This previous weekend, I noticed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the most recent addition to the blockbuster Hunger Games franchise. I begrudgingly drove my younger brother and his buddy to the theater for his or her second film of the day, lugging my Thanksgiving feast-filled abdomen with me. I’d have quite stayed at home. I anticipated the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ ebook, a prequel to the opposite books in The Hunger Games trilogy, to be simply as lackluster because the barrage of prequels, sequels, and remakes which have plagued theater-goers for the final decade. Yet, I discovered myself pleasantly stunned. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, although at instances missing emotional depth, is a strong, enough adaptation.
At the middle of the story is a teenage Coriolanus Snow and his rise by means of the ranks towards his eventual presidency. The problem any villain origin story faces is making a predominant character participating and relatable, even when they’re doing one thing notably evil. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes solves this drawback with Tom Blyth, who brings attraction and uncooked emotion to the display screen. Blyth makes us root for his character, Corio, the scrappy son of a once-great and highly effective man, making an attempt to claw his approach again into energy regardless of his grumbling abdomen. Blyth’s Snow is charismatic, calculating, and ruthless, reverse Rachel Zegler’s vivacious Lucy Gray Baird. Zegler, given her excellent efficiency in Spielberg’s West Side Story, is an comprehensible option to painting Baird’s wandering bard character. At instances, her appearing comes throughout as a trademark musical theater efficiency, which undermines among the extra emotional scenes with Blyth’s character.
The present is stolen by Jason Schwartzman’s portrayal of Lucretius “Lucky” Flickerman, who brings a poignant humor in opposition to the in any other case grim backdrop of teenage bloodbath. For Flickerman, narrating the video games is a giant break — a extra seen position than his earlier weatherman assignments — however he finds himself in approach over his head, unable to utterly comprehend how he discovered himself the commentator of such violence Schwartzman brings a component of dazed, joyful bewilderment to this position that sharply contrasts the bloodshed and provides a considerate commentary subsequent to different characters’ extra activist reactions to harmless loss of life.
The performances of Hunter Schafer, Viola Davis, and Peter Dinklage all stand out. Schafer shines because the caring older cousin — one of many solely characters who tells Coriolanus what all the viewers is pondering. Davis’ Dr. Gaul is a genuinely malevolent presence on this film in a skin-crawling, sinister approach that might encourage any film antagonist. Dinklage’s Dean Highbottom, in distinction, provides a rounder, extra nuanced antagonist. In Highbottom, we see the tortured artist, disturbed by his personal creation: the Games themselves. Highbottom is compelled to observe his Games run amok, managed by sadistic and power-hungry forces that go away him to rot in his personal Morphling dependancy. I’ve some sympathy for the person, and but none in anyway.
This film, on the entire, is deeply unsettling. Though an identical premise to the unique trilogy, making the principle character Snow as an alternative of the plucky, decided Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) lends a extra melancholy and hopeless air to the Games themselves. The final result of the film was portrayed within the authentic Hunger Games trilogy and thus comes as no shock; this prequel establishes the dystopian world {that a} future heroine will rectify. However, that doesn’t imply that seeing Panem go from unhealthy to worse is any much less miserable.
There have been a pair instances whereas watching this film that I needed to remind myself that it wasn’t actual — one thing that doesn’t sometimes occur to me in fantasy motion pictures. Perhaps it’s as a result of this film appeared shockingly well timed: there was the slaughter of harmless young folks, the power-hungry young politician not fearful of stepping on toes (or chopping them off). The parallels aren’t essentially totally shaped, however they really feel related given the present political local weather.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a film that the filmmakers clearly put effort into — and in some methods, they succeed. The solid is stellar, recruiting some new faces alongside a couple of large names. The costumes are fabulous, the plot feels sufficiently authentic whereas inserting simply sufficient easter eggs to attraction to The Hunger Games fanatics. The explosions are massive; there’s some romance, some betrayal, there are ballads, there are songbirds, there are snakes. It’s all completely entertaining. Is it essentially the most wonderful film ever? No. But it pulls itself up by its bootstraps and hoists itself above mediocrity.
