The Hunger Games
is a ridiculous film made plausible through its singularity of vision and the
brilliant casting of Jennifer Lawrence, an actress who is rocketing her way
toward Can Do No Wrong (CDNW) status.
The film is a take on the conceit of Battle Royale, which was a take on The Most Dangerous Game. In The Most Dangerous
Game and all the films that copy it, people are the quarry for hunters
either rich or alien, which is basically the same thing as far as the films are
concerned. In Battle Royale, contemporary Japanese high school kids are trapped
on an island and must hunt one another until only one remains. In The
Hunger Games, a random selection of teenagers from the provinces of a
dystopian future America are forced to fight for survival amongst themselves in
a high-tech dome that happens to replicate our heroine’s home environment of
Appalachia.
By backing off from Battle
Royale’s unflinching brutality, The
Hunger Games allows the audience to maintain a kind of distance. We know that kids are killing kids, but
Battle Royale puts the horror front
and center through grisly, unsettling practical effects. The
Hunger Games, on the other hand, shows us enough to get the point across
while keeping enough back to maintain its tone as a grim adventure, vice
nightmare-inducing horror show.
Further, The Hunger Games
creates distance through its setting in a ridiculous future, one in which the
ruling class prances about in laughable costumes and makeup that we barely
accept only because its members are portrayed by gifted professionals such as Stanley
Tucci and Elizabeth Banks.
It keeps the distance in check through its conviction. The film never winks at the audience,
it builds and maintains its world consistently, and it shines in the casting of
its star, Jennifer Lawrence.
Lawrence, who broke out in the magnificent independent film Winter’s Bone and showed that she could
hold her own with performers like Kevin Bacon and Michael Fassbender in the
tentpole X-Men: First Class, brings
an earthy realism and courage to her role as Katniss Everdeen, a young woman
who volunteers to compete in the eponymous games in place of her younger
sister. She comes across as smart
and resourceful and completely engaged, and she takes us along with her because
if she buys in, why shouldn’t we?
The result is a successful film, one that creates a
consistent world, populates it with interesting people, and makes us care about
what happens to them. I understand
that The Hunger Games is to be the
first of a franchise. I look
forward to the further adventures of Katniss Everdeen. This film made me believe in her.
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