Francis Lawrence’s prequel often wobbles, especially in the early going. And yet, in the end, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” propelled by Blyth’s performance, manages to be the deepest expression yet of the series’ melodrama of adolescence. In Panem, the only thing more tragic than the suffering inflicted by adults on the young may be a bright kid warping wickedly into one of those elders, too.
That generational divide was always at the heart of the appeal of “The Hungers Games,” a fantasy where no adult or institution can be trusted, and the normal pressures of teendom are amplified in a modern, televised Roman Coliseum — an “American Idol” with murder — concocted by elders. It’s madness shrugged off as, “That’s just the way it is.”
In “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” we see how it got to be that way. The 10th annual Hunger Games are approaching but it feels more like pre-Super Bowl times when the NFL and the AFL played in separate leagues. The broadcast is low rent, the ratings are poor and the games themselves are staged in a dilapidated stadium.
With little food in the fridge, Coriolanus is living with his cousin Tigris (Hunter Schafer) and grandmother (Fionnula Flanagan). Their family has fallen on hard times, in part because of a family rivalry with Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage), the dean of the academy who harbors hatred for the Snows. (Dinklage, whose wry presence adds a kick to the film, has managed to appear once again in an outlandish fantasy with a man named Snow. )
As the students gather amid Third Reich architectures (the production design by Uli Hanisch is stellar) and the games’ founder Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis, majestic in blue, with a turquoise eye) gazes on, Coriolanus is assigned his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, a bold young woman from District 12 (also the home of Katniss) who wears a rainbow skirt and sports a dubious Southern accent. During the reaping ceremony, she makes an immediate impression, putting a snake down the back of a rival and bursting into song for the cameras. See, now there’s concision, I thought. You get your songbird and snake, straight off.
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