Mockingjay I (Film Review)

[selenak]

Spoiler-free version, for anyone curious whether or not the decision to split the final volume of the trilogy in two would come across as "we want to milk this cash cow a bit longer" or would be justified by the end result, it's definitely the later. There is no "post" in Katniss' PTSD, so I'd rather describe her as shell shocked (come to think

Comments

[fallingtowers]

Yes, this list really drives home the point. Also, Peeta is another person whose sanity and personality are utterly broken at some point, though the hijacking plotline is more like external reprogramming than something more realistic like Haymitch's alcoholism. (Though he does have issues long before that - see his "it's okay, I get nightmares, too" comment.)

Is there anyone in the books who is not emotionally and mentally fucked up?

Speaking of Johanna: I really hope that the next movie is going to show her and Katniss as traumatized and pissed-off roommates. I liked the prickly friendship among survivors they had going on there.

But because she's the heroine (tm), there seems to be the perception that any emotional reaction like breaking down and crying makes her weak.

To be fair, I think some of the criticism might be due to the structural issues of Mockingjay. She's the heroine and the first person narrator, and she spends a lot of time in the books being trapped and breaking down while the war is going on elsewhere, and we don't get the glimpses we had in the film.

So if you want to know more about the state of the rebellion, this limitation would be frustrating. I was less interested in that aspect, so that was all right with me, but I also think the snippets from the various districts worked very well on screen.

[lady_songsmith]

I strongly agree with that last point. Most of the criticism I hear leveled at Katniss in my circles is really more of a criticism of Collins: to wit, that she spends the whole book thinking about herself and every time something major happens she goes off to cry. Which is really just a frustrated audience looking for more focus on the things that happen off-stage. I think Collins' dedication to maintaining the single POV really hurt both the story and reader perceptions of Katniss in Mockingjay. It will be interesting to see if people coming fresh to the movies have a more sympathetic take, getting both the depiction of shellshock and the action the book sidelines.

[fallingtowers]

I think Collins' dedication to maintaining the single POV really hurt both the story and reader perceptions of Katniss in Mockingjay.

Well, I think she's not a good enough writer to pull off the story I assume she was trying to tell. Maybe I'm reading too much into things, and she just decided to stick to the first person POV for the sake of consistency, and everything spiralled from there.

But I suspect that the decision to keep many events offstage was in some ways a deliberate choice. Personally, it was interesting to me because I like narratives about the effect of combat, but not so much about the battles themselves, if that makes sense. But such a thing is very hard to pull off in writing because the prose was too simplistic and lack the nuance to give it resonance.