure why the movies have such a hard time with the Katniss/Peeta dynamic. The first movie glossed over their central shared memory (the Boy With the Bread scene), the second one rushed through everything, and this one misses the chance to finally tell that memory properly (replacing it with a scene where Katniss illogically has a long-distance conversation with Snow... aargh). They did add a dream scene where Katniss imagines him coming in to comfort her, which was nice, but only a replay of a scene in CF. It would have been really simple to start the first movie with that scene, but they chose not to. It would have been really simple to put it in here, since it's in the novel, but they chose not to. It's a really strange scene to skip, and does a disservice to the characterization. I was also sorry they skipped her direct address to Peeta, where she went to
the bakery and pointed out to him that his family was dead, and his
calls for a ceasefire had no one left to listen to him.
Setting
This is the big ball-drop in this movie.
Oh, sure, the physicality of District Thirteen is well-played, but District Thirteen itself is missing most of what made it ominous. By the time Peeta asks Katniss whether or not she trusts the people she's working with, in the book she has very good reason to consider the question.
The biggest problem for me (which seems tied to the odd choices with Coin) is that Thirteen is not shown as anything other than a bunker. Sure, light references are made to strict rules, and Haymitch complains about it being dry, but one of the primary establishing moments is turned on its head. In the book, when Katniss's prep team is introduced, they're in a prison cell, and have been kept there, in chains, because one of them stole bread. (There's that bread again... jeez, they skipped District Eleven's gift of bread to Katniss, too. It's like someone's trying to avoid a certain theme and certain allegorical connections.) In the movie, Effie, who has taken the place of the prep team, is explicitly not in a cell, told she's free to come and go as she pleases from her room, and is asked, not told, to be Katniss's escort. Katniss is not forced to go in and free her, and there's no conflict with Gale, wanting to know how she could care about someone who prettied her up for slaughter, which shows the first serious schism between Gale's worldview and Katniss's. She barely understands the question. She doesn't need to here, because it's not asked. The whole questionable side of Coin's leadership (of Gale as well as D13) is more or less skipped.
We don't see the tattooed-on daily schedules, or hear about the strictly rationed food, or even get a sense that Katniss has left one dictatorship for another. Granted, in the books, it takes her some time to understand this -- she's seventeen and wants to believe -- but the reader certainly sees it immediately. In the movie, there's no real sense of it at all.
This is a fairly major breaking point in the remainder of the story, which ends with meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- a situation Katniss is forced to resolve in a very nasty way at the climax. If District Thirteen's real nature hasn't been revealed, then will that choice even work? Oh, book readers will get it, but the movie-only people? I'm just not all that sure.
(They did, to some extent, show some callousness -- people gathered and cheering for a propo when there are hundreds of people dead, and then doing it again while Peeta screamed and screamed in the hospital, bound in his restraints -- but I don't think it showed it to the extent really necessary to understand just how bad it is.)
Style/Technical
There's an unrelenting grayness about District Thirteen that's very well put together. The horrible jumpsuits -- Effie's opening scene shows her holding on to the bright Capitol dress she presumably was wearing when they took her, and the contrast is lovely -- and the bleak rooms, and the claustrophobia is really caught well. The contrast with the outdoor scenes, when Katniss is truly herself, makes an interesting study in itself. Thirteen could be shot in black and white without much notable difference, but the scenes on the surface, both at the lake and while Katniss and Gale are hunting, are breathtaking.
I do wish the first person to design the sets hadn't made the districts all look so urban and uniform, but it's silly to keep complaining about that. The set design on the return to District Twelve was suitably distressing (especially when Katniss accidentally steps on a skull). I think it had a very different feel from the book, where everything was quite literally ashes and silence, but I'm not sure how that would have come out on film.
In all, a decent entry in the series, with a weakness that I'm concerned about in regard to the remainder of the story.
