Lionsgate’s second installment in the series based on the young adult fiction literary series by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, is not as satisfying as the first movie, which I reviewed here. The film, a two and a half hour episode titled Catching Fire, is too static. There are fine moments, scenes and themes – how could there not be with the West being on track toward dictatorship and the studio bringing on top talent to create this movie? – but the story is promised more than it is delivered.
Catching Fire is transitional, given the planned and hyped four-picture deal, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t stand on its own. Here, writers Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3) and Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire), directed by Francis Lawrence (the atrocious I Am Legend), whom I suspect is partly the cause of the problems, take too long and convey too little. It’s not a bad movie. Fans will want to see it and should. But it is lacking in key parts.
Catching Fire fails to depict the full grip, scope and magnitude of totalitarianism. This pervaded the first picture in the capable hands of director Gary Ross. The death cannon lingered. Gray skies closed in. Every part of every person’s existence reeked of control by the state. By shifting focus to the personal after-story of heroine Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence again), who suffers post-traumatic stress disorder and psychological damage, the feeling of the dystopia’s chronic, constant control is dissipated. All the players return and they’re in fine form as Katniss is threatened and ordered back to the death hunt in an all-star, prior victor “Quell”. But a subtle approach by Gary Ross is replaced with more generic, overstuffed direction. This film is less cohesive.
Without a strong, integrated theme of oppression, the story’s rising demand for revolt feels unearned, episodic and tacked on. Action happens too fast. Relationships are abbreviated. Too much is stuffed. The need for revolt is taken for granted.
With so much going on, as hunting partner Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, who is very good) steps up again, too, one gets a sense that society should be moving toward revolution in an organic, grass-roots movement to quell – a term which originates with kill – the totalitarian state. And there are signs of rising opposition, such as when an old man defiantly whistles a tune or the people of District 12 unite to voice support for the good. These moments, and counterbalancing scenes of brutality, such as slave-whipping and black-bagging people’s heads, are well done. They drive Catching Fire in the first hour. The power of ignition is even in the government’s torching of people’s private property.
So we should see sparks. Beyond the deepening bond between the leads, we don’t.
Katniss is too caught up in PTSD, despite tender moments with her true love Gale (Liam Hemsworth) and her sister Prim, who has observed her sister’s acts of bravery and chooses to act on what she’s learned. The government’s monopoly on the use of force and constant threat to use it is spoken more than depicted, with President Snow (Donald Sutherland) personally confronting Katniss. In spite of missing elements, by the time the Quell gets underway, with predictable developments and usual Capitol freaks in tow, we’re ready to witness an unwinnable game and hungry for the rise of the resistance.
The game comes with a new batch of misfits. Here, too, there are good scenes. Director Lawrence is more comfortable expressing the script in action sequences than in depicting the cause of the action – rule by brute force – in all its insidiousness. Giant waves and lightning strikes are more interesting to the director than the forces behind both – statism – which diminishes the power of the writing. In one crucial scene, an old woman demonstrates without words how love of life is what matters – more than life itself – and the theme that the old and young are interlinked in camaraderie against the omnipotent state, as both persecuted groups are in reality under the fascist ObamaCare, filters through Catching Fire. The best aspects are muted by excessive, nonessential material.
Jeffrey Wright portrays an intelligent character in the jungle-set game. His character figures out a key point that could alter the course of history and power the revolution. It’s a metaphysical fact that he abstracts and, as played in the picture, it’s brilliant and original. Even better is his character’s insight that the state-sponsored “Quell was written into law by men – and, certainly, it can be unwritten.” This goes to the core of what satiates about this series: the individual transforming government-dictated hunger into hunger for rebellion, revolt and resurgence for life. However, the revolutionary theme is treated as a twist, not as a logical swell of the Wright character’s radical philosophy.
What might have been another work of art comes off as synthetic, like the artificial arena where people are pitted against one another – another metaphor for the deathtrap ObamaCare – and forced to fight for life. The story of one woman’s revolt against tyranny advances in Catching Fire. This time, it is less powerful.
In mythology, Diana was a huntress who set upon the woods and wild animals with bow and arrows, precision in her aim and a natural desire to protect youth and life and, essentially, The Hunger Games, based on the fiction series by Suzanne Collins, is a version of her story. It isn’t fast and flashy like most of what we consume in today’s similarly-oriented movies. It is slow and subtle. As a dramatization of the individual against the state, it is a work of art.
But it is not pumped up blood porn like 300. The Hunger Games is based on reality, not fantasy. There are no speeches with lines about fighting for reason. There are no massive assaults on the senses. There are no excessively graphic scenes. There are, however, mythical animals, cunning maneuvers in life-or-death conflict and fearless warriors. It is also not laced with sex porn like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There are no lingering shots of graphic human degradation, no fundamentally, deeply damaged souls at the center, and no scene exists without a purpose that serves the plot. Writer and director Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit, Dave) stays focused on the goddess tending to herself and fighting for her life.
