Review of Stanley Tucci in the Hunger Games
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Reality Telly is the opiate of the masses
Similar many scientific discipline-fiction stories, "The Hunger Games" portrays a future that we're invited to read equally a parable for the nowadays. After the existing nations of North America are destroyed past ending, a culture named Panem rises from the ruins. It's ruled past a vast, wealthy Capitol inspired by the covers of countless sci-fi magazines and surrounded past 12 "districts" that are powerless satellites.
Equally the story opens, the annual ritual of the Hunger Games is first; each district must supply a "tribute" of a young woman and man, and these 24 finalists must fight to the death in a forested "arena" where hidden cameras capture every move.
This results in a television set production that apparently holds the nation spellbound and keeps the citizens content. Mrs. Link, my high school Latin instructor, will be proud that I recall 1 of her daily phrases, "panem et circenses," which summarized the Roman formula for creating a docile population: Requite them breadstuff and circuses. A vision of present-solar day America is summoned up, its citizenry glutted with fast food and distracted by reality Idiot box. How is the population expected to accept the vehement sacrifice of 24 young lives a year? How many take died in our recent wars?
The story centers on the 2 tributes from the dirt-poor District 12: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). The xvi-year-former girl hunts deer with bow and pointer to feed her family; he may be hunkier just seems no match in survival skills. They're both clean-cut, All-Panem types, and although one or both are eventually required to be dead, romance is a possibility.
In dissimilarity with these healthy young people, the ruling form in the Capitol are effete decadents. Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), bedecked in gaudy costumery and laden with garish cosmetics, emcees the almanac cartoon for tributes, and the nation gets to know the finalists on a talk show hosted by Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), who suggests what Donald Trump might do with his hair if he had plenty of it.
The executive in charge is the gamemaker, Seneca (Wes Bentley), who has a beard and then bizarrely designed that Satan would be envious. At the height of the society is the president (Donald Sutherland), a sagacious graybeard who harbors deep thoughts. In interviews, Sutherland has equated the younger generation with leftists and Occupiers. The sometime folks in the Capitol are no doubt a right-wing oligarchy. My bourgeois friends, however, equate the young with the Tea Party and the old with decadent Elitists. "The Hunger Games," similar many parables, volition prove you exactly what you lot seek in information technology.
The scenes set in the Capitol and dealing with its peculiar characters have a completely unlike tone than the scenes of conflict in the Loonshit. The ruling class is painted in broad satire and bright colors. Katniss and the other tributes are seen in earth-toned realism; this character could be another manifestation, indeed, of Jennifer Lawrence'due south Oscar-nominated character Ree in "Wintertime'south Bone." The plot even explains why she'southward adept at bow and pointer.
1 thing I missed, however, was more than cocky-awareness on the part of the tributes. As their names are being drawn from a fish bowl (!) at the Reaping, the reactions of the chosen seem rather subdued, considering the odds are 23-to-one that they'll end up expressionless. Katniss volunteers to take the place of her 12-year-old kid sister, Prim (Willow Shields), but no one explicitly discusses the fairness of deadly combat between girl children and 18-yr-old men. Apparently the jaded Tv set audiences of Panem accept developed an appetite for barbarity. Nor practise Katniss and Peeta reveal much thoughtfulness well-nigh their own peculiar position.
"The Hunger Games" is an constructive entertainment, and Jennifer Lawrence is strong and disarming in the fundamental role. But the flick leapfrogs obvious questions in its path, and avoids the opportunities sci-fi provides for social criticism; compare its world with the dystopias in "Gattaca" or "The Truman Show." Director Gary Ross and his writers (including the serial' writer, Suzanne Collins) obviously think their audience wants to see lots of hunting-and-survival scenes, and has no interest in people talking about how a cruel class system is using them. Well, maybe they're right. Only I constitute the movie too long and deliberate equally it negotiated the outskirts of its moral problems.
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert was the flick critic of the Chicago Dominicus-Times from 1967 until his expiry in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
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The Hunger Games (2012)
142 minutes
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