The Hunger Games

I was reminded of why I don’t normally watch blockbusters when I watched the lame and predictable Snow White and the Huntsman (I might muster up the energy for a review of that later on, but I’m not sure it even deserves one). The Hunger Games, however, is something else. It is a blockbuster that offers entertainment but also has depth, complexity, an inspirational heroine and subtle yet powerful political and social messages. 

The premise of the story is truly horrific. In a dystopian future USA, the evil empire Panem wields its power over its twelve districts in a tyrannical fashion. One of the ways it does this is by pitting districts against each other in the annual Hunger Games, where one boy and one girl from each district are set loose in the woods to battle the elements and each other until one person remains alive. The Hunger Games is public entertainment and is broadcast across Panem, including all the districts. It felt like a combination of the reality television show Survivor and Lord of the Flies, with a bit of The Truman Show thrown in the mix. But it was much more gruesome than any of those. 

The heroine, Katniss, captures the heart of the public from the beginning because of the courage she displays in volunteering for the Games to save her little sister from having to compete. Her little sister, Primrose, would not have survived five minutes in the Games, and everyone, including Katniss, knows it.

Katniss retains the heart of the public by somehow remaining humane during the Games, when everyone else involved (apart from dear little Rue) seems to be ruthlessly intent on killing the other competitors. By the end, she shows up Panem, with her integrity and courage, and comes out a winner in more ways than one. Obviously she can’t avoid killing but she sees there is another way, and although not sure how to pursue it initially, she follows this instinct. She is the most wonderful heroine I have seen in a movie for a long time. In a reversal of what happens all the time in movies, she saves the male lead’s life; she tells him to ‘come on’; she takes control, but never in a domineering or power-hungry way. She’s sensible, grounded and brave. And guess what? She’s not beautiful or sexy—that’s never the point—she’s just awesome.

Initially I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘Why don’t all the competitors band together and decide not to kill anyone – that way they will win and the evil Panem will be ruined! That’s what I’d do!’ But then I realised that these kids had grown up with this. Every year of their lives they had witnessed the Hunger Games. In fact, the pair from District 11 had spent their entire lives preparing for them! The Hunger Games was a part of everyone’s lives. Rebelling against it was not an option. It was outside their sphere of what was possible. For me this was one of the movie’s most important messages: that social oppression of one group by a dominant power often operates in a way that makes the oppressed turn on each other instead of raging against their oppressors. This becomes the focus of rage. But Katniss (and Peeta) represented an alternative—they gave the districts hope—and as the character played by Donald Trump intimated, with hope, the oppressed will see that it is possible to fight back.

The costumes and makeup were fantastic – who can resist Lenny Kravitz with gold eyeliner? I’m aware of the criticism of this film that it was slow-paced and that it attempted to avoid violence. I didn’t feel it dragging for one moment. I watched it twice and even the second time around I found myself surprised to find it ending. As for avoiding violence, I’m not sure why anyone would think more violence was necessary in this movie. It was pretty gruesome and there was enough blood to go around for everyone.  It was a bunch of kids slaughtering each other...you want more violence and gore? Seriously? This criticism makes me think that some people, film critics especially, are desensitised to violence in films. Frankly, if it was any more violent I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.

The Hunger Games can be enjoyed on a number of levels. As a blockbuster action flick I think it’s pretty good. But it also offers a political and philosophical insight into war and oppression. While the ending is not exactly a happy one because the districts remain under the rule of the despotic Panem, the message offered by the story is ultimately one of hope.

P.S I haven’t read the books :-)

Tokyo Sonata

This movie is a social commentary on contemporary Japanese society. It deals with the following issues: the emptiness and loneliness of the nuclear family, for all members, including the loveless couple and the selfish and isolated children; the lack of hope in teenagers as they realise that Japanese society has nothing to offer them; the collapse of the traditional employment system and the subsequent demise of the salaryman and Japan’s reliance on the US for national security.

