“THE HUNGER GAMES”Based upon the novel by Suzanne Collins
Screenplay Written by Gary Ross and Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray
Directed by Gary Ross
**** (four stars)
When I introduced myself to The Hunger Games trilogy, author Suzanne Collins’ mega-blockbuster young adult/science fiction/action thriller saga, I read the first two installments back to back and I have to say that I was, unfortunately, a tad underwhelmed. Now before any of you die-hard fans of the series take up your arms of bows and arrows and utilize me for target practice, please allow me to elaborate a bit.
I did indeed like the first two novels. I just did not fall in love with them. I did, however, love the story and overall concept. Collins’ violent, dystopian vision of a future post-North American landscape where teenagers from twelve impoverished districts were unwillingly selected to engage in a televised fight to the death where only one victor survives was indeed a visceral reading experience. I also thoroughly enjoyed Collins’ dark political commentary and pop-culture satire against the increasingly soul sucking world of reality television. I also loved that this series did place a striking teenaged heroine front and center, who along with a certain Hermione Grainger, gave that insipid Bella Swan a run for her money. Yet, throughout it all, I just didn’t care that much and that reaction may have been due to Collins' actual writing style rather than her compelling vision. For me, while the action moved at a breakneck pace and kept me eagerly turning the pages, the characters themselves felt a tad thin, dialogue seemed to be too clunky and by the second novel, I was a bit tired of feeling as if I were several steps ahead of our heroine Katniss Everdeen. That events which should have been OBVIOUS to her just weren’t. Furthermore, the “voice” of Katnisss simply struck me as sounding like it originated from a petulantly, narcissistic girl who was irritated with having to clean her room again, instead of a government pawn forced to fight and kill in order to survive. And so, by the conclusion of the second book, I felt as if I needed to have a break from the experience before plunging into the series’ finale.
What a difference a terrific movie can make. As I have stated many times on Savage Cinema, books are books and movies are movies and Director Gary Ross’ “The Hunger Games” was an adaptation that not only honored the source material heroically, it even elevated it for me. This is a rare example of how a filmmaker can take a book an improve upon what is there through a mastery of tone, visual style, storytelling skill, and unlike the awful “Twilight” film series, hire real actors who can make the material soar. And I’m telling you, Jennifer Lawrence is the real deal as her performance as Katniss is sensational. More on her a bit later but for now, “The Hunger Games” more than deserves your hard-earned box office dollars as it is big budget Hollywood entertainment with a brain, a heart, and copious amounts of soul. It is a gift to those die-hard fans of the novels as well as also existing as an excellent film-going experience for complete novices.
For the uninitiated, allow me to set the scene. Just as with the original novel, “The Hunger Games” opens in a crucially dark period set in the future as North America has been destroyed, leaving in its wake the thirteen poverty stricken districts of Panem. After a devastating uprising during which District 13 was decimated, the all powerful governmental forces of The Capitol, now under the leadership of the sinister President Snow (Donald Sutherland) have orchestrated an annual event entitled the Hunger Games, as a punishing reminder to the remaining twelve districts to never again rebel against The Capitol. The cycle of the Hunger Games begins with a process known as “The Reaping,” where one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12-18, and from each of the twelve districts are chosen to battle in the aforementioned televised death match.
Jennifer Lawrence stars as 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, an inhabitant of the destitute, rustic, coal mining community of District 12, who is the sole caretaker for her younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields) as their Mother (Paula Malcomson) is stagnated in a crippling depression after the death of her husband. Katniss provides for her family by consistently sneaking out of her district boundary to illegally hunt for food alongside her close friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth).
By the time of The Reaping, 12-year-old Primrose is selected to be a Hunger Games contestant, yet in a moment of fierce protection, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Katniss is accepted into the games and is soon joined by the shy baker’s son Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) as another contestant. The twosome are quickly taken from their home and sent to the lavish surroundings of The Capitol. It is there where they are placed in the care of escort Effie Trinket (an unrecognizable Elizabeth Banks), stylist Cinna (a solid Lenny Kravitz) and finally, Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrleson), an alcoholic and sole survivor from his past Hunger Games competition who serves as their mentor and primary source to obtain sponsors before and during the games.
