The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 1

"It's the things we love most that destroy us."

I has been three years in the making and we only have one more year left before the Hunger Games movies end and Katniss Everden's story has finally and completely been told. Like most of the franchises today that are based on a book series; The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 is the first of the two part series that took the final novel and split it into two. While I do understand that from a corporation point... this was purely a money making scheme; I love that they did this because this allowed the screen writers and the producers to take the novel and really tell the story well.

It has been about a year since I have read this novel, but from what I remember, this movie followed the book almost to the word. There were many things that they took from the books word for word which is always a good thing. Mockingjay was never my favorite book in the series. I always found it to be confusing and boring. That being said, thinking about this chapter in Katniss's story, I may have to rethink my position on this book. 

Mockingjay picks up right where Catching Fire left off. Katniss and the rest of District 12 have taken refuge in the secret underground District 13. Katniss is trying to heal mentally and District 13 is trying to make her the face of a revolution. They want to use her to inspire all of Panam to rally behind them and turn against the capital. Katniss becomes angry when she learns that Peeta and the other tributes where taken by the capital and there is not much known about their fate at the time. 

Katniss has become another pawn. This time rather then being used by the capital to keep peace. She is being used by District 13 to inspire an uprising. I thought that the juxtaposition between this movie and the first one was done in a wonderful manner.Once again, Katniss enters this game in an effort to save someone near and dear to her heart. This time she is trying to save Peeta and the other tributes. She entered the 74th hunger games in an effort to protect the life of her sister. She intended to decline the role of the Mockingjay, until she realized that she could use the position in a away that would allow her to keep the people she loved most safe. That was all that Katniss ever wanted, those around her to be safe. I found that the entire story could be summed put beautifully when President Snow says, "It's the things we love most that destroy us." It is the things that Katniss love that causes her the most pain. The reason she entered the games, the reason that she never wanted to truly hurt Gale, the reason that she could not see Peeta suffer, the sole reason she began the Mockingjay-all of these things steam from love. It is also love that causes a major change in Peeta and what causes him to turn on her. It is important to remember that love and hate can be so closely related that many times they cannot be separated. 

One of the most powerful scenes is when the President of District 13, Julianne Moore, is addressing the people of District 13. She is talking about the Mockingjay and of Katniss. The President calls her out to be shown in front of the people and raises her hand in the air as the people cheer. This is exactly what happens to Katniss at the reaping when before she heads to the capital to take part in the games. I thought that this was a very telling moment and showed the audience that Katniss is STILL in the games and the stakes are even higher now. 

I thought that this part of the story really focused on Katniss trying to find herself. She was still trying to find her voice. I believe that it is in these pages (moments in the movie) that she begins to realize that she has a voice and she can make a difference. One of my favorite quotes, "The only necessary thing for the triumph of evil is that the good people do nothing," popped into my head about halfway through the movie. Katniss has never thought very highly of herself. She has been acting on the sole purpose of protecting the people that she loves. She has not realized that she has a great power to unit a nation and the change the things that are wrong with the world. There had been many moments through the earlier novels in which she really thought about leaving and hiding and just staying low and out of the way of the capital. It is here that she begins to see the power that she has to change the world. As scary as it is, she needs to find her voice. She struggles in the beginning when she is being told what to say in the promos. Katniss shines when she can just be herself. 

Mockingjay: Part 1 did a wonderful job of setting up the final chapters in the story. The next movie will be a wonderful and heart wrenching journey into the center of the capital, but it will be with a stronger and more sure of herself Katniss. It will be with a Katniss who sees who she is, what power she holds, and one who begins to understand that sometimes there are things that are bigger than yourself that you are a part of. 

If you are a fan of the books, you will be very happy with what they have done with this movies. It was a great adaption. I recommend taking a trip down to District 13 and become part of the revolution!

Interstellar

 

 

"We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible."

 

 



