The Hunger Games -- Mockingjay, Part 1

Photo: Poster used in the viral campaign for the film, from the film's Wikipedia site.

Mockingjay, Part 1 is a very good, effective film that can be seen as a YA action movie, perhaps the first of its breed.  Jennifer Lawrence's performance and the just-right balance of action and politics carry it, and save it from being just another action film, or just another angry YA film.  I could've done without the (for me) unnecessary romance angle, but I'm not exactly the target audience for this film, and I'm okay with that.  In fact, this film deserves the same kudos as the Alien franchise, and maybe Thelma and Louise: usually action films have male main characters and the females are slower-witted things who get told what to do.  Mockingjay is exactly the opposite of that: the women here are large and in charge, and it's the men who look and act lost.  The men have to be saved by the women, not the other way around.

This is a smarter-than-usual YA movie, which I mean in the kindest of all possible ways.  It's political message is strong: if we all fight each other to the death, surely we will all die.  This makes sense.  Yet, does that mean you shouldn't rebel, as this movie (or, at least, the Capitol, strategically) says for awhile?  The answer is No, of course not.  The rebels will die if they don't rebel, and they may only die if they do.  Furthermore, it makes no sense to support a system that suppresses you.  This makes me want to go on a tangent about Southern Republicans, and the women who support the men behind that social and political system, but for now I'll refrain.  But don't get me started.

This movie should work for the older crowd, such as myself, as long as said crowd remembers that it is a YA action movie, not necessarily made for guys my age.  One immediate criticism (you knew there'd be at least one) hit me, hard, during the movie: Just as the female protagonist (Sigourney Weaver / Ripley) did in the first Alien, Jennifer Lawrence / Katniss (or, more specifically, her sister) does here: during a violent life and death crisis for a large group of people, these two women went back to get the cat.  True, Katniss goes back for her sister who had gone to get the cat, whereupon Ripley simply went back for the cat, but it's still the same.  Of course, the point is that love conquers all--and I'd be a hypocrite if I said I wouldn't risk life and limb for my own pet--but that doesn't stop me from picturing someone in the underground rebel stronghold murmuring: "Uh, could someone close that door, please?  Aren't we getting bombs dropped on us?"  It's a bothersome sequence, though, in 1979 and now, if your point is to show that women can be just as formidable in war as men.  The scenes fit the YA movie, but it didn't fit the movie's subtext.  I'm just sayin'.

And, like me, you may have to assume that the moviemakers really don't believe that an emotionless tyrant in charge of a totalitarian regime--someone so evil that he would bomb a hospital just to prove a point--would let some fighter jets and some really good, sophisticated fighters come and go as they please just to deliver a brainwashed former-boyfriend to a teenage girl who stands mostly as the symbolic representation of a rebellion.

Read that sentence again.

This point was actually discussed between a friend and I recently.  I tried picturing Saddam Hussein, for example, doing the same.  Or, maybe Stalin.  Hell, even Sherman or Ulysses S. Grant.  But, no.  They'd just overwhelm and kill such fighters, or--like Sherman and Stalin--just burn to hell everything in their paths to starve them out.  Chances are, such men wouldn't even know what such emotions were.  There's a war to win here, after all.  Snow wouldn't think he was fighting one teenage girl.  He'd know he was fighting a rebel army, with a solid leader, good fighters, a sophisticated technology expert, etc.  If a brainwashed and violent guy would be trained to go after any of those people, Katniss Everdeen would be the last person he'd strangle.  He'd be sent after President Coin first, the tech guy second.

That'd be like the U.S. South sending a hitman after Harriet Beecher Stowe, who for many was the symbolic representation of the North's stance against slavery.  Didn't happen.  (Well, to the best of my knowledge, anyway.)  Hell, that'd be like Hirohito sending kamikaze pilots after Rosie the Riveter.

But I digress.  I liked the movie.  Seriously.  It's good for all ages, if you like action movies with a political message.  Or if you enjoy looking at Jennifer Lawrence all pissed off.  Maybe she was thinking of the guy who hacked into her cloud.  (Sorry.)  Anyway, go see it, but repeat three times: It's a YA action movie...It's a YA action movie...It's a YA action movie...and a pretty good one, at that.    