Reverence for life is her religion. Set in a dystopian future where the omnipotent state selects a boy and girl from 12 districts to fight to the death on live television, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), who has stepped in where her mother has failed and vowed to protect her sister, volunteers to take her younger sibling’s place for the 74th annual Hunger Games. They live in a world like We the Living of total government control (and it’s interesting that that story’s Communist regime lasted 74 years). Their mother is weary and has given up. The young sister is a hero-worshipper. Katniss, like the cat that hisses as the movie begins, is the only one who acts as if she knows she’s living in a dictatorship, except for her mate Gale (Liam Hemsworth) who is strong and gentle and wise and senses when she’s about to scratch somebody’s eyes out.
Anyone is bound to feel like that in this repulsive slave society where everything is ruled by the state. Ross deftly illustrates the insidious effect of totalitarianism on one’s spirit in the faces, the use of force and fences. When one character wonders what his life would be like if he weren’t enslaved – he doesn’t put it that way – I could feel the war-weary, economically depressed, government-controlled audience responding, relating and rooting for something good to happen. The picture depicts a dark, depressing mood and world not unlike our own. You feel the heavy weight of government control in every scene, from the propaganda film preaching brotherhood and sacrifice to total absence of music, lightness and joy. People live in total fear of the state and it shows. Watching citizens in The Hunger Games is like looking at faces in line at the TSA. People are beaten, defeated, dead. Ruled by the state.
Not Katniss. She is presented as an individual, not merely as a girl, clearly depicted as a certain type of individual – one with a heroic spirit – she gets angry. She does not submit, she tends to defy. She holds on and does not let go of hate and she hates. At the beginning, she knows it’s wrong that they’re all slaves. She hasn’t figured out how to play, let alone win, the game. But she’s working on it. She’s the something good. That she is a girl does not go unnoticed by the baker’s son Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) whose name is also called for the death contest. He is strong, sensitive and kind and knows his limits; he provides the film’s mystery, since we probably have figured out certain outcomes given the hype surrounding the movie, and it’s his story one should watch more closely for clues about the contaminating power of totalitarianism.
It is an infection, a theme which permeates The Hunger Games, from its bizarre bureaucrats (Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Toby Jones) to its three young lives – Peeta, Gale and Katniss – who bravely struggle to be true to themselves with the only power they have left: free will. The government that controls the Hunger Games sacrifices its youths while slowly draining the life out of them and it does so to pacify the population, which is hungry for the sight of a brighter future. So, the film has an advanced understanding of what it means to control people’s lives and it is impossible not to notice that those for whom this series is an obsession are like the masses in the movie; they are passive, compliant spectators who subtly, unmistakably and unconsciously sanction and support the meaning of the state’s monstrous Hunger Games. You notice this during the movie. That is an achievement.
It’s not flawless. Amid the toneless sense of dread as 24 kids kill each other one by one, there are raised questions – didn’t these kids ever watch previous Games? – and consistency issues and the state’s technology is more incredible than it would be after 74 years. But there are real, deep and serious issues played out here. While The Hunger Games is certainly derivative of stories such as “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell and “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, it carefully dramatizes nihilism in today’s culture, including our worship of the asinine – stupid TV shows about sluts and freaks – while our government gains power and sacrifices youths in endless wars about nothing as we watch shows and games about nothing.
Katniss knows that she is alone in the world. She is acutely aware in each action she takes, whether kissing a boy or drawing her bow, that she is on her own and that it is up to her to stand up and defy the state to serve her values and live on her terms. Watching her take aim at the core of the omnipotent state when no one else will – with a climax that captures the unconquerable human spirit – is an amazing and searing dramatic accomplishment. At the end – by being true to herself – she may be less alone than she thinks. The Hunger Games, which is too clever and subtle for its own good, is part of a rich history in dystopian-themed filmmaking about the classic theme of the individual against the government – 1984, V for Vendetta, The Mortal Storm, Agora, Doctor Zhivago, The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl, We the Living (all of which should be seen, especially now) – and it earns a place with every sound of the death cannon that hits you hard and makes you feel hollow below your chest. As any story against government control should.
Author’s Note
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Lionsgate’s second installment in the series based on the young adult fiction literary series by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, is not as satisfying as the first movie, which I reviewed here. The film, a two and a half hour episode titled Catching Fire, is too static. There are fine moments, scenes and themes – how could there not be with the West being on track toward dictatorship and the studio bringing on top talent to create this movie? – but the story is promised more than it is delivered.