Philip Seymour Hoffman – Memphis Flyer

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 2 is the latest in a growing series of films whose title contain both a colon and a hyphen, like The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 1. The paired punctuation has come to indicate a mangling by studio money-grubbing—one story has been split into two movies, and padding applied, to get you to shell out twice for closure.

Mockingjay completes The Hunger Games‘ unlikely transition from winking high school allegory to grimdark military science fiction. Our beloved heroine, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) begins part two in a familiar setting: a hospital bed, recovering from wounds she received in battle. In this case, she was put in the hospital by her former fiancé and fellow survivor of the arena, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who was brainwashed into hating her by the forces of the Capitol, led by President Snow (Donald Sutherland). Sporting the thousand-yard PTSD stare she adopted in Part 1, Katniss meets with the leader of the rebels, President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), and agrees to drop her former ethical reservations and do whatever it takes to defeat the Capitol. She is immediately thrust into battle in District 2 beside her second love interest, Gale (Liam Hemsworth), in an effort to destroy the last enemy stronghold blocking the way to an advance on the Capitol. When the post-battle evacuation of civilians threatens to turn into a riot, Katniss manages to partially defuse the situation before being shot by a loyalist refugee. After once again waking up in a hospital bed, she vows to personally kill Snow. Katniss defies the authority of Coin and her propaganda minister Plutarch Heavansbee (the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose absence the filmmakers work around with fragments of dialogue and CGI) to get into the battle at the Capitol, where the rebels must fight their way through a booby-trapped city to topple Snow’s teetering regime.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 2

There’s a core of classic sci-fi running through all of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games novels, which became best sellers in the vacuum left by the completion of the Harry Potter cycle. One of the interesting things about Harry Potter is its author, J.K. Rowling, offered a decidedly female take on the formerly male-dominated realm of epic fantasy, and the same dynamic is at work with Collins in the world of dystopian science fiction. Katniss is an action hero, but she’s also a reality TV star who has her own stylist. The story focuses very tightly on her character, and her two would-be boyfriends get about as much development as your typical Bond girl. The dystopia Collins paints is an artfully rendered funhouse mirror-version of contemporary America—surely, the Capitol is the most garish evil empire in film history.

Unfortunately, the film adaptations have not served Collins’ vision as well as the Harry Potter films did Rowling’s. The first film was barely competent, and the second was only an incremental improvement. The only great thing about the franchise has been Lawrence’s muscular, multifaceted portrayal of Katniss. And if Mockingjay had been just one movie, Lawrence might have finally gotten a film worthy of her talents. Katniss has grown from scared country girl to a hardened warrior who can take a nap as the dropship flies her to the war zone. At least director Francis Lawrence has the good sense to bring the series to a close by hiring a decent editor and giving Lawrence lots of close-ups.

But like The Hobbit films, there’s just no saving the movie from the financial imperative to split the story. There’s a solid two-hour movie buried somewhere in the 260-minute combined running time of the two Mockingjays, but, as it is, the beats just fall in all the wrong places. Part 2 builds some decent tension, particularly in a claustrophobic sequence where our heroes fight mutant attack zombies in the Capitol’s sewers, but the overall structure has been so fatally compromised that Katniss just seems to drift around in a haze of nonsensical plot complications. When our long-suffering hero gets her much-deserved rest, we share her relief that it’s finally over.

I’ve seen the needle and the damage done,

a little part of it in everyone …

— Neil Young

I’m reading Neil Young’s autobiography Waging Heavy Peace. Or, I should say, I was reading it. I’ve stopped now, about 250 pages in. I’m a fan of Young’s music, but he writes like a ninth-grader — self-absorbed and obsessed with his “cool stuff” — elaborate train sets, rebuilt cars, vintage guitars, his ranch. It’s written in a stream-of-consciousness fashion that interweaves what he’s doing at the moment with what he did in 1972 with what he plans to do next week (which, since the book came out a couple years after he wrote it, is sort of absurd).

It’s an informal, naïve sort of book, and I stuck with it for a while because Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and Crazy Horse made music I love and Young was in the middle of all of it. But Young writes more about his possessions and his friends — including those who fell prey to hard drugs — than he does about music. Bandmate David Crosby was a junkie; Young’s close friends Danny Whitten and Bruce Berry both died from heroin overdoses (inspiring The Needle and the Damage Done).

It’s an object lesson in how lots of money, easy access to dope, and an addictive personality can be a lethal combo — as we saw again this week with the death of the fine actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I’m always amazed that someone as famous as Hoffman, someone surrounded by admirers and caretakers, someone with a longtime relationship, three small children, and a fulfilling career, can somehow find a way to destroy himself, to find the crack in the facade and slip into a lonely, private hell. But it happens — over and over.

It’s important, however, that we not let the sensationalism surrounding this very public heroin death impact another drug-related discussion that’s going in Nashville this week (cover story, p. 17). Marijuana isn’t heroin. Marijuana, as the cover story makes clear, can have very specific medicinal purposes, including treatment of glaucoma, cancer, Alzheimer’s, siezures, and a host of other diseases and conditions. The proposed Tennessee statute is not the kind of sham law introduced in California 20 years ago. It will be one of the strictest in the country and will provide a real benefit for many Tennesseans who are suffering.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to imagine the legislators we now have in the General Assembly making anything but a knee-jerk decision. Marijuana scares them and the false, decades-long conflation of pot with hard drugs is a difficult perception to overcome.

But there is a difference — a big one. At 66, Neil Young has basically been stoned on pot for almost 50 years and is gaining on Willie Nelson. At 46, Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com