Catching Fire (Film Review)
When I watched The Hunger Games, I hadn't read the trilogy of novels, which I find is the better way of watching a film based on a book, because you're not conscious of anything that isn't there, you only focus on what's there, and take the story as given (for good or ill). But I couldn't help myself in the intervening year, I had to read the books, and thus I am no longer unspoiled. Will try to separate spoilers for Mockingjay from the rest of the review to protect the lucky innocent, though.
Both film and book have the "middle chapter" problem, if course, i.e.: it's not the beginning of a story, and it's not the ending, you're never going to leave the cinema with a sense of completion because part of the point of the story is the build up to the next part. With that general premise in mind, I still wish they'd departed a bit more from the novel at the end - showed us, for example, the destroyed District 12 and/or Peeta and Johanna as captives of the Capitol, just a brief glimpse, instead of, as in the novel, Katniss being told that District 12 was destroyed or that Peeta and Johanna were taken prisoner. It's a visual medium, and the film has the advantage of not being limited to the first person narrative the novels are in, so why not? It wouldn't mean additional screentime, I'm just talking about a few brief montage like glimpses.
With that nitpick out of the way: the wintery surroundings in the first half of the film don't just make for a good contrast for the tropic like landscape of the arena later but with the last movie, and they enhance the sense of fear, desperation and rage during the Victor's Tour sequence through the disctricts. The District 11 visit, starting from the moment when Katniss and Peeta, still in the train, see all the barbed wire and tanks as the train pulls in, really brings the fascist dictatorship system home, and I'm glad the film took the time to play out the visit, the speeches re: Trush and Rue and the ensueing crowd response, not just because it does convey that start-of-rebellion sense but also because it brings home again the emotional reality of those deaths from the previous movie. Considering that part of the meta point is the way the Panem audience treats the Games (watch teenagers battle each other to death, yay!) mirrors a current day audience's response to fiction, and considering a film has far less time than a book to present characters, there really is this need to make it emotionally clear people, not game figures, are dying and this is what makes these games so horrible. Showing Rue's and Trush's families and their responses helps with that.
Speaking of emotional responses, Catching Fire the movie offered some great material to Elizabeth Banks as Effie, who was basically comic relief (and satire of a certain type) in the first film (and book). In the course of the film, you can see Effie's ability to rationalize what she's doing breaking down, not because of acknowledgment of the horror of the games per se but because she's been around Katniss and Peeta (and Haymitch, of course) long enough to become attached and see them as people. Which is what the books imply partly happens to the Capitol audience as well, with all the Victors, but seeing it happen here with Effie whose determined cheer becomes ever more desperate while the stricken and sympathetic glances last longer till she reaches the "you deserve so much more" point makes that real and makes Effie into a three dimensional character. Again, still a part of the system; she doesn't make the transition to realising not just Katniss and Peeta but every single tribute deserves to live - to do so would mean acknowledging she's been part of glorifying organized murder; but a human being. Because Katniss' prep team, while existing, and her relationships with them aren't fleshed out the way they are in the novels (other than Cinna, obviously), this is important because it means Effie gets this focus instead. And as I said, Elizabeth Banks really rises to the occasion.
One of the advantages/disadvantages (can't make up my mind about this particular point) in having read the book is that I knew, going on, what Plutarch was up to. I thought the casting of Philipp Seymour Hofmann really worked because you can believe him both as being a dedicated game maker and as secretely manipulating Snow. Because it's impossible to discuss the moral implication of what it means that Plutarch is part of the rebellion without Mockingjay spoilers, I'll do so at the end of this review after appropriate spoilier space. Similarly, I'll discuss then why perhaps the most effective liberty the film took from its ability to go outside of Katniss' pov was to introduce Snow's granddaughter as an on screen character. For now: if you're unspoiled, those scenes with Snow and his granddaughter work because the granddaughter being a Katniss fangirl who wears her hair Katniss-style illustrates to Snow in cinematic shorthand just how far spread the idolization of this particular Victor has become.