This movie deals with these issues quite sensitively, but loses some the plot two thirds of the way in. The significance of the wad of money found in the toilet by the protagonist, the car crash and the trip to the beach by the mother was lost on me. Especially considering that nothing actually changed as a result of these events. Or maybe they did. The final scene of the younger son playing the piano perhaps signified a new beginning for the family. The father had obviously embraced the idea of his son pursuing a career as a pianist, signalling a shift in his mindset about his son’s careers, and perhaps an acceptance of the fact that Japanese society has changed for good—something he has to come to terms with considering his apparent lack of employment options.

I think director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s decision to cast Koizumi Kyoko as a full-time housewife was old-fashioned. Married women in Japan tend to go back to part-time work once their children are at school, especially if their husbands are not big earners, which Ryuhei clearly wasn’t. The full-time housewife is a thing of the past (and even so, a phenomenon that has always been limited to the middle-and upper-classes). If Koizumi Kyoko’s character depicted a more realistic married Tokyo woman, this would have enabled a better consideration of contemporary married couples, and pointedly, how the shifts in society have affected women.

Educating Rita

Based on the play written in 1979 by Willy Russell, the movie Educating Rita was produced in 1983 and is set in Liverpool. It stars Julia Walters as Rita and Michael Caine as Frank Bryant, her tutor. Its central themes of class, gender, and privilege are timeless, and as a result, it has aged well.

Rita is a 26 yr old hairdresser from a working-class family, married to a working-class man. She is aware that something is missing in her life. She wants ‘choice’, and realises that as an uneducated hairdresser whose destiny is to have children—and soon, as her husband and father keep reminding her—she doesn’t have much choice at all. She decides to attend ‘Open University’ to study literature. Enter her tutor, Dr Frank Bryant. Frank is a failed poet, who, since his wife left him many years ago, has replaced writing with drinking. He is full of cynicism for life, his students, and for university learning.

Rita and Frank hit it off and both of them are enriched for it. Frank admires Rita’s warmth and grounded outlook. Rita looks up to Frank and can see brilliance beneath his weary and cynical ways.

Rita’s controlling husband has never liked her studying. He’s keen to have children, but Rita is secretly taking the pill because she’s not ready. Unable to identify with either her working-class background or with the educated elite, she feels that she’s a ‘half-caste’. Her sense of entrapment is captured in the poignant scene in the pub where she sees her possible future in her mother’s tears, as everyone around them sings happily, but obliviously. Rita decides she wants to ‘sing a better song’ and leaves her husband. She chooses a difficult path for a woman in the early 1980s and turns her back on not only her husband, but her father as well, who also thinks she should stop studying and have a baby.

Her rationale for choosing this path is the unfailing desire to find out ‘about me’. She likes what she finds and sticks with it. Her eagerness to learn initially outweighs her ability, but soon she is talking and talk and writing essays with the best of them. As the quality of her work improves, Frank’s admiration for what he initially saw in her turns to fear and despair as he witnesses Rita become more like him and all the other faceless academics around him. Gone is her naivety and in its place is her ability to adopt the correct jargon, socialise with other students and write essays that will satisfy examiners.

In short, she gains the knowledge that he has. She is able to enter a world that he takes for granted. Frank does not realise that it is his position of privilege that allows him to be cynical. It is precisely because he is educated that he can see ‘culture’ for what it is. Rita, on the other hand, does not have that privilege. Importantly, once she gains that privilege, she will not necessarily take Frank’s position on it. She will not necessarily become cynical like him, or like her flamboyant and ‘classy’, but deeply depressed flatmate Trish.

As a sometimes disillusioned academic, I found this film easy to relate to, very entertaining and extremely thought-provoking. For a simply made film, it has layers and layers of meaning to it that give it great depth.

The King review

I watched The King because I am love with Gael Garcia Bernal. He is, in my opinion, the most delicious-looking man in the world. I want to devour him, and I want him to devour me. Obviously I knew nothing about the film prior to watching (apart from the all-important fact that GGB was in it) because when he started speaking English my jaw dropped to the floor. This was the first time I had heard him speak English. I learnt later that this movie was in fact his first English-speaking role. Honestly, him speaking English took away some of his allure. It must be his swarthy Spanish-speaking ‘otherness’ that I am attracted to.

