"Hunger Games," but first ...
Saw Hunger Games last night, and enjoyed it immensely, but before I ramble about that, go read read my wife's brilliant essay:
The Fifth Wall: Strategies of the Self in Ginsberg, Plath, Neruda & Rilke
, over on Radius. I'll wait.
Done? Good, because when you're talking about Hunger Games, you're talking about perspective. In Suzanne Collins' novel, the story is told exclusively from Katniss Everdeen's perspective, and in a lot of ways, that obscures the ramifications of events and actions throughout the book. the misery of District 12 is inferred from the way Katniss lives -- poaching to survive, living in fear of authority, dealing with having to take care of a young sister and a traumatized, mostly absent mother. Her view of the world outside District 12 is shaped exclusively by television ... and even then, mostly through previous Hunger Games, televised gladiatorial events were teenagers are forced to fight to the death as punishment for a rebellion 74 years previous. In a lot of ways, her world is small, and because we only have her as a guide, that's all we know of it. We only know misery. Oh, we get flashes of the outside world -- the security transport that flies overhead while she and Gale are hunting shows us that not everything in her world is as rural and poverty stricken as her surroundings, but it's not until Katniss is taken off to compete in the Hunger Games that she and the reader get a sense of the disparity between her district and the capital.
The movie does little to change this, and indeed, may tell us less about Katniss' dystopic country of Panem, as it doesn't offer much of the train ride from District 12 to the capitol, where she sees much of the country for the first time. It's a small thing, but it shows the limitations of telling a story such as this exclusively from the perspective of one character, either in fiction or in film. Thankfully, the film breaks away from that perspective from time to time, giving us glimpses of the machinations of political power players such as Seneca Crane and Coriolanus Snow, allowing us to see Haymitch wheeling and dealing on Katniss' and Peeta's behalf. Because these things are happening outside of Katniss' vantage, she only finds out about them afterward, or through inference (for instance, when Haymitch is able to convince a sponsor to send her something.)
Events in both the book and the film are often bewildering because Katniss has little understanding of how or why things happen. Indeed, she often doesn't even know the names of the teenager's she's competing against, either not finding it out until they make an impression on her by being either an ally, such as Rue, or a menace, such as Cato. Some names she only learns after they die. Some she never learns at all.
That anonymity is a strange thing, how these young people are expected to fight and kill each other but, really, have no idea who each other are. Less so the people watching them on television, and in many cases, less so those of us watching the movie or reading the book. It's an odd, understated reality, one that parallels chillingly when you, say, watch war reports on the nightly news as though it were a reality TV program. Living people become characters in a story, and a wall gets built between them and the audience.
But are the characters' lives and deaths without consequence, whether we or Katniss learn their names? Katniss herself is oblivious to the idea that her actions have any consequence in the outside world, preoccupied as she is with survival. There glimpses, of course. In the book, a gift delivered unexpectedly as a token of gratitude foreshadows Katniss' actions rippling throughout the real world. In the movie, we simply see the repercussions itself, and I'm not sure which is stronger storytelling, but it does set up the events of the second two chapters nicely.
Without spoiling anything, it becomes clear throughout both the book and the movie that, for all the violence, it's Katniss' actions of bravery and sacrifice, kindness and love that ripple furthest out into the world, with the most transformative effects ... effects she herself is largely unaware of.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed the movie immensely, even if it is "CliffsNotes to the Hunger Games" (much as the Harry Potter film franchise was really "CliffsNotes to Harry Potter.") I suspect it's a movie best enjoyed when you've read the books and can fill in the gaps yourself. Aside from the occasional shift in perspective, the film doesn't really deviate much from Collins' novel at all. Which is fine. Jennifer Lawrence is extremely compelling as Katniss, even if the viewer is left to discern what's going on inside the stoic character's head without the benefit of the novel's internal monologue. You can see, in her performance, why Katniss is a hero that's struck such a chord with readers over the past few years. There's an immense sense of too much responsibility being placed on the shoulders of the very young, and of that weight escalating to terrible proportions and, ultimately, still being accepted. Katniss is handy with a bow and arrow, sure, but that's not what makes her a compelling hero. She herself would probably not see herself that way, but then, heroism is often a matter of perspective.
