A Future Where Entertainment is Brought to Deadly Extremes

Reality television, for some reason, has been one of the biggest viewer-grabbers in the history of the medium.  It seems like that for every creative television drama or comedy, there are 100 reality shows that make you embarrassed to be human.  TV series that expose some of the worst in its subjects have been bombarding our home entertainment for the past few years.  The characters are either inebriated, fighting, sleeping around or engaging in any other mischief in order to hog the camera.

In a post-apocalyptic North America, reality television is as in-demand as ever, but it's frightfully different.  Instead of the characters wallowing in alcohol, debauchery and mistakes that they will regret in the morning, they are pitted against each other in a cruel test of survival that's televised to a national audience.  In director Gary Ross' The Hunger Games, based on the first book in Suzanne Collins' marvelously addictive trilogy, the film provides an alarming atmosphere that has a very different feel from the text.  We are positioned in front of a screen, much like the viewers in the movie, and are forced to watch what happens.  It's a visceral view of the depravity that people are willing to sink down to in order to survive.

In the nation of Panem, the 12 districts that cater to the Capitol instigated a failed rebellion against their oppressors 74 years ago.  As penance for their defiance, the Capitol creates a yearly event where each district picks one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12 and18, out of a lottery, or "the Reaping."  The two teenagers are then taken to the Capitol, where they are trained to fight in a death-match where only one can emerge victorious.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a 16-year-old living in District 12, the poorest and coal-mining district of the Capitol.  She loves to hunt with her best friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth), and provides for her family with the game she finds.  When the 74th Hunger Games has its lottery, Katniss' younger sister, Prim (Willow Shields), gets picked as the female tribute.  Desperate to keep her safe, Katniss heroically volunteers to take her place.  Once Katniss and District 12's male tribute, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), are selected, they are brought to the Capitol to train for the games.  Once they are put into the arena, Katniss will do everything she can in order to survive and get back to her family.

Jennifer Lawrence's performance utters a few echoes of her breakout role from the 2010 indie drama, Winter's Bone.  Both characters come from impoverished households and dangerous surroundings, and they both must provide for their families when there isn't anyone else who will.  Lawrence's physique and superlative acting abilities (she is an actress well beyond her years) build Katniss into a strong and independent female character for the screen, just as Suzanne Collins did with her heroine for the page.  Lawrence fluently translates Katniss' tough-girl survivalist personality that made her character so emulative when we were first introduced to her in the book.  She is prodigious with a bow and arrow to the point where she resembles a Robin Hood for her dystopian society.  Lawrence covers every emotion that Katniss should feel in her world.  Everything is there, from her sense of comfort when she's hunting with Gale, to her poignant sacrifice for her sister, to her dazed and confused expression when she begins her interview in front of the Capitol.  When she's about to go into the arena, she is visibly shaking, and our hearts beat with her's as she's brought onto the killing grounds.

Josh Hutcherson has gradually become a mature actor, especially ever since he had a role in the 2010 comedy, The Kids Are All Right.  With Jennifer Lawrence, the couple sticks very close to the relationship dynamics that the two share in the novel.  Before the games, Katniss and Peeta don't have any sort of past besides a brief act of kindness.  Afterwards, Lawrence and Hutcherson skillfully carry the heightened romantic tension once they're characters are in the games, with Katniss trying to play on their status as "star-crossed lovers," and with Peeta who has genuine feelings for his fellow tribute.

Similar to the Harry Potter films that are stacked with countless famous British actors, The Hunger Games comes with an array of experienced American actors.  There is Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, the sprightly escort for the District 12 tributes.  Stanley Tucci plays Caesar Flickerman, the cheerful interviewer of the tributes who knows how to please his audience.  He has a personality as sparkly as the blue suit he dons.  Woody Harrelson is the film's comic center as Haymatch Abernathy, the boozy mentor of Katniss and Peeta.  Lenny Kravitz is splendid as Katniss' sympathetic and compassionate stylist whose clothes eventually make her into the Girl on Fire.  Donald Sutherlnad is shiver-inducing as the quietly ruthless President Snow, an apt name for his cold persona.

