Of Mockingjays and Media: THE HUNGER GAMES, MOCKINGJAY PART ONE

The "Bechdel test," as I've said before, isn't the ultimate or only standard by which a film should be judged. Two of my favorite movies from last year, Her and Gravity, technically failed the test but showed interesting, complex female characters doing interesting, complex things. Nevertheless, the fact that only 4 of the 9 Best Picture nominees in 2014 had any kind of significant female onscreen presence continues to support the need for litmus tests such as Bechdel's, because if your movie can't manage to have one named female character capable of having even a brief conversation with another female character about something other than a man, chances are that your movie's leaving out a lot of people.

As I watched the first of the final two Hunger Games films, Mockingjay, I was struck by how many female characters were onscreen, by the variety of the roles they played, and by the film's respect of them as real people with concerns other than straight romantic relationships. The romance triangle between Katniss, Gale, and Peeta in the books always felt rather forced; I suspect, knowing what I do of YA publishing from the editing side, that her publisher urged it on Suzanne Collins, who made it work by pointing out how silly it is to get wrapped up in which person you want to be your boyfriend when there are slightly larger issues at hand (e.g., evil governments are trying to murder you and everyone you know). The film adaptation (written by Collins, although the screenplay is credited to other writers) wisely shifts focus away from the "which boy does Katniss love better?" angle to instead examine the machines that have been set in motion by her fiery arrow in the last Games.

I loved Catching Fire's attention to the Capitol's Katniss + Peeta propaganda campaign and the damage it did to those characters, which I thought was the more interesting part of that movie. The same is true here, though now we see the situation's inverse: District 13, home of the rebel movement, is fighting back with propaganda of their own. Plutarch Heavensbee is in charge of creating these "propos," but it's the hip young Cressida who directs them. Especially given the dearth of famous female directors in Hollywood -- seriously, how many names can you rattle off in ten seconds? -- it's refreshing to see Cressida, completely in control, assessing situations with a professional craftswoman's eye and giving directions to a male team who never question her abilities. (Natalie Dormer, who  made The Tudors watchable with her Anne Boleyn and is currently ruling as  Margaery in Game of Thrones, brings a cool, smirky confidence to the small role that's delightful to watch.) The film spots paint Katniss as a defiant warrior who shoots Capital bombers out of the sky and screams threats to the dictator, and as such, they are very effective. The film emphasizes, though, that the Mockingjay is a PR creation; Katniss is far more complex. Cressida and Heavensbee's propos do not show her falling to her knees amidst the bombed rubble of District 12 after witnessing a valley filled with the charred corpses of her fellow villagers. They do not show her unable to bring herself to kill an elk that has committed no sin but existence. They do not show her collapsing on the stairwell as she struggles desperately to rescue her sister. Panem likes its heroes uncomplicated.

The film's commentary on propaganda and manipulation isn't subtle, but it's effective -- an idea winked at in the movie when Heavensbee remarks that his tweak to a song in a propo is "on the nose, but so is war." Directness is something of a value in District 13, embodied in its elegant, quiet, and immensely powerful president, Alma Coin (Julianne Moore). Coin begins the movie making concise, factual speeches in a low, unemotional voice; she learns, with some help from Effie Trinket and Heavensbee, how to manipulate her audience into feeling what she wants them to feel. Her speeches get more jingoistic, her gestures get more "presidential." At one point a character remarks that her address is akin to a "fight song in a funeral home." With her steely grey hair, tightly controlled mannerisms, and military clothing, she's not entirely dissimilar visually to President Snow. Emerging a victor in politics, it would seem, is a lot like emerging a victor in the Games; there might be survivors, but there are never winners.

And that leads me to one of the more interesting things that the Hunger Games does with its young characters: poor, sweet Peeta, kind-hearted blonde baker boy, is the film's damsel in distress, held and manipulated by the Capitol as a weapon. He's not the alpha-male that Gale is, and thus is not the clear pop-culture trope favorite for Katniss's affections; small frail young men who need rescuing are not generally seen as heroes. Yet Katniss clearly has deep, if complicated, feelings for him, and defends him even when everyone in District 13 believes him a traitor. She insists on his rescue and pardon as a condition for her participation as the Mockingjay. Gale boasts at one point that he would "never" do what Peeta has done no matter what, but the comment rings hollow; it's clear that we're meant to see Peeta's disintegration as another casualty of war's cruelty, not a failure of masculine resistance.

In fact, although Katniss is its official mascot many of the faces of the rebellion are female. Commander Paylor, the leader of District 8's resistance, is a Black woman, and many of the soldiers she commands are women as well. Even the lumberjacks have women amongst them. The film does better than its predecessors at integrating persons of color too; in addition to Beetee (Jeffrey Wright) from the last movie, District 13's head of security, Boggs, is also a Black man (played by Mahershala Ali, the devious but sexy Remy Danton in House of Cards). When you're being starved, beaten, and worked to death by a fascist government that televises your children murdering each other, it would seem that everyone has an equal stake in resistance. Why it takes a YA sci-fi dystopia to get a measure of gender and racial parity onscreen, I don't know. But I like it.

Is Mockingjay a perfect movie? No. The characters still have a tendency to state pretty baldly what they're thinking and feeling, and the political satire isn't exactly subtle. The balance between the propaganda machine and the action scenes feels off sometimes; this is the first Hunger Games movie without, well, Hunger Games in it, and the lack of that framework slows the film in places. But it's extremely well-acted and a much more diverse and interesting movie than almost anything else I've seen this year. I felt that the books suffered from a steep law of diminishing returns, but it looks like the opposite is true of the movies: they just keep getting better. Go see this one.