Johanna is my favourite among the non-Haymitch older Victors, so I am delighted to report that the actress playing her does so really well and the film in generall does an excellent job of introducing her character. (Even if they leave out how she won her own Games, alas, but the personality comes across vividly from the moment she has the elevator scene with Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch.) While I thought the film didn't convey the closeness of most of the older Victors to each other as well as the book did, the exceptions were Johanna and Finnick on the one hand and Finnick and Mags on the other. Speaking of Finnick: leaving aside the whitewashing discussions of the casting, I thought the films from a purely pragmatic pov made a mistake in casting yet another blond male (seriously, when they're running through the jungle or battling monkeys, it would really help if one of the two guys were black haired as opposed to having two blonds around!). Also: the actor did a good job and you could see where both Katniss' initial impression of Finnick as a sleazy braggart and the later revelation about his strong loyalties and bravery come from, but he's not as charismatic as I imagined Finnick to be (though then again, maybe unspoiled viewers will react differently).
Our main cast: Jennifer Lawrence continues to be fantastic in the role, with particular highlights being her scenes with Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson. And she has such an expressive face; when Katniss and Snow look at each other, JL conveys so incredibly much. Ditto in the completely different situation when Katniss has to witness Cinna getting beaten right in front of her. And I loved all the back and forth betweeen Katniss and Haymitch. I was never that interested in Gale as a character (or Katniss' feelings for him), but I didn't get the impression the film overplayed the triangle aspect here. Quite rightly, Katniss had more on her mind than "Gale or Peeta, which one?". The two most important Gale scenes in Catching Fire; which the film does justice to, are probably his discussion with Katniss about whether or not they just simply flee (and his refusal to do so once he latches on the idea that rebellion is an option, which is important to where Gale is going in Mockingjay), and the flogging scene, which isn't really about Gale but about Katniss, Haymitch and Peeta's reactions; the film cuts directly from there to Snow watching and lets him conclude that all the Victors need to do right then and there. As for Peeta, the film imcluded what I thought were his most important scenes in the novel (going off script to donate money to the families of Rue and Trush, the conversation with Katniss about how playing lovers in front of the cameras than going back to strangers is silly and they could at least be friends off camera, and the masterful PR stroke of "incidentally, we're expecting a baby" during the Caesar-interviews-the-tributes sequence (Peeta being good at public speaking and PR is a very unusual trait for a young male love interest - usually it's something only given to villains and older mentor/trickster types), and perhaps because the actors know each other far better by now I also thought there was a palpable sense of familiarity between Haymitch-Katniss-Peeta throughout, which really worked for me. But the big acting challenge re: Peeta is going to be what happens to him in Mockingjay, and I have no idea whether Josh Hutchinson will be up for that.
Which brings me at last to the part of the review dealing with spoilers for Mockingjay. Read no further if you haven't read the books.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
A
L
E
R
T
One of the things I was most curious about was whether the film would give away the fact Plutarch is in fact a double agent and that Haymitch is preparing a breakout and is involved in staging a rebellion earlier than the novel does. I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted that. It doesn't; the audience basically finds out when Katniss does, same as in the books. While watching - and taking in the vicousness of the arena all over again - it occured to me that the fact of Plutarch in Catching Fire is an early sign for something central in Mockingjay, i.e. how the rebellion, while direly necessary, is not a bastion of righteousness and using more and more of the same methods Snow & Co. do, until it gets to the tipping point for Katniss, when Coin postulates the idea of staging one more Game, with the Capitol's children as tributes in revenge/retaliation, starting with Snow's granddaughter. (Hence my appreciation of the film's decision to make Snow's granddaughter - whom we never "meet" in the novels - an on screen character, which will make what Coin proposes less abstract in Mockingjay.) Because Plutarch is a dedicated game maker and has to be incredibly cold blooded and ruthless with human lives to get to the point where he's in a position to fool Snow, not to mention the sadism inherent in any Game set up. So for Plutarch to be a quintessential part of the rebellion from the start sends a signal from the get go that this won't be a Star Wars good versus evil scenario (even though of course the Panem dictatorship needs to end, something that's brought home by Catching Fire as well). Again, this is why the Philipp Seymour Hofmann casting really works for me; he's played a great number of villains and morally ambigous characters in addition to a few good guys. But watching the Plutarch scenes also made me very curious: why does he do what he does? Can't really be seeing the signs on the wall and wanting to be on the winning team, because Plutarch is not a late changer of sides who only joins the rebellion once they actually have a chance, he's giving them their first chance here after having made it to as far as he could come in Panem society, which is very far. If it's because he sees that the system is wrong, it makes the extent to which he has become part of the system in order to topple it something I wish fanfiction would explore since by necessity the first person narrative books couldn't. I also wonder whether we'll get a scene addressing that in Mockingjay the film, but probably not, given the sheer amount of plot that has to be conveyed anyway.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/939713.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Both film and book have the "middle chapter" problem, if course, i.e.: it's not the beginning of a story, and it's not the ending, you're never going to leave the cinema with a sense of completion because part of the point of the story is the build up to the next part. With that general premise in mind, I still wish they'd departed a bit more from the novel at the end - showed us, for example, the destroyed District 12 and/or Peeta and Johanna as captives of the Capitol, just a brief glimpse, instead of, as in the novel, Katniss being told that District 12 was destroyed or that Peeta and Johanna were taken prisoner. It's a visual medium, and the film has the advantage of not being limited to the first person narrative the novels are in, so why not? It wouldn't mean additional screentime, I'm just talking about a few brief montage like glimpses.