Seward's Successful Defense of an Insane Black Man

Photo: William Seward, from his own Wikipedia page

After watching Spielberg's Lincoln, I bought the book much of the movie is based on, Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Because I'm nerdy like that.  On page 85 is a true account of William Seward's defense of William Freeman, a former slave (last name ironically notwithstanding) who, after years of extreme mistreatment in jail, was released and almost immediately broke into the home of a rich white man--a friend of Seward's, in fact--and killed him, his pregnant wife, their little child, and his wife's mother.  This was undisputed during the whole trial.

The amazing thing about the trial is that, after Freeman was found guilty of the murders, Seward chose to defend him, for free, during the penalty phase.  Long a supporter of prison reform and reform for the mentally ill--and long an abolitionist--Seward realized that Freeman, who was deaf, dumb, and, according to Seward himself, an "imbecile" and a "maniac"--committed those crimes because of his maltreatment in jail for a crime that, it turned out, he never actually did to begin with.  (This case reminds me a bit of Murder in the First, an 80s movie with Christian Slater and Kevin Bacon, and Gary Oldman as a sadistic warden).

And so Seward, who had already served twice as Governor of New York, and who would soon run for president and lose the nomination to Lincoln (partly because of this case), defended him, this black man, who in March of 1846 wiped out a family of Seward's friends.  I found, free on Google Books, Seward's entire closing argument for the case--all thirty-one pages of it.  (!!!)  Full title: Argument of William H. Seward, in defense of William Freeman, on his trial.  In it is some fantastic stuff, including--

--Seward's insistence that Freeman belonged in an asylum, not "on the scaffold," because he was insane.  This was practically a brand new defense at the time.  In fact, though relatively new, Seward reminded the jury a few times to not consider the overuse of the insanity defense against his own insane client.

--A very strong argument against capital punishment itself.

--A very strong argument against the treatment of the insane.

--A rebuke about the bias accorded to the "negro" and to the insane.

--An impassioned stance against the slavery Freeman had lived under, and the mistreatment in jail he had incurred.

--A reminder that had Freeman been white, and the murdered family black, there would have been no trial.

--A warning to the jury to put aside their bias against "the negro" and "the infirm."

--A reminder that, although the murdered family's family and friends were all over the courtroom, the defendant's family was not, because they were slaves, and nobody could track them down.

--The oft-repeated quote: "The color of the prisoner’s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race—the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man."

And many more things.  And he won!  After a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (apparently the well-written argument given to the case's jury had no effect), he was spared from the scaffold and died of consumption in a cell somewhere.  An amazing thing, for one person to defend a person of a race oppressed by his own society, who killed a family of his friends.  Seward had everything politically to lose (and he feared for his safety and that of his family, too, from an enraged local populace during the lengthy trial), and he had the bias against the race and the insane to overcome.  All to save a man who never had the sense to know what was going on, to thank him or to pay him, who was never going to see the light of day, even if victorious.

I wonder if any politician today, with the public the ravenous and rabid dog that it is, would have the courage of his own beliefs to defend a man who had done this, who was as hated by his society as he was, who had killed a family of friends, solely because of Seward's beliefs against capital punishment, against slavery, and against bias against blacks and the insane.

I wonder if many of us would, even those of us outside the public eye.  Would many of us even take such a stance against someone at a social gathering?

Doubtful.

Django Unchained

Photo: Movie poster from its Wikipedia page

Any Tarantino flick is worth seeing, and this one is no exception.  Though worth seeing, however, I can't say it was on par with his latest and greatest.  In fact, this one was the biggest disappointment for me since Jackie Brown.  Of course, a disappointing Tarantino film is still a good film, but Django could have been so much better.  One of the most glaring examples of this is that the dinner scene here tries to maintain the same unbearable tension as the basement bar scene in Inglorious Basterds, but it doesn't come close.  There is tension, of course, but not to the elevated levels of Basterds.

