It’s been eight years since the closing of the final cinematic chapter of Katniss Everdeen’s horrific travails in the Hunger Games, and her struggles against the oppressive, dystopian government of Panem. It’s fair to say that despite the wobbles in critical and audience reception of the latter pair of films, Jennifer Lawrence’s performance as Katniss Everdeen is as much loved as Donald Sutherland is joyously despised for bringing the charismatically wicked President Snow to the screen.
But the global cinematic juggernaut of the franchise could only stay dormant for so long, what with novelist Suzanne Collins having penned a prequel novel in 2020, and Hollywood perpetually hungry for money. Thus we now have the awkwardly titled The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes; a film delving into the murky past of Panem’s history, the origins of President Snow, and the events that help form his dark designs on Government.
Set a full 64 years before the original Hunger Games film, Ballad follows 18 year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth), the last scion of a once proud household, now secretly reduced to poverty, on the brink of achieving a prestigious scholarship that could secure his future. Only, at the last minute, this opportunity is snatched away and in its place, he and his classmates are each made a mentor for a tribute in the upcoming 10th annual Hunger Games. The first Games to be televised across Panem, and the final deciding factor in whether the entire barbaric spectacle will be continued or abandoned forever.
Given the popularity of the Hunger Games franchise, both as a YA book series and a movie serial, it stands to reason that Ballad would be an open goal. But rather than simply repeat the stock formula of the previous stories, instead it opts to tell a three-act tragic opus, for better or worse. Following the cynical hardening of the ambitious Snow as he teaches and is in turn entranced by Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), his tribute and mentee. But it’s both a blessing and a curse. Despite the poor reception received after director Frances Lawrence split MockingJay (the third book) into a pair of films, in this case it would have made more sense, delineating the main thrust of the narrative from the geographically, and tonally removed and far less compelling final act.
At over 2 1/2 hours, the film is by turns both over-long, and unpleasantly hurried. It gives an impression of being edited in fits and starts, dwelling laboriously over points already made, and then skipping over things that would be better dwelt upon in detail. Snow’s poverty and him skipping meals is made much of in the first scene, and then forgotten almost immediately. Whereas Lucy Gray’s singing is belaboured over and over, to the point of almost absurdity, despite Zegler’s obvious vocal prowess. Meanwhile, more complex discussions of the Games themselves, the government, the war, and the society that has risen up, are all eschewed in favour of a few repetitious comments and aphorisms.
But that’s not at all to imply that the film isn’t entertaining. It’s fun to step back into Panem, and more to see this dark and relatively technologically basic history. There’s a delightful art deco feel to things, harking toward Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and aided by the towering monumental shooting locations used in and around Berlin, Wrocław and Leipzig. The film also wallows hard in the lack of polish and sense of ruin that is deliberate in the design of recently post-war Panem, but again, it’s never quite given time or room to breathe as well as it could have. This is especially clear in the third act, where a sizeable chunk is set in the impoverished mining zone, District 12. Which, aside from lacking the iconic Bagger 288 on the horizon, looks rather similar here to how it did in the first film.
In terms of acting, the weight of the film lies mainly on the shoulders of Blyth, and he copes admirably. It’s a likeable performance, if underserved by depth of script, but he’s believable enough as a youth who could turn into the white-bearded tyrant of the earlier films. Zegler fares less well, as the all-singing, all smirking, southern-accented nomadic Covey. She’s never quite likeable enough to sell the part, and suffers from the script treating her as something of an afterthought, and an exotic plaything for Snow, rather than a character in her own right. Still, whenever called upon to sing, she belts out a banger.
The real MVPs of the movie are the supporting ‘grown-ups’, with Viola Davis hamming it up delightfully as the mad scientist, Dr Gaul; Peter Dinklage as the world-weary Games’ inventor and college Dean, Casca Highbottom, and Jason Schwartzman stealing his every scene as the flamboyant weatherman turned Hunger Games TV host, Lucky Flickerman. Each of whom seem to know they’re just there to have fun, and make their scenes all the more entertaining for it.
Overall, it’s the sort of film where, if you are already a fan of the franchise, then you’ll want to see it. There are countless nods, some bordering on the ridiculous, to the previous films, and those will go down nicely to the diehard fans. To everyone else, this is a passably entertaining dark YA adventure, but one that won’t lose a lot if you wait for it to show up on your local streaming service. It’s a mediocre film, based on a story that didn’t really need to be told, and feels rather like it ought to have been made as a miniseries instead, if even at all.
At cinemas nationwide now