Note: This appeared in the TV Guide of the print edition of The Marshall Independent.
After a number of so-so to absolutely dreadful adaptations of classical myths over the past few years, finally there’s a movie that does an intelligent job of adapting myth to screen.
A living myth resonates enough to be reinterpreted in subsequent generations. In this case Theseus and the Minotaur, the story of the seven youths and seven maidens Athens was forced to give to Minos, King of Crete to be fed to a monster.
“The Hunger Games,” based on the book by Suzanne Collins, is set in a post-apocalyptic future. The 12 districts of Panem are ruled from The Capitol in the Rocky Mountains. The Capitol is rich and conspicuously decadent, the districts that feed it are grindingly poor.
Every year two “tributes,” a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18, are chosen by lot from each district to participate in The Hunger Games. The twenty-four contestants are released in a wilderness area to fight for survival, until only one is left.
District 12 resident, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a dirt-poor woods girl and huntress who volunteers for the games in place of her 12-year-old sister Primrose (Willow Shields.)
The other tribute from District 12 is an upper-class (for the district) boy Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson,) who has been seriously crushing on Katniss for a long time. But even if they both survive all the other contestants, they’ll have to fight it out among themselves. This lends itself to a certain amount of romantic tension.
Oh yes, and while Peeta is crazy about Katniss, Katniss is sort of attached to a boy back home.
Katniss and Peeta are escorted to The Capitol where they are mentored by Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson,) the only living winner of the games from District 12. Their district hasn’t won in a long time, and whiskey-swilling Haymitch tells them up-front he doesn’t expect that to change any time soon.
Nonetheless, someting about Katniss inspires Haymitch, and Cinna (Lenny Kravitz) an image-consultant who volunteers to groom her and teach her how to win the masses over.
OK, that takes you through the first 15-20 minutes, before you’re even in the Game. The set-up is very skillfully done, and now you’re at ease in Panem.
Aside from the story of Theseus, the movie owes much to previous murderous-game-shows-in-a-dystopian future movies, such as “The Running Man,” and numerous reality shows.
There’s an underlying theme exploring what the role of mass entertainment is in keeping the masses subjugated. “Panem” is an allusion to the Latin, “panem et circenses,” (bread and circuses,”) referring to the dole and gladiatorial games the rulers of ancient Rome kept the masses content with. It doesn’t beat you over the head with pop-sociology though, thank you very much!
Lawrence is convincing as Katniss. She learned to skin squirrels, chop wood, and fight for her role in Winter’s Bone (2010) and it shows. Watch for her in the future. She’s better than beautiful, she’s talented.
Donald Sutherland has a cool, understated presence as President Coriolanus Snow. Harrelson is great as the survivor anesthetizing his pain with liquor, redeemed by a chance to strike back at the system that wounded him almost to madness. Kravitz can act, who knew? And Hutcherson is an adorably goofy love-struck teen.
There have been questions raised about how appropriate it is for children to see teenagers killing each other. My first reaction was, “What do you think war is but teenagers killing each other?”
But the violence is mostly shown with a soft focus or indirect angle, with some exception. I am of two minds about this, caught midway between a disgust with violence porn, and worry that sanitized violence gives an unrealistic idea of what violent death really looks like. (Katniss shoots an enemy with a bow, and the guy drops dead right there and then. Ask any bow hunter how likely that is.)
At any rate, it looks like you’ll have an opportunity to find out for yourselves. The movie played to a packed house, and there are two sequels: “Catching Fire,” and “Mockingjay,” in Collins’ trilogy.