The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023)
Rene Stanley for MovieReviewRelay and PopCultureChef.
A dystopian society forces children into a competitive school of violence to fight to the death.
Great set design and vibrant cinematography. More horror than drama. 3 of 5.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) is a well made film, directed by Francis Lawrence, based on the novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, great music by James Newton Howard. Great performances by a beautiful cast:
Tom Blyth plays Snow with such passion as he navigates through a storm of complex feelings from mentor to lover to hunter.
Rachel Zegler is the heroine with the golden voice, Peter Dinklage (“Tree, he needs the handle”) rendered a heart breaking performance, Jason Schwartzman is perfect as a charismatic announcer, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, and Viola Davis is deliciously evil as Dr. Gaul, loved seeing Fionnula Flanagan as Grandma.
157 minutes.
Rated PG-13
Warning: major spoilers for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes ahead.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is a well made film,
directed by Francis Lawrence ,based on the novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins, music by James Newton Howard
Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, and Viola Davis
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
There’s something for everyone in The Hunger Games. It is more horror than drama because of the dark nature of the film, a novel based on the Suzanne Collins’ book of the same name. Children must kill each other in order to survive and the kills are brutal and barbaric.
When the film opens , you will initially notice the nice set design and good music provided by Mr Howard. The is a lot of singing.
Lots of hanging. Lots of bullets. Lots of death.
There are very dark scenes the infer hopelessness and misery. This is not a “feel good” movie.
You got the Capitals who are strong and wealthy against the rebels who are weak and poor.
The feature film The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is divided into three segments.
Segment one entitled is The Mentor.
We begin with a warm privileged home with Mr Snow his mom and sister when his forced to be
a mentor to Lucy in the hunger games.
“Violent disgusting horrific”, “Humanity undressed”, “See how soon you become the prey” are just some of the phrases used to describe the game. This portion of the film acquaints the viewer with Snow’s background and his personal introduction to Lucy.
The second segment is extremely violent as we see several killings. Snow helps Lucy survive.
Snow’s mom and sister appear to be captive and held as a punishment for helping Lucy survive the game.
The third segment is the Peacemaker.
Snow is sent back to district 12. He meets up with Lucy at a meetup. Of course she’s the featured singer. After her performance, they get together to kiss and talk and acknowledge that they’re both killers now.
Lucy wants Snow to be happy staying there with her in district 12, but he gets a promotion and must go to the Capital. It appears his family is in jail in the capital. He sees his friend hanged and decides to run away with Lucy.
Snow plans to meet Lucy at the hanging tree and they’re going to run north and does not worry about his family at this point.
Snow thinks Lucy tried to kill him with the snakes so he tries to shoot her. The ending is somewhat of a cat and mouse chase. Snow never finds Lucy so he head back to Capital. He is told by Dr. Gaul he will work with her- welcome home.
Snow accepts his fate, he seems now to talk to and to poison Casca, the head dean of the school.