Before I start, a disclaimer: this will be the most uninformed film review you'll ever read. Here's what I know about the film: I saw it; I didn't like it. Here's what research I did about the film and the novel it's based on: my wife read it and told me about it on the way to the theater. I admit that I'm not familiar with the filmmaker (don't know who produced it) nor the book's author. I'm can't tell you how either artist typically uses conflict or weaves in literary themes. What I can tell you comes only from my experience of walking into a theater on opening weekend, watching the film one time, then walking out. And from that experience, here's my conclusion.
Hunger Games is poorly conceived, poorly executed, and morally abhorrent.
If you haven't seen or read anything about the plot, here's a summary: The setting is America in some future state following a civil uprising. The country has been divided into 12 districts. The capitol district has become the seat of all power and oppresses citizens in other districts with martial law and forced labor. To demonstrate their power over district citizens, the country's leaders (we only meet one of them in the film - the president played by Donald Sutherland - whose job seems to consist of watching TV and pruning roses) declare that there will be an annual gladiatorial games in which 24 children are chosen at random - two "tributes" from each district - to fight to the death with primitive weapons. The kids are ages 12 to 18. Every second of the games is broadcast in by sort-of Truman Show omnipresent-but-invisible film crew. We join the story as children are being selected ("reaped") for the 74th annual installment of the games.
Before we talk about the story's failings, let's examine the premise.
If you're going to oppress people, this is a bad way to go. I can't think of any better way to incite an uprising than to torture people's children. Halfway through the film, the main character, Katniss Everdeen, raises a cryptic hand sign to one of the TV cameras as a sign of solidarity with viewers against the Capitol and its cruel games. People watching in the districts are inspired. One of them even vandalizes some government property. Apparently, after 73 years of oppression and public torture of children, this is the first time anyone has gotten really upset about things and defied the Capitol by knocking over a speaker tower. That's as far as the revolt goes.
Such a premise is not only unbelievable, it's revolting. I am not easily offended by movie violence. Some of my favorite films are also some of the most violent I've seen. The first 10 minutes of Saving Private Ryan are some of the bloodiest in cinematic history and part of a film that I rank among the best of all time. But the differences between Spielberg's depiction of Normandy and the Hunger Games couldn't be more glaring.
The victims in the Hunger Games are coerced children; not Nazis, not criminals, not soldiers or volunteers. Not even adults. They have been kidnapped by their government and forced to kill on TV so that viewers can enjoy a reality show combination of Survivor and Gladiator. Take away the cameras and this plot line might sound familiar: we've been watching it in Uganda and Sudan for years. Oddly, I don't hear anyone praising the storytelling genius of Joseph Kony.
With such a spectacularly-flawed premise, I was hoping the film would redeem itself with a heroic plot twist or at least an artful handling of the subject. I saw neither.
The heroine's primary goal throughout the film is to stay alive through the games so that she can return to her widowed mother and little sister. But if you had hopes for a dynamic heroine whose motivation ascends from survival to something more altruistic, you'll be disappointed. Katniss seems to have a soft spot for younger girls (she tries and fails to protect the youngest tribute in the games) but that doesn't seem to come from a sense of justice or virtue. She shows that she's willing to lie, use people, and kill to stay alive. And then in a dumbfounding plot twist at the end, her motivation seems to turn to spite when she enters a suicide pact with another tribute. So much for the stay-alive-for-my-family motive that had driven her through the first 90 minutes of the film. I was, in fact, so dumbfounded by the suicide pact that I asked my wife if there is something in the book that hinted that the poison berries she was about to eat weren't really poison, or that Katniss somehow knew that the Capitol would step in and stop the suicide. There isn't. Apparently, for Katniss, life got horrifically hard and she decided to bail.
Finally, I found nothing artistic or poetic about the way the events were filmed. What few touches of beauty existed in the script (volunteering for tribute and burying Rue come to mind) didn't turn out to be particularly memorable scenes.
In classical terms, I suppose it would be accurate to call the Hunger Games a tragedy. Even though the herione lives, she sacrifices everything good to do so. She is willing to die for spite and not for virtue. And so, to be fair, maybe it's not so much that the story is bad, but that it's a tragedy. I have never liked tragedies.
Poetically, the other film I saw this week was Blue Like Jazz, the film adaptation of the popular Donald Miller book. One of the themes of Blue Like Jazz is that life is like jazz music because it doesn't always resolve. Oddly enough, Blue Like Jazz come to a much more satisfying resolution than Hunger Games. Maybe I should embrace Miller's line and appreciate Hunger Games' tragic ending. But if you ask me for a film recommendation this week, I'm sending you to Reed College, not the cornucopia.
