Viva Riva!

Viva Riva! is the first Congolese film I’ve seen.  It tells the story of Riva, a small-time operator and scumbag trying to outrace a bunch of other scumbags who want his MacGuffin.

The MacGuffin, in a Congolese twist, is a tanker-truck full of stolen gasoline.  Gasoline, you see, is in short supply, and prices are only going up.  Who wants it?  Why, the criminals from whom he stole it.  Who’s going to help him keep it or sell it?  Who’s going to try to take it away?  Who’s going to win?  Sit back, ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy the show.

Your enjoyment, I think, will depend on the degree to which you sympathize with Riva.  Unfortunately, I didn’t care for him one bit.  In fact, I found him odious in nearly every way, not only for the damage he did to himself (which is his business) but for the damage he did to everyone who cared about him and all of their families.  Additionally, he wasn’t charming or invitingly evil – he was just a scumbag, with scumbag tastes and scumbag plans.  I couldn’t even root for a good guy to put him in his place, as Viva Riva! is a film about people of varying degrees of badness.

That said, this is a professional film, one that could easily have been created by a more mature national production industry.  It provides a window into life in Kinsasha that most of us would not otherwise enjoy.  It moves briskly and earns its ending.  Viva Riva! did not work for me, but you might love it.

The Hunger Games

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.