After the completion of the training sessions, makeovers and media blitz publicity tour featuring shockingly innocuous television interviews with the legendary and horrifically plastic TV host, Caesar Flickerman (an outstanding Stanley Tucci who oozes with glistening sleaze), Katniss, Peeta and the 22 remaining “tributes” are ejected into the woodsy battleground, clawing for their individual survivals. And will Katniss, ever resourceful and consumed with her unique brand survivalist instincts, outlast her competitors while keeping her humanity intact?
Furiously paced, expertly acted, and filled with a moody intensity escalating the provocative story and concepts most handsomely, “The Hunger Games” won me over immediately. What I found to be especially remarkable about this film is how expertly Gary Ross honored the source material by remaining supremely faithful to the text yet he also devised a way for this experience to stand on its own cinematic feet, creating an experience I am already anxious to revisit. To my eyes and perceptions, and much like Director Chris Columbus’ spectacular “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001), Ross remarkably created a cinematic palate that nearly matched the images the original novel conjured in my head. Everything just felt right as characters, locations and events appeared upon screen. Mostly, what I had loved is how Ross quickly established the proper somber, gritty, restless, uneasy and aggressive tone for the film with his striking cinematography, James Newton Howard’s strong film score, terrific set design, innovative and grotesquely plastic makeup design for the high fashion characters, grounded and tasteful special effects and visual design. While none of this should be a surprise as Ross was the filmmaker behind the brilliant color/black and white fantasy “Pleasantville” (1998) and the period horse race drama “Seabiscuit” (2003), you just never know when it comes to an adaptation of a book. But, after witnessing this film, Gary Ross was the faultless choice and I really hope that he helms the remaining two installments.
Thematically, and as with Suzanne Collins’ novel, the film is a hodge-podge of familiar elements. There’s a bit of “Logan’s Run” (1976) here, some of George Orwell’s 1984 and William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies there, and the disturbing battle between pre-conceived destiny vs.free will with the world of reality television as the backdrop provided a healthy dollop of Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show” (1998) for good measure. But, in the best conceivable fashion, Ross makes all of this feel fresh and not the least bit derivative. Collins’ political and television commentary are placed front and center with a true gravity that anchors the experience, ensuring the film never flies completely off the rails into an unrelatable fantasy world. Collins and Ross clearly have weighty concepts on their minds and I was pleased to witness how Ross was certain to not allow the film to fall into a mindless barrage of CGI effects and bloodthirsty carnage.
All with some of the best science fiction I have had the pleasure to read and see throughout my life, “The Hunger Games” serves as an allegory about a variety of topics, all of which connect together seamlessly to form a hugely resonant whole. The sequences in District 12, with children being forcibly marched towards their destinies in The Reaping ceremony, certainly brought images of nothing less than Auschwitz to my mind. The Hunger Games themselves felt like every lowest common denominator nightmare about reality television brought to brutal life. Even a late film riot sequence recalled the Civil Rights clashes of the past and the Occupy movement uprising of the present. Speaking of our current societal battles between the 99% and 1%, I loved the film’s take on the cruelty of a society that functions as an oligarchy. Yes, the lavish opulence of The Capitol serves to carry that theme heavily but I loved the mass displays of food during the sections where Katniss, Peeta and the other tributes are in training and making their media rounds. Just the blatant indifference held towards these children who have all been deprived of the basic life necessities throughout the entirety of their lives and are now being fed and “fattened” for the purpose of slaughter was powerful. Yes, all of these elements are present in Suzanne Collins’ original novel but the way Gary Ross interpreted this material made everything resonate for me in ways the novel did not and I was left with a powerfully grim and stirring impact overall.
Yet, the biggest question about this film version is the level of violence and how it would be depicted in a PG-13 film, considering that Suzanne Collins wrote an unflinchingly brutal series. Certainly because this is a young adult novel, there was no way in the world that Hollywood was going to deliver an R rated version of this material, thus ensuring that their intended audience would be routinely turned away from the box office window. And here is where Ross has triumphed again. As I have stated, he sets up and masters the film’s overall tone from the get-go ensuring that the inhumanity of the piece remains in the forefront and the movie never disintegrates into a Schwarzenegger styled bloodbath. But, you do, however, feel that sense of thrill and excitement once the timer counts down to zero and the 24 tributes race for their lives. A very clever move, as those feelings force us in the audience to re-examine our relationship with violence, especially as we watch teenagers hunt and murder each other. All of that being said, the film shows no gore whatsoever, never lingers on violent images and at no point is the film exploitive. And yet there has been some surprising criticism on the internet that “The Hunger Games” is not violent enough (!), a criticism that was unwisely hurled at Peter Jackson’s PG 13 rated adaptation of “The Lovely Bones” (2009). For me, Ross has wisely figured out how to dance to the edges of the PG-13 rating, as “The Hunger Games” never strikes a note that could be considered juvenile despite its collection of teenage characters. And this element actually brings me to the film’s most controversial device…the return of the dreaded “shaky cam”!!!
