Lene Trunjer Petersen
The Silhouette
The highly anticipated sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is an impressive film that demonstrates what all the new teen-series productions should do – produce stories with substance and excellent actors.
Admittedly, I haven’t read Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy. Even so, the fist film’s dystopian setting impressed me and the sequel is even darker. I love how the films toy with our growing need for reality TV, making me question whether or not I myself participate in this pop-cultural phenomenon, just by watching The Hunger Games. Inside the arena, combatants kill each other in a vicious manner, but I still watch.
Catching Fire picks up where The Hunger Games ended. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) are back in District 12 awaiting their Victor’s Tour. Haunted by nightmares from being in the arena, Katniss must face the consequences of her and Peeta’s supposed love story.
Before going on their tour, however, Katniss has a surprising meeting with President Snow (Donald Sutherland). He warns her that her actions in the arena have inspired revolutionary ideas, which he, of course, is not interested in. The whole idea of the Hunger Games is to keep the masses under control. If Katniss does not play her part as ‘lovesick’ tribute, President Snow will eradicate District 12.
Naturally, the Victor’s Tour is not a success and the new game master suggests a different approach to the 75th Annual Hunger Games, referred to as The Quarter Quell. Instead of finding new tributes, President Snow summons previous winners in the hope that Katniss will die in the arena.
Back in the Capital, Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) tells Katniss and Peeta that the arena is not a “kids game” anymore, and the previous winners are definitely stronger and more ambitious than the opponents they faced before.
At the official presentation of the tributes, they demonstrate their aversion to the games, just as Peeta attempts to get Katniss out by telling everyone that she is pregnant. Nevertheless, the next day they all find themselves in a new arena, a stunning setting shot in Hawaii.
It is hard not to be impressed by 23-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, who acts with an intensity that jumps right out of the screen and lingers in your thoughts for days. Lawrence portrays Katniss with a wide range of emotions that makes her character authentic and convincing. Everybody wants to use Katniss, whether it is as a face for or against the revolution, but all she really wants is to protect her family.
It must be difficult for Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), who in the first film seemed to be nothing more than a supporting character. But I must admit that Peeta has found his own voice in Catching Fire. He is not a confused kid anymore, but has figured out what his strengths are, and he seems to be the one who keeps Katniss focused in the game. Hutcherson is definitely playing up to Lawrence and the two of them make an excellent tribute couple, with lots of problems to work out.
Catching Fire exceeds The Hunger Games and it is not a typical teen-film. It debates such themes as revolution, government control, torture and oppression, which are all mingled with a realty show, and it shows how hope can light up even a dark, apocalyptic world like Panem.
4/5
The Hunger Games
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci
Directed by: Gary Ross
3 out of 5
Myles Herod
Entertainment Editor
Sourced from a series of popular teen-lit novels by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games could have easily succumbed to the wretched excess and brain-dead nothingness of the Twilight franchise.
Fortunately, at about 20 minutes in, director Gary Ross’ adaptation makes it clear that consideration was procured for its cinematic crossover, affording depth rather than the expense of a cashed-in afterthought.
Stretched across a two and a half hour span, the film’s alternative universe begins in District 12, a rural, working-poor slum that Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) calls home.
Consciously or not, the texture and dankness of the backwater setting echoes Lawrence’s Oscar nominated role in Winter’s Bone, complete with shaky cam, bedraggled locales and the image of Katniss mothering her younger sister Prim (Willow Shields) in the surrounding decay.
Despite some significant ho-hum clichés of Hollywood’s ubiquitous grasp, the sense that director Ross has a lean vision for his fantastical setting (fastened in real-world plight) makes for a credible thrust of high-concept duality between entertainment and creativity.
With most of North America obliterated, the land of Panem still remains, governed by an opulent totalitarian regime situated in the “Capitol.”
Every year, the “powers that be” (headed by a sinister, and always superb, Donald Sutherland) summon one boy and girl from each of the 12 districts to compete as “tributes” in a gladiatorial clash of death.
When young Prim’s name is called to lead, Katniss nobly takes her place, partnered with the male tribute, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), a physically fit but weak-willed bread-boy, seemingly naive for survival.
Relying on her archer instincts and the mentorship of a drunken former Hunger Games victor, Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson sporting a blonde, Kurt Cobain wig), Katniss is literally throw into a war-torn hell where fate and fatality tango.
When stripped from its phenomenal popularity, The Hunger Games basically boils down to familiar storytelling. Apart from the obvious comparison to Kinji Fukasaku’s bloodsoaked cult piece Battle Royale, one can point out borrowings from the lovable ‘80s cheese of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s The Running Man, Peter Weir’s prophetic The Truman Show, and even scrapings of Goosebumps, a televised teenage horror program of the 1990s.
It helps that both Ross and author Suzanne Collins penned the screenplay together. The content is thematically dark, and its allegorical elements are finely executed, highlighting the way in which the televised ‘games’ critique today’s obsession with reality entertainment.
The depicted on-air bloodbath represents the Capitol’s twisted idea of cultural normality, disturbingly serving as a timely and effective parable of today’s perverse couch potato comfort.
Oddly, my favourite parts of the film have nothing to do with its carnage or combat, but rather Philip Messina’s production design. Impressive in creating bold set-pieces and corrupt decadence, The Hunger Games’ off kilter look comes personified in Stanley Tucci’s role as Panem’s televised host, Cesar Flickerman.
Channeling the Joker and a pill popping Jay Leno, he interviews each challenger before battle, embodying the film’s eccentric style in an arena akin to American Idol.
Like any movie of this magnitude, there are portions to nit-pick. The climax is forced, and the life-saving plot devices are contrived, but it’s tolerable because Ross commendably pushes the film as far as it can go.
While it’s not art, there’s something encouraging about a well-executed adaptation of pop fiction that plays to the fans as well as the uninitiated.