Another supporting cast in the film comes in the form of the four Career tributes, those who are trained from an early age to partake in the games.  They are led by the sadistic Cato (Alexander Ludwig).  These tributes take glee in their slaughter, and are a constant danger.  There is a scene where they are chasing Katniss through the arena, and they are laughing and acting playful with her.  This is a disturbing juxtaposition with their true intentions to kill her.  These contestants are unrestrained in their thrills of their kill.

The costuming and make-up are among the film's most memorable aspects, especially for that of the Capitol citizens.  They are dressed in colorful (and I mean colorful) clothing, with each outfit trying to outdo the other.  Their impressively bizarre make-up, along with their costumes, highlight how privileged they are in the never-ending good life that they all share.

The music, composed by James Newton Howard, is wonderful in the ways it's used and not used.  The main part of the opening music consists of a few strums of a guitar that reflects the simple, Southern atmosphere of District 12.   None of the music is used in one of the most important scenes: the Reaping.  This plays as a benefit to this sequence.  All we hear are the sounds of footsteps on gravel as the citizens attend the bleak event, distant voices and the piercing silence as the characters, and ourselves, wait for the names to be called.

Cinematographer Tom Stern's dominant filming technique for The Hunger Games is the handheld camera.  It works very well in the scenes depicting the games.  One of those sequences in particular is when the tributes enter the arena.  As they run to the Cornucopia, a pile of gifts consisting of survival essentials, there are quick cuts and unsettling camera movements that capture the overall sense of danger and emphasize the frantic actions that these teenagers take in order to survive the first blood-splattering moments of the games. However, the unsteady-camera approach is used a bit excessively.  It should have been used only for the scenes that the citizens of Panem get to view on television, such as the Reaping, the tribute interviews and the actual games, since these are the parts of the film that simulate the experience of watching a merciless reality show.  It wasn't needed for the scenes that happen outside of what appears on Panem's broadcasting.

The story cleverly adds some elements of reality television that we see today, such as the ostentatious costumes worn by the contestants in the tribute parade and the interviews, the romance between Katniss and Peeta that's staged in order to please the audience and the way how the games' control-center influences what goes on the arena, all to give the audience what it wants.

The screenplay, by Suzanne Collins, Gary Ross and Billy Ray, is one of the most faithful book-to-film adaptations to come out in a while.  Despite a few minor changes, the original story is nearly all there, most likely because of Collins' help with the script.  It's transparent that the screenwriters have the second installment in mind because they add a few scenes that are not in the first book, in order to provide a vision of what's to come in Catching Fire.  The character of President Snow comes to mind.  He appears more in the film than the book.  The extra scenes give us a greater perspective of Snow, and provide us with a taste of how big a threat he will pose to Katniss in the next movie.  There is also a glimpse of an uprising in District 11 that also helps to put future events in motion.

Before The Hunger Games, the last movie Ross directed was Seabiscuit, and that was nine years ago.  Besides that, the only other time her sat in the director's chair was when he made Pleasantville in 1998.  Because of his limited projects as a director, it was a challenge to predict the vision that he would bring to this futuristic, war-ravaged society.  Fortunately, he keeps the edginess of the source material and doesn't water-down the violence that provides a view into the extensiveness of the brutality that the Capitol pushes on the tributes.  With his working close with Suzanne Collins, the two retain the story's ideas that have kept readers obsessively flipping through the pages.  He competently handles his many actors and manages to have them give spot-on portrayals of how these characters conduct themselves in the novel.  The film's observations of reality television are handled just as adeptly.  That genre of TV doesn't make the viewer think, but the reality-television aspect in The Hunger Games does, and that's what makes the film a haunting social commentary.

Final grade: A-