In a year of blockbusters preoccupied with relentless action
and testosterone, Catching Fire feels
like a breath of fresh air – and not just because its protagonist is female. It
takes at least half the movie’s hefty running time for something resembling a
real action scene to arrive. Director Francis Lawrence and screenwriters Simon
Beaufoy and Michael deBruyn actually care about developing a plot that makes
sense and put genuine effort into (re)establishing the characters and their
world, which is really the bare minimum of good storytelling but suddenly seems
like a luxury. Although Katniss Everdeen, the heroine, knows how to use a bow
and arrow, she relies on more than physical prowess to overcome adversity, as
she’s forced to navigate the treacherous waters of politics and fame, occasionally
at the expense of her own morals; especially as portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence
with her signature blend of mercurial brashness and matter-of-fact poise, she’s
more complex than your usual feisty, rebellious, faux-feminist heroine (see:
Merida from Brave).
As it
turns out, Lawrence is an almost uncanny fit for the role of Katniss (I say
“almost” because there’s still the whole white-washing issue, which I won’t get
into here). Since appearing on Hollywood’s radar with the critically acclaimed
2010 indie Winter’s Bone, the
Kentucky-born actress has evolved into a legitimate superstar, becoming the
youngest person ever to receive two Best Actress Oscar nominations, joining two
major franchises and basically dominating the Internet, thanks to her charming
interviews and talk show appearances. She’s the perfect celebrity: gregarious
and outspoken yet modest and self-aware, her every action and sentence
seemingly free of any affectation. It’s hard not to draw parallels between
Lawrence and Katniss, from the constant pressure they face to maintain their
carefully manufactured personas and indulge a fickle, judgmental public to the
endless media attention devoted to their physical appearances and private
lives. Just as Katniss symbolizes hope for the budding rebellion in Panem,
Lawrence has come to epitomize female empowerment for a generation of young
women. It’s one instance where real-life knowledge enhances fiction, imbuing
Katniss’s situation with an added layer of resonance and helping Lawrence
accomplish a rare, often under-appreciated feat: she makes heroism compelling.
The
rest of the cast is more of a mixed bag. As the other two points of Suzanne
Collins’s insipid love triangle, neither Josh Hutcherson nor Liam Hemsworth
makes much of an impression, bogged down by a pair of characters with little
substance beyond their conventionally hunky physiques. Elizabeth Banks gives a
surprisingly affecting turn as the shallow, uptight Effie, revealing a glimmer
of humanity beneath the extravagant mask of cosmetics and grotesquely
ostentatious costumes; in one gut-punch of a scene, Effie has to announce the
latest tributes for the Hunger Games, and you can sense the emotion seeping through
her characteristic oblivious serenity just from the trembling in Banks’s
strained, high-pitched voice. Fellow Hunger
Games veterans Woody Harrelson and Stanley Tucci are similarly beguiling
despite limited screen-time, lending a pleasantly acerbic edge to the otherwise
earnest affair.
Of the
newcomers, Phillip Seymour Hoffman stands out, yet again showing why he is
among the most respected, dependable actors working today. Even in a small role
like that of Plutarch Heavensbee, the enigmatic new Gamemaker, he makes his
presence felt, his gravelly voice and knowing smirk tinged with understated
menace. Jena Malone and Jeffrey Wright do their best with characters that never
quite feel fully formed (Johanna in particular enters with a promising spark
but quickly gets pushed aside), and Sam Caflin lacks the intoxicating allure
required to pull off the role of god-like heartthrob Finnick Odair.
Overall,
Catching Fire marks a considerable
step forward from its forerunner. To start with, the noticeably bigger budget
certainly doesn’t hurt; not only does the fire actually look like fire this
time, but the costumes also look suitably elaborate and more distinctive than
they did in The Hunger Games. Spectacle is really where the movie thrives –
grand gestures and big emotions, such as when Katniss and Peeta go off-script
during their visit to District 8 or when Johanna uses a couple less-than-PG13
words to describe her feelings about being chosen in the Quarter Quells. As
superficial as they may be, the images of mass restlessness and
anti-establishment rage are genuinely rousing (one particularly chilling shot
shows the ironic words “The odds are never in our favor” scrawled on a wall in
graffiti). Like so many recent blockbusters, Catching Fire seeks to tap into post-9/11 paranoia and anxieties
about government manipulation, the loss of individual freedom and collective
helplessness in the face of destruction, but in contrast to, say, Man of Steel, the politics feel sincere,
rather than a cynical attempt at shock value. With Katniss’s struggles to cling
to her personal beliefs and sense of humanity, Francis Lawrence recognizes the
importance of internal conflict, which the first Hunger Games installment largely lacked, and grounds his film in
concrete stakes, something that seems increasingly hard to come by in
blockbusters.
Once we
get to the arena, however, the movie loses its energy, becoming little more than
a series of unexceptional action set-pieces. If there’s one area where The Hunger Games remains superior, it’s
the action scenes because at least then, you could actually tell what was going
on. Relying too heavily on rapid editing and the overworked shaky-cam
technique, Alan Edward Bell and Jo Willems, the movie’s editor and
cinematographer respectively, render the action and fight sequences virtually
incoherent, sapping them of whatever excitement they might have had. Even more
than its predecessor, Catching Fire
suffers from the required PG-13 rating. For a story about the horrors of
violence, it’s rather unnervingly bloodless. The sight of people mercilessly
slaughtering each other should be visceral and disturbing, but instead it feels
hollow and rote, devoid of even the slightest emotional impact, as though the
filmmakers themselves are afraid of unsettling the audience or presenting the
protagonists as anything other than completely wholesome and upright; even when
Katniss experiences nightmares as a result of her participation in the Hunger
Games, the film declines to show the content of her dreams, apparently deciding
that having her wake up in a mess of tears is enough to convey her trauma
(hint: it’s not). You could argue that it’s impossible for a mainstream studio
tent-pole aimed largely at teens to not sanitize the violence, but only a
couple years ago, Steven Spielberg managed to capture the essential brutality
and devastation of combat with his old-fashioned WWI epic War Horse without using excessive amounts of gore or being slapped
with an R-rating, so evidently, it can be done.
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