Let me preface this by saying that, omfg, Hunger Games! I haven't been this excited about a movie for years. Years. I went on about it so much that not only did my wife buy us tickets a week in advance (as one of her characteristically awesome surprise gifts) but she started reading the books.
I love Katniss Everdeen (more in the first book than the others): she's socially awkward – and not in an adorkable Zooey Deschanel way – sullen and bitey. I love Peeta: he's good-hearted and not an alpha male but he's also savvy and sharp. I love dystopia, I love Capitol fashion and most of all, I bloody love Battle Royale.
So, yes, there were many things I was primed to love about the movie, but there were others that either only came through on screen or hit me a lot harder than they had on the page.
The most exciting of these, as my wife pointed out as we left the cinema, was that Katniss – who lives completely in her own head, and may be the least expressive protagonist in the history of film – forces filmmakers into 'show don't tell' mode. I've read a couple of internet comments saying they'd have liked to have her narrate the film. I'm profoundly glad she didn't. The list below, however, consists of a few more specific high points.
1. The only 'hot' is actual, genuine fire
Not a single pretty face in that movie, I swear. If I was in the habit of playing 'hot or not' the only characters I'd grade as 'above average'* were Katniss, Gale and Cato. OK, Rue was adorable, but not toothache inducingly so. That's four out of a cast of hundreds (including extras), and the rest of them were pleasantly average. No one, not even Glimmer (who I expected to be a supermodel) or Prim (who I expected to be so sweet and pretty she made me sick) was hotter than you'd plausibly expect to see in a crowd of people.
This would be enough of a win for me if it was just about the verisimilitude but it was incredibly refreshing to see a film that in no way made the assumption that to be interesting or worth the audience's attention, a character had to be attractive. In fact, I think there was a message: looks were irrelevant. A pretty face wasn't going to keep you alive, and most importantly it wasn't a measure of moral worth.
Heroes weren't beautiful and villains were neither sexy nor repulsive, and the supporting cast weren't pretty just because it was (presumably? Supposedly?) more fun to look at. Admittedly, good looks did seem to be an indicator of good health (hence Katniss and Gale – the hunters – are the most attractive of the downtrodden, malnourished residents of 12 and in general, those in the Capitol are more attractive than those in the districts). Given that it was only a general tendency and not a universal law (Marvel and Clove: decidedly average), I'm not even going to take issue with that.
It's also going to be nice to be able to tell the difference between characters who are meant to be mouth-wateringly hot (hi Finnick!) by looking at them, instead of counting the characters fawning over them.
2. Katniss isn't a superhero
Katniss doesn't get things. Katniss screws up. She misses shots. She gets by because she's good, not because she's superlative. Her success is neither about being so damn good it's sickening nor about 'trying really hard until she overcomes' or the power of friendship or any of the other fallbacks that occasionally make me wish I could ever get back the time I lost watching a film. It's about being good enough at a certain number of things and to some extent getting lucky.
The girl has a lot of flaws, and not just ones that advance the plot (you know all those romantic comedies where the 'clumsy' girl spills her drink on the man she'll be married to in ninety minutes' time? Yeah. Not that.) but the one that impressed me most, I think, was her archery. Katniss is a hunter. It's her thing. Everyone knows it's why she has a shot in hell at winning the Games… and yet I lost count of the number of times a shot didn't quite do what she wanted it to.
Most importantly, when Katniss gets it wrong, she really gets it wrong: she misses shots in practice, she misses them when it doesn't matter, not just at breathtakingly important super-dramatic moments. She misses them not because it's exciting but because she's just plain not good enough not to.
3. Panem is a whole world of pain
I've said before that Katniss is not a particularly expressive girl… but it's not just what shows on the outside: she's narrowed down the range of things she allows herself to feel until it pretty much comes down to caring for Prim (or Prim substitutes).
Katniss is lucky. Katniss gets a way out, that she even gets to fix the shape of herself. She's surrounded by people who, if she'd died in the arena, would never, ever have been able to say that: they'd have been locked into horrible, inescapable personal tragedies.
- Prim (is pretty sure she's) going to see her sister die in her place. For her. Because Katniss knew she couldn't take care of herself. Someone was willing to die for her and she has to watch it happen on a big screen, along with everyone she knows… who, for the rest of her life, will always know that she's the girl whose sister died for her.
- Katniss' mother is going to lose a child, after only recently dragging herself up from a total breakdown. A proper one. It's manifestly obvious that Mrs. Everdeen is broken… and Katniss can't even acknowledge that… and now a woman who couldn't stand to lose one person she cared about is going to have to live through it all again – and, as Katniss tells her, she can't tune out again.
- Peeta's mother doesn't care whether he lives or dies. Before he gets to the Capitol this boy's just heard his own mother outright say that she knows he's going to die and she's OK with that – and that it's not even the most important part of the situation. Oh yeah… he also has to either live with knowing the girl he loves died so he could live or face the prospect that he's going to die and she might not make it anyway.
- Haymitch is about to watch another pair of kids die, and he's both supposed to prevent that and powerless to do so.
None of these storylines are focal. None of them are even declared: you're just left to sit there, staring at the screen, and realising that life in Panem is horrible in ways that go far beyond starvation and electric fences.
The Hunger Games is a beautiful piece of filmmaking, and a great lesson in the subtle impact that can be achieved by not talking down to (or in some cases even directly talking to) your audience. If it needed drumming home any more, it's a lesson in how well this works in YA fiction. It's a lesson, therefore, that should absolutely be carried through to every piece of general or genre fiction ever written for adults. Especially by me. Lesson learned.
* Clearly, this is a derivative version with a more complex, semantic scale.
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~ by catherineevansgist on March 26, 2012.
Posted in Film, I think I'm clever
Tags: Film, Someone else wrote this, The Hunger Games