With that nitpick out of the way: the wintery surroundings in the first half of the film don't just make for a good contrast for the tropic like landscape of the arena later but with the last movie, and they enhance the sense of fear, desperation and rage during the Victor's Tour sequence through the disctricts. The District 11 visit, starting from the moment when Katniss and Peeta, still in the train, see all the barbed wire and tanks as the train pulls in, really brings the fascist dictatorship system home, and I'm glad the film took the time to play out the visit, the speeches re: Trush and Rue and the ensueing crowd response, not just because it does convey that start-of-rebellion sense but also because it brings home again the emotional reality of those deaths from the previous movie. Considering that part of the meta point is the way the Panem audience treats the Games (watch teenagers battle each other to death, yay!) mirrors a current day audience's response to fiction, and considering a film has far less time than a book to present characters, there really is this need to make it emotionally clear people, not game figures, are dying and this is what makes these games so horrible. Showing Rue's and Trush's families and their responses helps with that.
Speaking of emotional responses, Catching Fire the movie offered some great material to Elizabeth Banks as Effie, who was basically comic relief (and satire of a certain type) in the first film (and book). In the course of the film, you can see Effie's ability to rationalize what she's doing breaking down, not because of acknowledgment of the horror of the games per se but because she's been around Katniss and Peeta (and Haymitch, of course) long enough to become attached and see them as people. Which is what the books imply partly happens to the Capitol audience as well, with all the Victors, but seeing it happen here with Effie whose determined cheer becomes ever more desperate while the stricken and sympathetic glances last longer till she reaches the "you deserve so much more" point makes that real and makes Effie into a three dimensional character. Again, still a part of the system; she doesn't make the transition to realising not just Katniss and Peeta but every single tribute deserves to live - to do so would mean acknowledging she's been part of glorifying organized murder; but a human being. Because Katniss' prep team, while existing, and her relationships with them aren't fleshed out the way they are in the novels (other than Cinna, obviously), this is important because it means Effie gets this focus instead. And as I said, Elizabeth Banks really rises to the occasion.
One of the advantages/disadvantages (can't make up my mind about this particular point) in having read the book is that I knew, going on, what Plutarch was up to. I thought the casting of Philipp Seymour Hofmann really worked because you can believe him both as being a dedicated game maker and as secretely manipulating Snow. Because it's impossible to discuss the moral implication of what it means that Plutarch is part of the rebellion without Mockingjay spoilers, I'll do so at the end of this review after appropriate spoilier space. Similarly, I'll discuss then why perhaps the most effective liberty the film took from its ability to go outside of Katniss' pov was to introduce Snow's granddaughter as an on screen character. For now: if you're unspoiled, those scenes with Snow and his granddaughter work because the granddaughter being a Katniss fangirl who wears her hair Katniss-style illustrates to Snow in cinematic shorthand just how far spread the idolization of this particular Victor has become.
Johanna is my favourite among the non-Haymitch older Victors, so I am delighted to report that the actress playing her does so really well and the film in generall does an excellent job of introducing her character. (Even if they leave out how she won her own Games, alas, but the personality comes across vividly from the moment she has the elevator scene with Katniss, Peeta and Haymitch.) While I thought the film didn't convey the closeness of most of the older Victors to each other as well as the book did, the exceptions were Johanna and Finnick on the one hand and Finnick and Mags on the other. Speaking of Finnick: leaving aside the whitewashing discussions of the casting, I thought the films from a purely pragmatic pov made a mistake in casting yet another blond male (seriously, when they're running through the jungle or battling monkeys, it would really help if one of the two guys were black haired as opposed to having two blonds around!). Also: the actor did a good job and you could see where both Katniss' initial impression of Finnick as a sleazy braggart and the later revelation about his strong loyalties and bravery come from, but he's not as charismatic as I imagined Finnick to be (though then again, maybe unspoiled viewers will react differently).
