The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Review: Falters but Satisfies

(Spoiler warning: Mild spoilers)

The last Hunger Games movie (when you go by timeline, not by release), dropped in 2015 and now cut to 2023 and the prequel The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has hit theatres to offer a glimpse into what made Coriolanus Snow the man that he is and how the ‘Hunger Games’ that Katniss Everdeen won came to be. 

Set perhaps about 60 years before Everdeen’s victory and the eventual uprising by the districts, we meet a young Snow and his cousin Tigris braving the snowy expanse of the Capitol that lays in ruin due to the earlier uprising oft-mentioned in the Hunger Games books. As a young child who loses his wealth and fortune, Snow grows up feeling like a victim (and in some ways he, too, is a victim of those in power).

His way to help his family is to win a scholarship that will help him step forward in his quest to become President. 

To his surprise, this year, the scholarship isn’t decided just on academic merit – instead each of the hopeful candidates will be assigned a Tribute in that year’s Hunger Games and TV ratings will translate to ‘victory’. The mentors don’t have to make winners out of their Tributes, they have to create spectacles. This is a staple of the Hunger Games saga – the sinister reality that the Games exist as a spectacle for the rich and a warning to the underprivileged.

Those in power quell any hope of an uprising while watching young kids and adults fight to the death in a brutal arena of their design; somehow picturing them as the aggressors who must be kept in line. 

The Hunger Games books and the films are a great insight into the act of resistance and speaking truth to power; a timely message in our world today. Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has an almost adjacent messaging – of understanding that ‘evil’ isn’t always necessarily clear to the eye but can fester as time passes. Snow is one such character. I did raise an eyebrow at the film’s attempt to humanise Snow, considering that Donald Sutherland plays the character with manipulative malice.

Tom Blyth’s version is more human and empathetic but as the movie unfurls, you notice the underlying rage; the selfish need to succeed even when it comes at the cost of his loved ones or his own self. 

But perhaps this initial dissonance is necessary to understand why he and the Tribute assigned to him, the feisty and talented Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler), hit it off. Their romance feels half-baked when it starts off and the writers don’t seem to want us to believe in it. It takes some of the charm out of both Baird and Snow.

This further makes it harder to buy into the film's stakes which would still have been excusable if any of the other characters were fleshed out enough to hold the audience's attention when the leading duo didn't.

Jennifer Lawrence's Katniss is more stoic and indignant than Zegler’s Gray who is more ‘sugar, spice, and everything nice’. During a particularly eventful Reaping ceremony, she stands out in a sea of grey and beige with her outfit bursting with colour and a voice that instantly captures the attention of both the audience and the showrunners.

Zegler, who shot to fame with West Side Story, perfectly captures her character’s angst in her vocals; the sheer difference in the way Katniss and Baird sing ‘The Hanging Tree’ is enough to tell you loads about each character.

Snow's attachment to a girl from District 12 (Baird) and his memories attached to the song are smart nods to the trilogy but there are also other Easter eggs that feel a little heavy-handed.

The film’s third act, however, is its best. As loyalties and motives come into play, what started out as saccharine sweet starts to mould into something much unhealthier – it is no surprise that Baird and Snow come from different world and perhaps their romance was doomed from the start but the way the doom is spelt out is fascinating in an almost morbid fashion.

But this act is also where the film’s decision to continue to present Snow’s ‘humane’ side to the audience becomes jarring. The film begins to feel like it’s warring with itself. 

Baird, however, remains the film’s spirit – as Katniss Everdeen has been so far – and it’s easy to draw parallels between the two ‘Panem stars’. While Katniss’ fight was one in a world where teenagers fought for survival in an exploitative world and eventually joined the ‘good fight’, Baird’s is one where she is stuck fighting her way out of webs of political strategies where wounds are becoming increasingly personal.

It is Zegler’s act and the way Baird is written that keeps the film afloat when its narrative falters (and of course, due credit to Hunter Schafer as Tigris for injecting a feeling of warmth into this cold-blooded affair much like the respite the character offers in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2).

And that is perhaps another issue. You keep thinking of the other films – as is the danger with franchises in the first place. The Hunger Games movies were one of the few examples of the movies being as good as the books and there is something about the essence and the air of the films that feels almost impossible to replicate.

I still remember the goosebumps when the citizens march to the Capitol as ‘The Hanging Tree’ echoes in the air. Now, a lot of these moments in Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes feel like thematic repetitions; the true art of Suzanne Collins’ imagery doesn’t come through just as well. 

Any resemblance of that essence comes through here because of Viola Davis as Dr Volumnia Gaul, the head gamemaker, who sees Snow’s potential for the tyrant that he can become. Sneering through dialogues and wearing gloves that make her hands look permanently stained in blood (credit to Trish Summerville for costume), Gaul is as cunning as she is threatening.

Also, the payoff that comes from her cage full of colourful snakes is perhaps my crowning jewel moment for the film. 

It might be easy to miss the grandeur of the previous films that formed a crucial element to understand how the gamemakers hid violence and exploitation under the shiny cloak of gimmicky interviews, galas, and presentations.

But here, the 'show' is more muted because we're seeing the beginnings of how each game became more diabolical than the last with one man at the helm of it all - Snow.

In its close to 2 hours 40 minute runtime, there are moments that feel rather dull but there is also enough suspense and twists to keep you hooked, hoping for more. If anything, there is something heartbreaking about the way the film explores the nature of evil and human tendency to fight despite all odds.

For a Hunger Games fan, this runtime might be something to just brush past, for some it might be too less to truly explore Snow’s story. For me, it’s somewhere in the middle. 

Admittedly, I couldn't help but buy into the moments of power and resistance; glimpses of what lead to the Mockingjay's journey are visible even all those year's ago.