Done? Good, because when you're talking about Hunger Games, you're talking about perspective. In Suzanne Collins' novel, the story is told exclusively from Katniss Everdeen's perspective, and in a lot of ways, that obscures the ramifications of events and actions throughout the book. the misery of District 12 is inferred from the way Katniss lives -- poaching to survive, living in fear of authority, dealing with having to take care of a young sister and a traumatized, mostly absent mother. Her view of the world outside District 12 is shaped exclusively by television ... and even then, mostly through previous Hunger Games, televised gladiatorial events were teenagers are forced to fight to the death as punishment for a rebellion 74 years previous. In a lot of ways, her world is small, and because we only have her as a guide, that's all we know of it. We only know misery. Oh, we get flashes of the outside world -- the security transport that flies overhead while she and Gale are hunting shows us that not everything in her world is as rural and poverty stricken as her surroundings, but it's not until Katniss is taken off to compete in the Hunger Games that she and the reader get a sense of the disparity between her district and the capital.
The movie does little to change this, and indeed, may tell us less about Katniss' dystopic country of Panem, as it doesn't offer much of the train ride from District 12 to the capitol, where she sees much of the country for the first time. It's a small thing, but it shows the limitations of telling a story such as this exclusively from the perspective of one character, either in fiction or in film. Thankfully, the film breaks away from that perspective from time to time, giving us glimpses of the machinations of political power players such as Seneca Crane and Coriolanus Snow, allowing us to see Haymitch wheeling and dealing on Katniss' and Peeta's behalf. Because these things are happening outside of Katniss' vantage, she only finds out about them afterward, or through inference (for instance, when Haymitch is able to convince a sponsor to send her something.)
Events in both the book and the film are often bewildering because Katniss has little understanding of how or why things happen. Indeed, she often doesn't even know the names of the teenager's she's competing against, either not finding it out until they make an impression on her by being either an ally, such as Rue, or a menace, such as Cato. Some names she only learns after they die. Some she never learns at all.
That anonymity is a strange thing, how these young people are expected to fight and kill each other but, really, have no idea who each other are. Less so the people watching them on television, and in many cases, less so those of us watching the movie or reading the book. It's an odd, understated reality, one that parallels chillingly when you, say, watch war reports on the nightly news as though it were a reality TV program. Living people become characters in a story, and a wall gets built between them and the audience.
But are the characters' lives and deaths without consequence, whether we or Katniss learn their names? Katniss herself is oblivious to the idea that her actions have any consequence in the outside world, preoccupied as she is with survival. There glimpses, of course. In the book, a gift delivered unexpectedly as a token of gratitude foreshadows Katniss' actions rippling throughout the real world. In the movie, we simply see the repercussions itself, and I'm not sure which is stronger storytelling, but it does set up the events of the second two chapters nicely.
Without spoiling anything, it becomes clear throughout both the book and the movie that, for all the violence, it's Katniss' actions of bravery and sacrifice, kindness and love that ripple furthest out into the world, with the most transformative effects ... effects she herself is largely unaware of.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed the movie immensely, even if it is "CliffsNotes to the Hunger Games" (much as the Harry Potter film franchise was really "CliffsNotes to Harry Potter.") I suspect it's a movie best enjoyed when you've read the books and can fill in the gaps yourself. Aside from the occasional shift in perspective, the film doesn't really deviate much from Collins' novel at all. Which is fine. Jennifer Lawrence is extremely compelling as Katniss, even if the viewer is left to discern what's going on inside the stoic character's head without the benefit of the novel's internal monologue. You can see, in her performance, why Katniss is a hero that's struck such a chord with readers over the past few years. There's an immense sense of too much responsibility being placed on the shoulders of the very young, and of that weight escalating to terrible proportions and, ultimately, still being accepted. Katniss is handy with a bow and arrow, sure, but that's not what makes her a compelling hero. She herself would probably not see herself that way, but then, heroism is often a matter of perspective.
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