Literary Analysis

If you’ve read the “Hunger Games” trilogy, you likely have very strong feelings about the series’ third installment: either you (like me) thought it was a brilliantly bleak capstone to a memorable series, or you were repulsed by its unrelenting grimness. Given how remarkably well-done the film series has been thus far, I remain optimistic that next year’s finale will win over the naysayers – even if “Mockingjay – Part 1” isn’t quite up to the task by itself.

Following in the wake of “Harry Potter,” “Twilight,” and “The Hobbit,” “Mockingjay” has been split into two parts, with the second to release next fall. After being rescued from the wreckage of a second Hunger Games event, heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) finds herself in District 13, ground zero for a brewing rebellion. Meanwhile, her fellow Hunger Games veteran and erstwhile love interest Peeta (Josh Hutchinson) remains a captive of the authoritarian Capitol. While the rebels prepare for battle, Katniss is recruited to make propaganda films for the struggle, skirmishing with Capitol forces wherever possible.

As “Mockingjay – Part 1” unfolds, it’s hard to escape the nagging feeling that this shouldn’t have been two films. The pacing (especially in the first two-thirds of the movie) is positively languid. Lawrence is a great actress, and undoubtedly the soul of the film series, but three separate “Shocked To See Burned-Out Landscape” reaction shots is a lot to ask of anyone. Such moments end up feeling like filler – a serious sin in a penultimate chapter that should be characterized by escalating tension.

The sole blame for this weakness rests with whoever greenlit the split-movie idea: director Francis Lawrence does an outstanding job with the material he has, but there’s just not enough narrative here to sustain a full two-hour film. It’s naturally problematic to try to piece together a three-act film structure out of a novel’s first half: in order to form a coherent onscreen arc, comparatively inconsequential plot points are magnified beyond their relative importance (the Malfoy Manor sequence at the end of the first “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” film is another example of this). At such points, the music swells and top-dollar special effects cascade across the screen, but something feels off; in the aftermath, the status quo remains largely unchanged.

That said, when “Mockingjay – Part 1” does take flight, it soars. The film’s images of war-scarred landscapes are undeniably compelling, and the intimate human feel of the first two movies remains intact. More stars than Lawrence get their chance to shine in this installment, with Philip Seymour Hoffman delivering an especially magnificent performance as Katniss’ propaganda director. Liam Hemsworth’s Gale, previously little more than a token heartthrob, also gets some good character development this time around (vastly improving upon the source material). A “Zero Dark Thirty”-inspired raid sequence serves as the film’s climax – and as truncated as the movie feels as a whole, the scene is remarkably intense. (Also, a word for book fans: the film’s rendition of “The Hanging Tree” is sublime, segueing from a simple folk song into a solemn anthem of war).

For all its lapses into lazy screenwriting, “Mockingjay – Part 1” remains a solidly executed installment. It doesn’t conjure up the same menace and intensity as its predecessors, but there’s still a final chapter to come. And when stacked up against “Divergent” or any other inferior imitators, “Mockingjay – Part 1” looks very good indeed.

VERDICT: 7/10
The weakest of the three so far, but still a good deal better than any recent YA-lit adaptation out there.

Normalized Score: 3.4

There’s no one making movies quite like Christopher Nolan.  “Interstellar” is a majestic, deeply ambitious epic that attempts to grasp the entirety of human existence, much like “The Fountain” and “The Tree of Life.” In many ways, “Interstellar” is the flip side of “Inception”: whereas the latter probed the depths of human consciousness, “Interstellar” pushes outward into the furthest reaches of existence itself.

It’s hard to sketch out the film’s intricate (Nolanesque? perhaps it’s time to make that an adjective) plot without providing spoilers. The world of the mid-21st century has slipped toward a neo-Malthusian nightmare: dust storms and blight are wiping out humanity’s food supply and poisoning the atmosphere, slowly pushing the human species toward extinction (mercifully, this plot line doesn’t slide into eco-proselytizing a la “Avatar”). Astronaut-turned-farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is one of the few individuals left with the skills needed to save humanity; extraterrestrial colonization, via a wormhole crossing between galaxies, offers the only hope for species survival.

“Interstellar” is a breathtakingly beautiful film, offering images unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. From alien landscapes to naked singularities, “Interstellar” conjures up vision after vision of the universe beyond Earth, and it demands to be seen on the largest screen possible. Additionally, despite its lofty subject matter (in all senses of the term), this movie is an extremely exciting, heart-pounding thriller. It’s been a long time since I’ve really been on the edge of my seat in a film, totally engrossed and desperate to see what would happen next. “Interstellar” provides many moments like that, evoking the freneticism of “The Dark Knight” and “Inception.”

On the acting front, McConaughey is a phenomenal lead, as one might expect. The rest of the cast (Michael Caine, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and others) provides a winsome backdrop, but this is truly McConaughey’s movie, and he nails it.

Thematically, “Interstellar” has been described as a revival of the “hard science fiction” genre. For those not familiar with the term, “hard” science fiction refers to works that typically go to great lengths to explain their own plausibility. (“Star Wars,” for example, with its emphasis on the mystical Force, does not fall into this category). This descriptor is fundamentally inaccurate. The truth – which Nolan tries very hard to avoid – is that this is a deeply theological, not a scientific, film. At its heart, it is a depiction of human contact with the utterly transcendent – an encounter with Being qua being, in the experience of which is found the nature, purpose, and destiny of man. Moreover, it is a story of human participation in that transcendence, through essential qualities of humankind which extend beyond purely naturalistic materialism.

It is therefore unfortunate that massive amounts of semi-scientific jargon interfere with the sublimity onscreen. Whereas Kubrick, Aronofsky, Malick, and others working in this realm had the good sense to avoid superfluous explanation, Nolan can’t help but offer exposition for every development. In the weeks and months to come, the movie’s plot holes and inconsistencies will be dissected in minute detail – and Nolan has only himself to blame for this. The thin layer of “sciencey” vocabulary isn’t enough to disguise the fact that this isn’t (and shouldn’t have been) a movie about science proper. In the grand scheme of things, this is a minor quibble – but it’s the one thing really holding “Interstellar” back from near-perfection (there are also a couple of overly-twee lines about The Power of Love). In the years to come, I fully plan on watching it with the sound off (though I’ll be sorry to miss out on Hans Zimmer’s wonderful score).

If you were to ask me to sum up this film in one sentence, it would probably be “ ‘Knowing’ meets ‘Gravity’ meets ‘2001: A Space Odyssey.’ ” Joining an apocalyptic vision of the future to a metaphysical space drama, “Interstellar” continues Nolan’s run of exceptional films, even though its dense plotting occasionally hamstrings its own grandeur.

Highly recommended.

VERDICT: 9/10
A haunting cinematic achievement that raises provocative questions. A successful addition to Nolan’s celebrated canon.

Normalized Score: 7.9