The handheld camera technique is utilized heavily throughout “The Hunger Games” and at first, I began to carry a worry. As I have said many, many times before, I HATE, HATE, HATE the dreaded “shaky-cam” as I feel that it is a sloppy technique that all but obliterates the basic storytelling that is inherent in a visual medium and most notably, during action set pieces. Director Paul Greengrass’ “The Bourne Supremacy” (2004) and “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007) were two films that over-utilized the technique to the degree that I could not even enjoy the films at all due to storytelling incoherence and a nasty bout of nausea to boot. “The Hunger Games” never goes as far as those films but there were points where I did wonder if it was going to approach that neighborhood. Thankfully the camera work would settle down for long stretches before going haywire and after a spell, I did realize that Ross’ utilization of the dreaded shaky-cam was indeed story driven as well as assisting greatly to keep the on screen violence to a minimum. What we gain from the herky jerky camera motions is the chaos and insanity of war, something filmmaking masters Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg used to extraordinary effect in films like “Platoon” (1986) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). The handheld camera is also used to keep us constantly within Katniss’ eye level, a technique used to the disturbingly hallucinatory effect in Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” (2010). We see what Katniss sees, when she sees it, making the audience completely along for the ride, taking in every moment at the precise times that Katniss experiences them herself. On this level, the dreaded shaky-cam worked and while I will take this as a somewhat minor quibble with this otherwise excellent film, I sincerely wish that Gary Ross will tone it down considerably should he direct the second installment.
But beyond all of the cinematic aesthetics on display, “The Hunger Games” succeeds greatly by knowing that having strong actors will carry the day and this film has assembled a terrific cast from top to bottom. Josh Hutcherson’s performance as Peeta contained considerably more heft than how the character read upon the page as he felt to be too vanilla, too bland. Stanley Tucci was pitch perfect and I just wanted more and more of Woody Harrleson every time he appeared. And I also have to say that the building love triangle between the characters of Katniss, Peeta and Gale also found the right sense of longing, urgency, and potential tragedy in ways that the “Twilight” film series has not been able to convince me of in the least.
But the film’s home run is Jennifer Lawrence as she is magnificent in the role of Katniss Everdeen. In the novels, the voice of Katniss is “heard” through her first person narration, therefore we experience her every single thought as they occur. For the film, the narration is completely removed. So, everything that we would “hear” when we read the books is absent, therefore making Jennifer Lawrence’s performance one that is significantly wordless. Yes, Lawrence has dialogue and she is completely convincing when she speaks. But, so much of the film is the actual event of the Hunger Games, where she is often alone, so every thought that we were privy to in the novel has to be entirely read upon Jennifer Lawrence’s face and physicality, and both are extremely impressive. It was amazing to me that with this performance, I was able to know exactly what Katniss is thinking without her speaking a word. Her motivations are crystal clear. You know exactly why she makes the choices she does, how she ponders getting herself into and out of desperate and deathly situations and we are witness to her uncompromising desire of remaining humane in an inhumane world. Jennifer Lawrence brought this character to life in ways the novel just did not fully achieve for me. She possessed the perfect mixture of being haunted as well as hunted, ferocious as well as compassionate, and being protected as well as serving as protector. A world of emotions exists inside the character of Katniss Everdeen and Jennifer Lawrence nailed them all to perfection and she made this character a heroine I would follow absolutely anywhere.
What a great pleasure it was to be surprised like this. While I would have seen this film regardless, I have to admit it was not a film I had been anxiously awaiting by any means. Gary Ross’ “The Hunger Games” is a shining example and fully represents the exact type of science fiction film that resonated with ideas over mindless bombast, and filled with rich characterizations over a barrage of the best special effects money can buy. This is a film that represents what was once the norm for big budget Hollywood escapist features and not the exception, as nowadays, when you purchase a ticket, you are more than likely to be bludgeoned by sight and sound rather than be invigorated by them.
“The Hunger Games” is first rate, top of the line entertainment and if I could buy a ticket for the second installment today, I would! But for now, I’m heading right to the back of the box office line to see this one again.
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