It went wrong when Waltz's character, King, shot DiCaprio's, which was naturally followed by King himself being obliterated.  And then all Hell broke loose.  This didn't work for me on many levels, not the least of which is that it simply isn't in King's character to do it.  He himself reminded Django what they were there for, to not lose sight of their goal--to free his wife.  They were clearly about to do this, even if it wasn't in the way that they intended.  And they were about to walk away with her; DiCaprio's character was too much of a Southern gentleman to shoot someone in the back after a business transaction.  And a handshake after a deal was, for God's sake, actually how transactions were socially, if not legally, finalized in the South back then.  Heck, even Mikey and Frankie of American Pickers do that today.  The contract is the legal law, but the handshake is the social law, and in that part of the country, they're equally important.  You can't do business with someone whose hand you can't shake.  It's a gentleman's agreement--even if, nastily enough, you're dealing in slaves.  (This was undoubtedly what led to King's repugnance about shaking his hand.)

This was followed by an even more unrealistic plot event: after shooting the iconic plantation owner--and about twenty of his men--Django gets sent to work at a mine for the rest of his days?  That's not the slavery south I've read about.  He'd have been whipped until dead, or hanged, or attacked by dogs, or even dragged to death by a horse or carriage.  Sent to work in a mine?  With three dumb hillbillies in charge of him?  Not bloody likely.

Of course it's all a cartoon.  Of course Tarantino wants to cinematically wipe out slavery in an orgy of firepower and fire, just as much as he wanted to wipe out Hitler and the Nazis with firepower and fire--and Inglorious Basterds was clearly not realistic or sensible, either.  So Django had to be able to get back to the plantation house to bring it all down.  I get that.

The difference, though, is that Inglorious Basterds' ending stayed true to its own twisted universe.  Everyone stayed true to their own twisted personas in that parallel universe of unreality.  Here, they don't.  King's character was all about logic and sensibility, and a heckuva scary guy, too, when he wanted to be.  And a fantastic, quick shot.  Would he stare at the wound he made in the white flower, or would he turn and fire upon someone he would know was going to immediately fire upon him?

Django is actually Samson unchained, of course, in this movie, so he has to be the one to knock the building of slavery down with everyone in it.  I get that.  He, and Tarantino, and perhaps even the audience is in need of that purge, just as we all were in need of purging Hitler and his crew at the end of Basterds.  Understandable.

But not like this.  How, then?  I don't know, but it's not my job to know.  That's Tarantino's job.

So go see it, because it's a Tarantino film, and it's memorable, and it's well-acted and well-directed and well-designed and well-choreographed and it's, well...well-done.  It's very well-done.  And so maybe I'm spoiled by Tarantino by now.  I want something more from him than just very well-done.   The first 80% rocks, and the last 20% is the purging, I guess, and it's very well-done--but it doesn't rock, and it doesn't jibe with the rest of the film.  It's almost two different films in that way, unevenly broken into an 80/20 split.

But you still have to go see it, of course.  So go do that.

P.S.--While standing in line to buy the tickets for this movie, a guy walked around saying that the 6:40 showing of the movie Lincoln was sold out.  I am thrilled to hear that an important and high-quality movie, with such a rare, slow pace, was still being seen by American moviegoers. 

Lincoln

photo: Movie poster, from its Wikipedia page

A few comments about Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which you should go see:

--I was pleasantly surprised to find myself sitting in the second row from the front for this film.  Spielberg film or not, historical films or biopics do not draw huge crowds.  I got to this one twenty minutes early (pretty amazing for me) and almost had to see the next one, half an hour later.  The crowd, at a quick glance, was about 28 and older.  No teens; no kids.  (This will make for a better film experience.)

--Spielberg is usually the star of a Spielberg film.  This time he shared the billing with Daniel Day-Lewis, who was amazing.  But the film was so well-directed, with obvious Spielberg/Wellesian flourishes, that he doesn't let you forget who's sitting in the director's chair.

--This movie could've been a bore without Spielberg and Day-Lewis, as historical films and/or biopics can be.  Over 95% of the film is interiors and dialogue.  Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones often hold forth.

