The Hunger Games (2012)

Terry's Grade: C

Is this thing over yet?

I don't read a lot, really, so I don't often see movie versions of books I've already read. Hunger Games does illustrate some of the problems those movies face, though; in translating page to screen, it's important to make the transition from telling to showing. The script to this movie is true in every major way to the novel, and this might be one of its biggest problems. It's almost omission by inclusion; every character gets his time on screen (no matter how briefly), and as a result hardly any characters get their due. A book has the leisure to  fill in background and explain motivations; on the screen, we get only what we see.

Halfway through the movie, I was convinced that director Gary Ross didn't have all the necessary tools to direct a feature film. The story starts in the poverty-stricken, coal-mining District 12, then quickly moves via high-speed rail to the wealthy, narcissistic, over-styled capital of Panem. Both of these settings provide wonderful opportunities to illustrate the post-apocalyptic dystopia that Susanne Collins has created, and the art department doesn't disappoint; aside from a few wooden telephone posts and an electric fence, District 12 looks like 19th-century Appalachia, down to the hand-stitched dresses worn by the coal miners' daughters. And in the capital, every single individual has his or her own unique color palette--blue ponytails, gold eyeliner, purple suits, and facial hair trimmed to millimeter specifications. But it's extremely hard to appreciate the set design through Tom Stern's hand-held-camera shudders, close-zoom pans, and the unrelenting two-second-cut editing. When capital guards forcefully separate our heroine from her family, I don't want to see a close-up of a leather glove: I can get that anywhere (like on a Spinal Tap album cover). I want to see the juxtaposition of a white-uniformed, well-fed, soldier and a broken-down mother and her two starving children. By "juxtaposition", I mean put them all on the screen at the same time, dammit. These shots are so over-edited, it makes the movie feel cheap, as though the director is trying to hide something. It's a style that doesn't match the budget, or the subject.

In a way, these are some daring directorial decisions; the formula in a  movie like this would be to start off slow, emphasizing the quietness and simplicity of home life before before building up to the shock and excess of urbanity and finally the furious brutality of the games. Paradoxically, the over-editing of the first act gives the opening of the movie a plodding feeling. Every scene feels the same, and the audience isn't given a chance to develop any emotional investment in the characters and their circumstances. The problem with daring decisions is that sometimes they just don't pay off.

Fortunately, things get much better after the games start, when the subject matter finally catches up with the director's style. Curiously, at this point we also start to see a directorial range that was lacking in the first forty-five minutes. When Katniss is stung by a "tracker-jacker" wasp, she is thrown into a hallucinatory stupor, stumbling through the wilderness like a hippie on acid, and having flashing back (in one of the few scenes that manages to strike an emotional note) to the death of her father in a coal mining accident. And when a fellow tribute and ally dies, the film slows just long enough for Katniss to lovingly decorate her corpse with wildflowers.

As a fellow film-goer noted, the makers of this film didn't really have to work hard in order to get the fans out to the theaters. But I seriously wonder if they've worked hard enough to get us to come back for parts 2 and 3. On a radio interview, I heard Jennifer Lawrence joke that her character would be played by Hillary Swank in the future. In the same interview, Lawrence discussed her hesitation to take on a role that had the potential to define her entire career. For her sake, I hope she isn't remembered for being Katniss Everdeen. She's a good, maybe great, actress, but it's slight praise to say that she's the best part of a mediocre movie.