The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
The ballad of songbirds and snakes is the most gripping when it stops being about the hunger games. These moments happen in part three of this prequel that’s longer than needed, based on Suzanne Collins’ 2020 novel.
It is interesting to see an earlier version of the games, set 64 years before the events we know from the first film. Panem has not been a dystopian wasteland for very long, and this more rudimentary form of the elaborate bloodbath we’re familiar with serves as the capitol’s punishment against the districts for their uprising. You don’t have to be well-versed in the franchise to appreciate returning director Francis Lawrence’s bleakly vivid sense of place although fans will no doubt delight at such nods as Mockingjays and even Katniss Everdeen herself but there are times when you watch this movie and it feels like Leonardo DiCaprio is pointing at the screen going “There she is. That’s her.”
Within this furious state of flux, a young Coriolanus Snow starts his rise to power we know he gets there eventually; he’ll be played by Donald Sutherland with all due chill in four movies’ time but what makes that villainous president so fascinating here is how much fun Tom Blyth seems to be having with his grand gestures and tiny revelations along the way. It’s not every day your lead character goes from being a moneyed pretty boy destined for entitled greatness to a clear eyed manipulator intent on crafting his own fate, this performance could make him a star.
And yet still: The subtlety. In Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt’s script, Snow exerts control less through sheer brute strength than through simple, calculated decisions, made one after another until at first he can tell himself they’re wrong for right reasons but then eventually he doesn’t bother making that bargain with himself anymore.
We see it in how he pretends to still be rich around his pretentious school friends even though his once-prominent family has fallen on hard times, as have many others, in grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan), who puts on airs but can barely pay the rent, and cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer), who remains kind-hearted amid her suffering. And we seem him bring this consciousness to bear on his duties as mentor to Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), the District 12 tribute whom he’ll guide through the 10th annual Hunger Games.
Lucy Gray makes an impression from the moment her image is splashed across the nation’s screens she’s a songbird for a reason, and Zegler, the “West Side Story” star whose charisma keeps blossoming nevertheless, lets her voice soar; even more effective are the notes that catch in her throat.
Blyth and Zegler have a spiky chemistry with each other that’s equally about attraction and mistrust; they each know they can help the other survive because surviving isn’t enough. As head game maker Dr. Volumnia Gaul tells us. Making it out of these things alive isn’t the point anymore, baby. Now we’re here to create spectacle. Viola Davis plays her with just enough camp, but costume designer Trish Summerville gets some of her most striking creations.
Meanwhile, Jason Schwartzman offers some good jokes as a maid / weatherman named Lucky Flickerman he was actually a forerunner of Stanley Tucci’s host with blue hair, Caesar. The phrase that seems to follow him around “See what happens when you do stuff?” is a comment on our attention seeking times if there ever was one. And the mid century modern TV studio (complete with retro-futuristic graphics) hints at a prosperity promised by winning the Hunger Games.
Peter Dinklage grounds these events (ranging from silly to savage) as Casca Highbottom (gotta love Collins’ character names). He’s the dean of the Academy who helped develop the Hunger Games in the first place; now he’s suggesting they’re not such a good idea anymore. Some down-to-earth wisdom is needed here and there, and Dinklage brings it in spades. The kills feel more brutal this go round because these kids don’t have to complete complicated challenges before taking them on; they just need to pick up a weapon and aim at each other. (Some repurposed delivery drones also up the level of startling violence.) That’s where Snow’s clever bond with Lucy Gray comes into play. And because they’ve formed a deeper connection than most mentors and tributes ever could, part three of the film feels much more fraught.
Here is where we see how deep Snow’s dark side goes. There’s a shift in his posture, his eyes harden Lucy Gray knows how to use her folksy charm for maximum beguiling effect If energy may have felt uneven in chapters two and three (“The Mentor,” “The Prize”), part four makes up for it by making a bold departure in terms of location, emotion, and tone moving out from capitol austerity to a pastoral forest setting where returning cinematographer Jo Willems creates a lush vibe that is both romantic and dangerous, slowing the 157 minute film down, getting quiet, making room for exquisite tension between two people who dared to trust each other.
“Snow always lands on top” is the longtime Coriolanus family credo. How it falls and whether it sticks makes “The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” a prequel that is actually suspenseful.
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