Christopher Nolan has done it again. He has restored my faith in the movie industry. He has reminded me what it is that I love about the movies is not at all dead, but alive and well. It is because of this that I saw it fitting to dust off my keyboard and get back to one of the things that I love most- talking about movies. This was a great film to start again with. (I have only watch the movie once.... I will be watching it again....and then probably changing some things only because there was sooooo much to this movie. I am sure that I missed something)
Like every Nolan film, this movie was nothing more then another trip into the human psyche. This time he gives us a glimpse into one the most common and instinctual human needs- survival. That was the heart of this movie. At it's very basic, the story centers around a small group of astronauts attempting to save the human race from extinction.
It is set in the future, I would say maybe 60-100 years based on a conversation between John Lithglow's character and Matthew McConaughey's character. The world has reached a point in which we are being ravaged by these terrible dust storms. These storms have caused many deaths because of all the people breathing in the dust. Earth has begun to turn on us. Our plants keep on dying. Every year a new crop fails to grow. You get a sense that the population has decreased drastically. Nolan does a great job showing us this without telling us.
McConaughey's  character, Cooper, is a former pilot who works on a corn farm with his two children and their grandfather. The movie opens with him having a nightmare because of crashing his plane. We are given a sense that Cooper is much more then a farmer when he takes his children on a case of a drone plane to gather parts. During a meeting with his daughters school teachers, we learn that there is no need in this world for the technology that we use and take for granted everyday. Not one person in this movie had a cell phone.... NOT ONE. There were no computers, no video games, no medical equipment..... NOTHING! Our job as humans is to try and grow food so that we can survive. The need for all of those things that we say are "necessary" is not there. It was an interesting thing to have to think about. At a government level, their answer to helping the human race to survive was to make sure that there are enough farms and farmers to keep to population well fed. A major shift in what we see today.
The opening sequence of the film, like all of Nolan's, was significant. A shot of books on the bookshelf and his daughter, Murph, waking Cooper up about the ghost in her room. I won't talk about what I think about that right now, I'll wait until I know more people have seen the movie. However, the books play an important part in the message that Christopher was trying to get across through the movie. Food is not the only necessary part in our survival as a human race. Knowledge is just as important. There was so much physics in this movie, I wish that I was able to comment on all of the science stuff, but I am not a very science person so I cannot tell you that I even have an understanding of everything yet. I have to watch it again.
Cooper happens to find NASA's hidden underground work station and learns about a mission that they are ready to take. We learn that there have been 12 astronauts sent out into space, another galaxy, to find a new planet that we can survive on. Each astronaut had settled on a new planet, and this new group of explorers was to go out and collect them and their data. Cooper and Amelia, Anne Hathaway, end up with two other men on this mission into the new galaxy while Amelia's father, Micheal Cane, stays behind to try and solve an equation that would get the human population off of earth. If that fails, the people on the ship are instructed to start a new colony using fertilized eggs to ensure the survival of the human race as a whole.
Cooper makes a promise to his daughter Murph before he leaves that he will come back for her. He does not tell her when he will come back, but he promises her that he will return. One of the most interesting parts of this movie was the idea of time and gravity. For those up in space, time is moving at a much slower rate then on earth. Years are passing on earth and it seems like hours and days up in space. Murph has trouble dealing with her father being away. She never even told him goodbye, all she wanted was for him to stay.
This promise to his daughter is what drives Cooper's survival instinct out in the great unknown. He wants nothing more then to get back home to his daughter. Amelia talks to Cooper about the other astronauts  that are waiting on the other planets to be picked back up. She tells him that they all had no families and no attachments. Her father believed that this would be important and allow them to focus on the mission at hand rather then about surviving and getting home to their families.
The group arrive on one of the planets to find one of the scientists, Mann, that had been sent into space years before. He wakes up in tears at the sight of another human being (something that he thought he would never see again). He tells the group that the planet is livable down near the surface. They begin to set things up to start the colony and return home when Mann turns on Cooper while they are out exploring. Mann has lied about all of the data in order to get someone to just come and rescue him. He gives a speech about survival and how we will always fight for it. Even without human attachment, Mann wants nothing more to make it out of this alive, but at what cost. He has no human attachments back on earth, therefore he has nothing to fight for except his own survival. The one thing that Professor Brand thought to be the most essential part for his explorers, turned out to be the most damaging.
While Cooper is influenced by his love and desire to return home to his children, all of his decisions are based on their survival-Not his own. He went on this mission so that they would have a new place to live. It is with this that Cooper is able to make the sound decisions that he does rather then the rash ones in a simple fight for flight manner. He has known his entire life that his actions have consequences for the people around him. Mann only ever had to care about himself. How can a person who has only cared about themselves, ever truly be able to make the decisions necessary to save the entire human population?
I also loved that Nolan did not put aliens into this movie.....I have said before, and I stand by this even now, Aliens are just a copout way to explain the things that are occurring in a movie. Nolan uses the science of black holes and our basic understanding of how they are to work in order to explain what happens throughout the movie. There are no aliens or "they" as Ameila refers to them throughout the movie. It is us and always has been us. This is explain by that folded in half explanation of a black hole and how time is folded against itself....or at least that is the best why I can explain it.
Christopher Nolan does what he does best, and that is bring the movie full circle. There is nothing in this film that was there by accident, and that is what I love so much about watching his movies. I highly recommend taking the 3 hours out of your day and sitting down to watch this. It was brilliantly acted and well shot. The silence when they where in space at times made my skin crawl. You could almost touch the silence it was so thick. It really gave you a sense of what it would be like if you where to end up in space one day.
I will be watching the movie again and then editing this jumble to thoughts, but these where my initial feelings on the story and movie. I loved it. Get lost in space today. It's well worth the journey.
Surviving is built into us as a natural human instinct. This movie touched on the different types of survival instincts. It looked at a person who saw beyond what was in front of them. A person who thought about the survival of the human race as a whole, an sacrificed and lied to all of the people around him because he could see the bigger picture.