--This apparently isn't just movie theatrics, either, as characters throughout both cringe and anticipate Lincoln's long-ish stories.  Jones's character was also known to fillibuster, too, apparently.

--I'm betting $20 that most of the fires in the fireplaces were CGI.  I guarantee you the heat made by them would screw with the cameras, the lights, and who knows what else.  And it looked CGI most of the time to me.  If someone reading this happens to know whether this is so, please let me know.

--Who knew that Lincoln had a sense of humor?

--In case you're reading this: Uh-kay.

--The film (actually, Sally Fields' Mary Todd Lincoln herself) often mentions the First Lady's struggles with depression (she'd be classified bi-polar today, I'll bet), but the film does not mention Lincoln's own well-documented melancholia.  (Both had a lot to be depressed about.)

--One of the film's strongest moments is when Lincoln mentions her depression.  Her sadness.  Her anger.  The point being that she was so worried about her feelings that she ignored those of her husband and her other two sons.  From what I've read of her (and her sadness-drawn love of seances), this smacked of truth.

--Both Lincolns seemed like people you would not want to mess with--Lincoln on the political battlefront, Mary Todd at home.

--Speaking of home, the White House was apparently a pigsty when the Lincolns got there.  I'd known about this--the White House famously was ill-designed for heating and ventilation, and it was often in ruin because the Presidents then were, well, ill-kept themselves--but I had no idea it had gotten that bad.

--Obama and Lincoln are often compared, but I'll throw out another one: they were both either extremely well-loved, or extremely despised, with nothing in between.  Few people would think of either with a shrug of the shoulders.

--Someone mentioned that Bush Junior was the same way, but I was quick to point out that, though he was very heavily despised, he was not very well-loved, even by the dumbies who voted for him.  (I had to go back and delete a stronger word there.)

--Speaking of Dubya, make it a point to notice, in a VERY heavily researched and historically accurate film, that every table was filled with books, piled high.  Lincoln was mostly home-schooled and self-taught, and Bush went to Yale, but one has a Presidential Library that's known as a good place to research, with lotsa books.  The other hasn't opened yet, but when it does, to the tune of $250 million, the sound you'll hear is one hand clapping.

--And both Obama and Lincoln had a country at war with itself, socially.  Then and now, it is very evenly divided.  The south has not, apparently, changed all that much.  Perhaps we are two separate countries after all.

--David Strathairn is in a ton of films, and always does a quietly great job, and never gets any recognition at all for his work.  He's been doing this since the 80s.  For example, how many of you know who in the film I'm talking about?

--Daniel Day-Lewis will get the recognition he deserves (he already is), but the greatest thing about his work is that he made a revered American icon surprisingly and appreciably human.  Lincoln is almost as revered in the U.S. as many religious figures, then and now, and think for a moment if someone were to try to humanize one of them.  (::cough:: Martin Scorsese, 1988 ::cough::)

--Day-Lewis almost made me not wonder when Lincoln would pick up an axe and start swingin'.  Almost.  Two Lincolns at opposite ends of the spectrum in the same film year.  Weird.

--Back to the fireplaces again: Everyone's cold.  Sure, it's winter in D.C., which can be worse than winter in New England, but the White House seemed like nothing more than a big barn with one big fireplace in each room.  As I can assure you, one fireplace is not enough to warm a big room.  Everyone's wearing shawls, even the manly, well-dressed and -suited politicians.  Nice historical touch.

--Notice also that everyone wrote on small, wooden portable desks, sort of a take-it-with-you tiny podium.  I've got to get myself one of those.  What're they called?

--Spielberg said he didn't want to release this film until after the election because he didn't want to influence any votes.  You'll see why when you see it, but that tells you another very obvious comparison between Obama and Lincoln--in many ways, they're fighting the same issues.

--The same issues, about 147 years later.

--Thank goodness Lincoln was president during the Civil War.  Can you imagine Dubya or Mitt as President during the Civil War?  We'd still have slavery--and women still wouldn't be able to vote.