Nevertheless, he soon took his shirt off and voila, allure back intact. Frailty thy name is women indeed. Or, frailty they name is Emma, at the very least.

GGB plays a young (late teens? Early 20s?) man who just got out of the marines after having served for 3 years. Here we see the predictable prostitute scene of course, cos ya know, men who have been in the armed services NEED to have sex once they are on a break, it’s programmed into them you see – they are big strong men who need to penetrate women to maintain that big strong manliness. Groan.

Once that scene is out of the way (shame on whoever directed it for your lack of originality, by the way), GGB makes his way to his father’s hometown. His ‘father’, David, is a man he has in fact never met. His mother was David’s old flame (a prostitute? I wasn’t clear on this). Since then, David has become an evangelistic Christian, married and had 2 teenaged children. He has also become the pastor of a church. Anyway, disasters of biblical proportions follow, including GGB seducing his 16-yr old half-sister. It could have been a really good movie if the characters had a little more depth. GGB was initially presented as a bit of an enigma but it soon became clear that he was mentally deranged. Yet, this was not explored at all. In fact, I think GGB might have felt a little short-changed in his first English-speaking role—he barely said anything!!!!!!!! Perhaps a little more dialogue would have helped the main characters come to life a bit more.

Slumdog Millionaire

I had read an article in the SMH suggesting that viewers in India, where the film is set, might not enjoy the movie because it depicts the terrible Western idealisation of ‘happy’ slum-life. Western ideas about ‘happiness’ and the way that we seem to be constantly in pursuit of it but rarely attaining it run rampant in weekend papers. There is always some article chiding us to look to poor underdeveloped countries such as Bhutan where ‘life is simple’ and people are happy. These articles are patronising and, frankly, hypocritical. If the writer truly believes that life in a place like Bhutan would make us happy, why does s/he not go and live there? Therefore I was quite apprehensive going to see this movie because I cannot stand Hollywood films that depict poverty as a ‘simple but happy life’.

I think Slumdog Millionaire managed to avoid this cliché reasonably well. In fact, life in a slum look decidedly horrific in many, many scenes—in particular the one where the whole (Muslim) slum area is attacked by a pack of violent men intent on killing any person of the Muslim faith in their path.

The main character is Jamal. We meet him when he is a young man competing on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’. With each question he is led back into his past and this is how the story of his childhood and love for Latika is related to us. It is a brilliant framework for telling a story and we find ourselves shifting comfortably between the past and the present television studio until the end when the two collide.

The first question takes us back to Jamal and his older brother Salim as small children trying to make a living and go to school in a slum in Bombay. After the religious attack on his slum during which he witnesses the killing of his mother, he and his brother become street children and are joined by Latika, a little girl also orphaned after the attack. They become the ‘Three Musketeers’ until they are kidnapped and forced into the begging trade by a man so evil it makes your stomach turn.

Latika becomes separated from them but Jamal does not forget her. The middle of the movie follows the two brothers trying to make ends meet—riding from train to train, eating and stealing whatever they can. Theirs is a nomadic and hand-to-mouth survival existence. They eventually make their way back to Bombay because Jamal wants to find Latika. Salim, who has always had a nasty streak in him turns against his brother and becomes a gun-toting gang member. The climax of the story is suspenseful and very Bollywood-esque.

Overall the movie is a combination of Bollywood and art-house Hollywood. The romance between Jamal and Latika was unbelievable, mainly because they were children when they separated. The acting by the adult characters was exaggerated too—I don’t watch Bollywood movies, but I guess this is a characteristic of the Bollywood genre. Unfortunately I did not like Jamal—the older he got the more macho and exaggerated his behaviour became.

Despite its minimal shortcomings, I recommend it for its entertainment value.

