Katniss's district is shown as so drained of vitality, she, Gale, and
Peeta come across as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli did when they first entered the
no-more-cheer-than-a-graveyard domain of the subjected Horse Lords. The
result is that the Reaping looks like just as good an opportunity to actually save
oneself as Gale's proposal to flee into the forest does: the Opponent
is becoming as weak and drained as all the adults have become. This is
true for all the kids actually reaped -- excepting the ones killed off in the
first few minutes, dull as dishwater, excepting the frizzy-haired boy, who
might in some alternate universe had a one-in-a-million chance to jump-start
into a Sideshow Bob. Gale is a stag; Katniss, your alert, quick deer; and
Peeta the one a sophisticate would assess as so multi-capable his great flaw is
that, owing to his mother's apparently catastrophic denial of him, though he
can with facility heft hundred-pound bags he isn't anywhere near knowing the
extent of his reach. Rue is supposed to remind Katniss of Prim -- but
this is crazy talk: she is further proof that the Reaping took Katniss
away from country debilitation toward being amongst "Princeton's"
shining elite -- these type have got it so going on they even
know what it is to loosen themselves to impish play.
The favored district is composed of non-blanched meanies; but upon
watching the film I realized the experience of their involvement with Rue,
Thresh, Peeta and Katniss is kinda like the popular high school set figuring
out exactly how best to deal with spark-possessing new varietals that one day
might compose a competing rival one: even while conniving how to dispose
of them, pick them off, one by one, they're experimenting with and enabling the
mental/physical/spatial relocations that could let them acceptably fit them in
as their own. This is a bit of a stretch, I know, but it is still the
close high school equivalent.
It's the crowds that stand apart. It may be that in their united
fealty to Katniss, District 12 figures in the imagination as pure, while the
Capital is set as a grotesque -- but I am pausing on this one. If so,
however, the film does enable a certain class of people for ruthless,
empathy-denied elimination -- the Capital's crowds of splendor-entranced, disconcerned
entitled elitists; and for this then should the film principally be explored
for its say on fascism.
* * * * *
Jake's comment at Movieline.com:
[. . .] Consequently, I found the arrogant "bad boy" teen
leading the group of evil teens to be far more interesting a character with his
simple moment in the finale when he suggested that all the killing he did was
not worth it. That moment of regret showed more depth than katniss,
Peeta, Rue (sp?) and all the other characters combined.
My reply:
Cato's
final moment wasn't for me so much the character regretting as the film
archly regrouping to argue the contest as simply an evil thing,
rather than as a glorious opportunity for come-uppance on the arrogant popular
kids (with denouement looking to involve wizened commentary on the sure fall of
the arrogant). I believe, though, that Cato spent his last moments
sniffling something Peetaish -- that special Miss Katniss was of course the
one in the end who was going to prove victorious. I preferred the book
where he was kept such an arrogant, powerful brute, Katniss wasn't sure he
couldn't even have made his way through all the dogs (which were, by the way, way
too inflated in the film -- Conan, let alone Cato, would find
himself evenly matched if pit against one). I will cooperate and
acknowledge there is a way in which Cato's sniffling seems in character -- or,
rather, at least in archetype: he might be Hubris recognizing that
Selflessness is what in the end is armor-clad by God. Cato's group did seem
as if versions of the fallen out of Paradise Lost or Pilgrim's Progress -- or
perhaps better, out of Greek myths -- with each ordained an appropriate fall
for claiming glories belonging solely to the gods: Glamored-up becomes
hideous; tall-as-a-tree is shot through at the trunk; furious dexterity is
humbled by unabashed strength; Hercules-proud and strong, crushed by a pride of
much stronger lion-dogs. It's enough there, I think, to make Katniss and
Artemis comparisons at all worth our bringing up.
I wish I could say what I liked about the film so much, but it really isn't clear to me. In many ways, it was inflated - as with the dogs - but I liked the film so much I feel I should read the book, rather a reversal on my part.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I suppose, I must fall back on the cliche of "it made me think". Still, that is worth exploring, maybe...