Movie Rec & Thoughts: The Hunger Games

[retsuko]

A roundabout lead-in to my thoughts on this movie: when I lived in Japan, I went to see "Boys Don't Cry" as part of the Kochi City Modern Art Museum's series that I mentally translated as "films that some people here might want to see but won't get a wide release because the material is too challenging to translate." Going in, I really didn't know

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[digitalemur]

I don't know what the rest of the audience in my theater sounded like when Rue died and the riot happened and Katniss was freaking out after it, because I was in my seat with my hands alternately over my mouth and hugging myself, trying to make sure that my sobs were too quiet to disturb other people. The music covered me pretty well, I _think_

[retsuko]

Who the hell would think that BDC doesn't... oh, yikes. I'd better not get worked up over it. That was awful. I do think it's a movie that a lot of people should see once (especially those who are transphobic or think that trans issues don't matter to them), but I never, ever want to see it again. There was so much raw hatred in that scene. I've always wondered what it was like to film, and what sort of relationship you'd have to have with another actor to do that

[digitalemur]

Yeah I have no idea. I have trouble watching Peter Sarsgaard in anything _else_ because of that film. I pretty much dissociated during the rape scene. It was watching Brandon trying to tell the police what had happened, later, that made me start to hurt.

Buttons change over time. I could watch violence in college that I absolutely cannot watch now, and kids in peril bother me more now than they used to, and I don't even have any kids. Humans just aren't static.

[cerusee]

My audience was very similar, but the silence, to my mind, was not the silence of disinterest, but the silence of an audience that recognized this was the most emotionally significant and moving moment of the entire film, and was hyper-engaged with the film and showing respect for the moment and for other patrons by not making disruptive, distracting noises. Normal theater silence isn't really silent, but a quiet sound palette of people coughing, sneezing, shifting in their seats, whispering to friends, shuffling their hands around in their bags, checking their cell phones, and chewing on popcorn. This wasn't that kind of silence--it was the kind of complete and utter lack of sound that only happens when people consciously refrain from making any noise at all--a silence of action. Moment-of-silence silence. I found it moving

[retsuko]

I agree with you re: Gale's 3rd book spoilery character development. :p

Maybe I misinterpreted the reactions around me. I was very disturbed by the fact that there was a 7- or 8-year-old boy sitting down the row from me, and I thought it was completely inappropriate for him to be there. This story gets my Inner Judge really going, so perhaps that seeped into my movie-going experience.

ETA: Hey! How have you been? :)

[digitalemur]

We got a distinct impression that most of the audience around us had already read all three books. Our audience was definitely very Team Peeta, but honestly, there isn't as much Gale to root for in that first movie as there is in the book.

But maybe that's my perception being poisoned by having read them all-- it's weird, I don't hate Gale so much as have this weird dissociative thing about the end of the series. I read the third book in a tent somewhere in Canada. I remember sitting upright in disbelief, and spending a whole chapter or more thinking _I don't believe it, I don't believe it, I don't believe it_ after a certain point. I have never done that with a book before-- it was like I just didn't believe the author, that's not what happened, SHE'S TELLING IT WRONG, and that never happens to me.

[orichalcum]

Yeah, I think I choose to disregard the third book as canon. No idea what they'll do with it as a film (which seems likely given the success of this one) - I mean, can you really do that onscreen?

I've always been Team Peeta, and did think that Peeta didn't come across quite as cool in the movie as in the book; in particular, in the book you get more of a sense of Peeta Master Manipulator and Charmmeister, always thinking about The Show, whereas here he came across more as just Earnest Nice Guy.