Brokeback Mountain

Spanning approximately twenty years beginning in 1967, this is a story of the forbidden love between two ‘cowboys’ in Wyoming. Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) meet when they are both posted to a sheep minding job on Brokeback Mountain. The job that lasts for several months involves one of them sleeping with the sheep looking after them, and the other minding the camp (located a two hour horse ride away) and doing the cooking—keeping house essentially. Severe isolation and a helping hand from Jack leads Ennis into Jack’s arms one night (actually, the scene wasn’t nearly that romantic—it was rough and very macho). And so begins an exquisitely beautiful and deeply tragic romance between the two men.

Both men return once the season is over to ‘normal lives’ of marriage, fatherhood and providing for their families. After a four year absence, they meet again and rekindle their relationship in secret—something they decide to continue two or three times a year. Jack wants more. He is a romantic and believes they can make it work if they just ‘get a ranch together’. Ennis is more practical. He feels society’s eyes on him and fears the consequences if they are ever discovered. It is the classic Hollywood love story in that it explores that ‘will they ever be together?’ tension. Clearly Ang Lee decided to make the gay lovers ‘cowboys’—you could not think of a more macho occupation, particularly in that era—to intensify the difficulties the lovers would encounter.

The storyline was relatively original; the scenery was stunning and the music was perfectly suited. I think, however, that it was the superb acting from both lead characters that made this an extraordinarily powerful movie experience. The unbearable angst felt by Innys as he attempts to resolve his actions with everything he has learnt about ‘being a man’ would have been frustrating to watch if it were not for Heath Ledger’s tenderness. Even more unbearable was Jack Twist’s broken heart. The depth of feeling that Gyllenhaal conveyed as a suffocated and oppressed young man overflowing with love and hungry for it to be reciprocated was painful to watch because he made me feel his sadness and heartbreak.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

This movie is based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which was in turn influenced by an idea of Mark Twain’s. Twain’s idea was that a man’s life should be the other way around because he is at his best at the beginning of it and at his worst at the end. The movie’s premise is that timing is everything and that age will always catch up with us – it even caught up with Benjamin Button who aged in reverse.

Benjamin is born as an old man in New Orleans in the early 1900s. Doctors are at a loss to explain aging symptoms, such as arthritis, similar to those of men in their eighties. As the years pass he becomes younger. People around him, including his mother and biological father, die one after the other, just as they probably would have if was aging normally. He finds love with Daisy, played by Cate Blanchett, who he has known since she was a small child (and he an old man). Theirs is the classic Hollywood romance of star-crossed lovers destined to be together one day, but destined also for a rough ride getting there. It is not until Daisy is in her 30s that they become lovers and it is perfect timing as Benjamin is now in the prime of his life. Blanchett does a wonderful job of demonstrating the narcissisms of youth and the beauty of aging. Her younger character was indeed completely self-absorbed and a strong contrast to the more likeable woman she becomes. As she tells Benjamin one day, “I’m so glad we didn’t get together when I was 26—I was so young”.

Daisy and Benjamin ‘meet in the middle’ at around 42 around about the time Daisy falls pregnant. After the birth of their daughter, Benjamin decides to leave Daisy because he thinks he can’t be a good father to a child if he only continues to get younger. Furthermore he does not want to become another child for Daisy to look after. I was very disappointed with this turn of events and thought that the love story could have been so much deeper and stronger had he remained with Daisy. After all, a committed and loving couple don’t just separate when the going gets tough—regardless of what happens they look after each other. Furthermore, I couldn’t think of a better father for a child. A man who gets younger as his daughter gets older—perfect! Instead, Benjamin goes to India. Images of him washing in the Ganges, riding a motorbike and being a ‘solitary male’ follow. What a cliché!

Apart from this disappointing turn of events, the movie was a success overall. The acting was very good—Brad Pitt is absolutely brilliant as a curious old man and again as a thoughtful and sensitive young man. I wish Cate Blanchett had aged a bit more—she was absolutely stunning until she was over 60. Maybe I’m just jealous!

The moral of the story was clearly to grab hold of life because time waits for no-one. I certainly emerged from the 3 hour film with the reinforced idea that because time catches up with us no matter what we do, we ought to make the most of every day.