Our main cast: Jennifer Lawrence continues to be fantastic in the role, with particular highlights being her scenes with Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson. And she has such an expressive face; when Katniss and Snow look at each other, JL conveys so incredibly much. Ditto in the completely different situation when Katniss has to witness Cinna getting beaten right in front of her. And I loved all the back and forth betweeen Katniss and Haymitch. I was never that interested in Gale as a character (or Katniss' feelings for him), but I didn't get the impression the film overplayed the triangle aspect here. Quite rightly, Katniss had more on her mind than "Gale or Peeta, which one?". The two most important Gale scenes in Catching Fire; which the film does justice to, are probably his discussion with Katniss about whether or not they just simply flee (and his refusal to do so once he latches on the idea that rebellion is an option, which is important to where Gale is going in Mockingjay), and the flogging scene, which isn't really about Gale but about Katniss, Haymitch and Peeta's reactions; the film cuts directly from there to Snow watching and lets him conclude that all the Victors need to do right then and there. As for Peeta, the film imcluded what I thought were his most important scenes in the novel (going off script to donate money to the families of Rue and Trush, the conversation with Katniss about how playing lovers in front of the cameras than going back to strangers is silly and they could at least be friends off camera, and the masterful PR stroke of "incidentally, we're expecting a baby" during the Caesar-interviews-the-tributes sequence (Peeta being good at public speaking and PR is a very unusual trait for a young male love interest - usually it's something only given to villains and older mentor/trickster types), and perhaps because the actors know each other far better by now I also thought there was a palpable sense of familiarity between Haymitch-Katniss-Peeta throughout, which really worked for me. But the big acting challenge re: Peeta is going to be what happens to him in Mockingjay, and I have no idea whether Josh Hutchinson will be up for that.
Which brings me at last to the part of the review dealing with spoilers for Mockingjay. Read no further if you haven't read the books.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
A
L
E
R
T
One of the things I was most curious about was whether the film would give away the fact Plutarch is in fact a double agent and that Haymitch is preparing a breakout and is involved in staging a rebellion earlier than the novel does. I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted that. It doesn't; the audience basically finds out when Katniss does, same as in the books. While watching - and taking in the vicousness of the arena all over again - it occured to me that the fact of Plutarch in Catching Fire is an early sign for something central in Mockingjay, i.e. how the rebellion, while direly necessary, is not a bastion of righteousness and using more and more of the same methods Snow & Co. do, until it gets to the tipping point for Katniss, when Coin postulates the idea of staging one more Game, with the Capitol's children as tributes in revenge/retaliation, starting with Snow's granddaughter. (Hence my appreciation of the film's decision to make Snow's granddaughter - whom we never "meet" in the novels - an on screen character, which will make what Coin proposes less abstract in Mockingjay.) Because Plutarch is a dedicated game maker and has to be incredibly cold blooded and ruthless with human lives to get to the point where he's in a position to fool Snow, not to mention the sadism inherent in any Game set up. So for Plutarch to be a quintessential part of the rebellion from the start sends a signal from the get go that this won't be a Star Wars good versus evil scenario (even though of course the Panem dictatorship needs to end, something that's brought home by Catching Fire as well). Again, this is why the Philipp Seymour Hofmann casting really works for me; he's played a great number of villains and morally ambigous characters in addition to a few good guys. But watching the Plutarch scenes also made me very curious: why does he do what he does? Can't really be seeing the signs on the wall and wanting to be on the winning team, because Plutarch is not a late changer of sides who only joins the rebellion once they actually have a chance, he's giving them their first chance here after having made it to as far as he could come in Panem society, which is very far. If it's because he sees that the system is wrong, it makes the extent to which he has become part of the system in order to topple it something I wish fanfiction would explore since by necessity the first person narrative books couldn't. I also wonder whether we'll get a scene addressing that in Mockingjay the film, but probably not, given the sheer amount of plot that has to be conveyed anyway.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/939713.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.