Tomorrow I’ll be offering up a more extensive commentary on the second movie of the Hunger Games trilogy, “Catching Fire.” Until then, you can read Dylan Pahman’s engagement on the theme of tyranny, as well as that of Alissa Wilkinson over at CT. I’ll be critiquing Wilkinson’s perspective in my own review tomorrow. I think her analysis starts off strong, but she ends up getting distracted by, well, the distractions. But I commend her piece to your review, and in the meantime I’ll also offer a couple of notes on the film.
The film version doesn’t depart much from the source material, which is always a good thing when you have a strong source material. There is some streamlining of the plot and things are condensed a bit, but this is no doubt necessary to fit everything of relevance in to a 2.5 hour film.
One of the nice things that they do in the films is to show things that happen “off stage,” so to speak, in the books, which are presented from Katniss’ perspective. In this way, we can find out some things that Katniss doesn’t know, and some more texture is added to the narrative. In “Catching Fire,” the theme of hope flares up again, as it did in the first Hunger Games.
In an exchange between President Snow and Plutarch Heavensbee, the Head Gamemaker argues for more explicit brutality contrasted with puff-piece entertainment to bring the rabble in the districts in line. Snow expresses doubt, noting that “fear” only works to oppress “when there is no hope.” As long as Katniss is alive, the people have hope. Heavensbee persuades Snow, and in doing so deceives him, hoping to further foment revolt with such tactics.
But as I’ve also observed with before, the hope offered in the Hunger Games really is just a temporal hope. The bread that people seek really is literal bread. There is little in the way of spiritual nourishment offered to anyone in the films, despite the sometimes heavy-handed religious imagery. “Bread first, then ethics” remains the motto of life in Panem.
Oh, and Heavensbee also drops a plug for my book when, in the midst of the Quarter Quell, he exhorts Katniss to “get her hands dirty” a bit.