In the future, after disasters and wars, the nation of Panem
has been built. Twelve colonies are ruled from the capital. As punishment for a
past rebellion, each year each district sends two tributes to the capital.
These tributes will be feted, celebrated – and then pushed into an area and
made to fight to the death in “The Hunger Games”, all of it transmitted on TV
across Panem. To the winner, a lifetime of fame and comfort. To the losers –
well, death. In the poorest district, District 12, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer
Lawrence) volunteers as tribute after her sister’s name is selected. Stubborn,
surly, defiant and an expert archer, Katniss surprisingly finds herself
capturing the public imagination - helped by a faked romance with her media-savvy
fellow District 12 tribute (Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta). But in the ring will it
be everybody for themselves? Or can Katniss keep hold of her soul?
The Hunger Games is rich material. Panem feels more
and more like a mix between Gilead and Trumpian pomposity (the capital is a
heavily stylised and artificial Rome-inspired centre of excess), in which life
and death matters for very little. It’s a film that has astute things to say not
only about how totalitarian regimes operate, but also how the oppressed often
connive in their own suppression. So wrapped up is the population in the
excitement of the Hunger Games, so invested in the results, that they’ve almost
forgotten it is a tool of oppression. That the capital can only continue to
exist if all the districts co-operate in following its orders and meekly
supplying anything it asks – from food and resources, to teenagers for slaughter.
What this world needs is someone like Katniss. An individual
who knows her own mind, who won’t play the game and will be herself. The film
is brave in not softening the edges of this often prickly personality. Expertly
played by Jennifer Lawrence, Katniss is compassionate and caring – but she’s
also judgemental, untrusting, holds grudges and in person is often surly,
resentful and impatient. But what makes her a hero, is her refusal to
collaborate in softening the Hunger Games. She knows she is being manipulated
to make a world feel better about itself – and she is repulsed by the idea of
taking life needlessly and the slaughter of the weaker and more vulnerable
tributes. Indeed, she will go to huge lengths to keep others alive in the games
– something that helps to wake a population up to how they’ve been hoodwinked
by bright lights to forget their own humanity. Her defiance is less about
politics and more about simple human decency and being able to make her own
choices – something a whole world has forgotten.
Even the people in the capital have forgotten that the
Hunger Games exist to suppress not entertain. The film gets some delightful
mileage out of its satire of blanket media coverage. The TV coverage is pure
ESPN or Sky Sports, mixed with shallow chat shows. Stanley Tucci has a ball as
a flamboyant anchor who lets no moral qualms even cross his mind as he banters with
the tributes in interviews with the same excited ease as he will later
commentate on their slaughter. Wes Bentley’s would-be Machiavel TV producer has
been so drawn into the mechanics of his games, he’s stopped even seeing the combatants
as human beings, just another set of ratings-tools he can use to advance his
career.
It’s a neat commentary from the film on how we can be so
beaten down and crushed by the everyday that we forget – or overlook – how it
is both controlling our own lives and forcing us to rethink our own views on
life. This is a world where people are being taught that life and death are not
valuable, that murder can be entertainment and that everyday burdens are worth
dealing with because you have a chance of being allowed to fight to the death
for a shot at eternal comfort. It’s a deeply corrupt and savage system, and the
film doesn’t flinch away from exploring it.
Alongside that, it’s an entertaining, gripping and involving
film (if one that is a little overlong in places). The second half – which
focuses on the games – is both exciting and terrifying in its (often implied –
after all this is still a film that needs to be shown to kids) savagery. It
encourages us to identify closely with Katniss, to experience the same terror
she does as well as delight in her ingenuity and inventiveness to escape death
and plan strikes against her brutal opponents. By the end of the film we’ve
taken her to our hearts – for all we’ve seen how difficult a person she is – as
much as the population of Panem have.
Ross’s film is a triumph of adaptation, and you don’t say
that about many YA novels. Suzanne Collins’ adaptation of her own book captures
its thematic richness, while compressing it effectively. There are a host of
interesting actors giving eclectic performances, including Harrelson as Katinss
and Peeta’s mentor, Banks and Kravitz as their support team, and Sutherland as
the controlling dictator behind it all. The Hunger Games is prime
entertainment, with some fascinating design work (the costumes and sets are
spot on) and very well made. It’s a franchise to watch.
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