The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Author Suzanne Collins originally conceived The Hunger Games trilogy as an anti-war story. Famously, the germ of the books began to grow one night when Collins happened to flip back and forth between a reality tv show and news coverage of the Iraq war. That combination of violence, voyeurism, and entertainment struck a chord with the writer, and she turned it into a Young Adult publishing phenomenon. The books were adapted into the very successful film series of the same name and now, the final installment, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 has arrived in theaters.

Much like the films in the Harry Potter series, the Hunger Games movies have become progressively darker and more sophisticated in their themes and visuals. Despite its ostensibly teenage target audience, Mockingjay Part 2 is surprisingly bleak.  As our protagonist Katniss Everdeen leads a band of rebels into the heart of the oppressive, totalitarian capitol, certainly there are victories and successes, brief moments of romance and exciting action set pieces, but none of it feels particularly celebratory or worthy of a fist bump. Throughout the film, Katniss and the other characters wrestle with questions about who we consider an enemy or a friend, what lengths people are willing to go to in order to win a battle, and how reliable the information we get from the media and our leaders really is. Though it is a tent-pole blockbuster film, given our moment in history, Mockingjay Part 2 is an uncomfortable and sad film at times.

In one scene, a train full of refugees fleeing the devastation following a bombing rolls up to a station full of the heavily armed people who just dropped those bombs. Katniss tells everyone to lower their weapons, imploring for peace, but even as she’s trying to protect the refugees, one of them, sick with his own losses, puts a gun to her head assuming she’s the one responsible for all the destruction. Mockingjay part 2 deals with more ambiguity than you would expect and wrings a lot of tension out of characters trying to do what they feel is “the right thing” and having it turn out to be misguided, destructive, or naïve.  With everything happening in Europe and the Middle East recently, it’s hard to get any escapist pleasure from moments like this in the film.

But then like I said, escapism was never the point of the Hunger Games books or films. On the contrary, the futuristic setting and gleaming, good-looking American sweetheart lead actors just seem like a way of getting audiences to consider how we really feel about killing other people in the name of an ideology or a government, what we think about the voyeuristic nature of the 24 hour news  cycle and infotainment. The film doesn’t offer any easy solutions. It treats oppression, rebellion, violence, and war as inevitabilities, and suggests that there are no actual victors in war except for the people who get to write the history books.

Strictly as a film, Mockingjay Part 2 is pretty good with a few flaws. As usual, Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss manages to convey a wealth of feeling with a minimal performance, and her emotional presence carries the film. Katniss’s younger sister Prim plays a major role in the movie’s plot but gets almost zero actual screen time and no character development at all. The normally excellent Julianne Moore is also given very little to do in her role as President Coin and almost seems bored throughout the film.

In the end, Mockingjay Part 2 finally gives both its characters and its audience get a moment of peace after four movies worth of suffering. It’s hard-won and sad but peace nevertheless.