First of all, I'd like to thank the MPAA for giving this tale of teenagers hacking each other to death a PG-13 rating. It is perfect commentary for a moralistic story about a society desensitized to violence. The Hunger Games may not be the most violent picture ever made, but no amount of pure violence can garner an R rating. But, fuck, this fucking sentence is rated R. Show a nipple? That's an R. Gay stuff? NC-17. The MPAA has an anything goes attitude with regards to violence, but treats sex and cursing like cardinal sins. This is not how the rating system should work. They should be rating violence more restrictively than sex and far more restrictively than language.
What struck me watching the film is how poorly designed the Hunger Games were for their intended purpose. The Hunger Games are supposed to be the circuses part of the old Roman bread and circuses style government, but how they were managed the games were more likely to cause a rebellion than prevent one.
The first mistake of the Panem government is the hunger part of The Hunger Games. The Romans may have been brutal conquerors, but they were surprisingly benevolent governors. The Romans knew that hungry people are angry people. They always made sure that the basic needs of their people were met. The Capitol did not have such regard for their citizens.
In The Hunger Games, 24 children are taken away from their homes and forced to fight to the death. No matter how apathetic the people get, one of the few things everyone is willing to fight to the death for is their children. You want to get people angry? You want to start an insurrection? Try randomly kidnapping and executing the most adorable kids you can find. Just look at the riots in District 11 over cute, little Rue being cutely speared in the chest.
After snatching the children from the poverty and starvation they have been living in, they make sure they experience the finest side of Capitol life. They are given more food than they can possibly eat. They live in total opulence. They are given a true first-hand view of the great inequity of Panem society. And then, knowing that they are likely to die very soon, they give them the biggest microphone imaginable. They are put on live, national TV for days on end on a program certain to be viewed by nearly everyone in the country. They are offered effectively unlimited time to rail against the oppressive government and wealth inequity. And what could the government do to shut them up, kill them? Shut off their mics? They are probably dead already. And stopping them like that would only prove them right. The government could go after their family which is probably what keeps the kids in line, but at some point one of them will take the risk because the government has so effectively demonstrated how little they had back home and how much there is to fight for.
So for any aspiring dictators reading this, I suggest using adult prisoners of below average intelligence for your gladiatorial games. The criminals should be guilty of serious, violent offenses. This will prevent backlash at their deaths. It should also provide a higher level of competition than randomly chosen children. Should they chose to use the forum politically, which is unlikely from the less intelligent members of the prison community, they will probably be ignored. I'm not saying you should brutally oppress millions of people, but if you do, please be smart about it.
Now, all of this might have eluded me had this film not had one of the worst SAMs in cinematic history. A SAM, or Stupidity Awareness Moment, is the instantaneous conversion of a movie from an entertaining film into a laughable mess of illogic. A Stupidity Awareness Moment is a moment so stupid and illogical that it causes you to question not just the logic of the scene it is in, but the logic of every moment of the film. The SAM in The Hunger Games comes as Katniss is being chased by a pack of other kids and chooses to climb a tree. Katniss choosing to trap herself in a tree is SAM worthy in and of itself, but the true SAM comes a few seconds later when the pursuing gang after missing with a few arrows just stops firing. Here they are with their enemy trapped in range of a projectile weapon with effectively unlimited ammunition and they don't finish her off? It is the worst strategic planning I have seen in any movie. And, then they further compound their mistake by all taking a nap. One of the primary reasons for the gang to exist is that they can sleep in shifts and they all go to sleep within sight of the enemy? It is perfect execution of the very rare triple-SAM. For the record, this SAM is also in the book and it is the principal reason I never read the later books.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Artist- It's Quiet...Too Quiet
Oh, This is so unexpected...I'm so excited. Where do I begin? Well, first of all, I'd like to thank the Academy for the re-release of The Artist. One of the problems with Denver being a smaller market, is that limited releases tend to get here later, run on fewer screens, and leave pretty quickly. All that is to say I wanted to get to it the first time around, I just didn't have a chance. If you haven't gotten a chance to see The Artist yet, do so. It is very good and like a big 3D event movie, like Avatar, this silent film will not translate well to DVD.
The Artist is not truly a silent film. In fact, it uses sound more effectively than any film I have ever seen. The music is so engaging and the actors are so expressive that dialogue feels unnecessary and unwanted. Sound effects are rare and where they are it is typically as an outward expression of the protagonists fears. The first sound effects we hear are literally a nightmare with the cacophony reaching deafening levels while George is himself silenced. (See, I can do serious analysis. I choose not to.)
Up next for discussion: Is Peppy insane? She flirts with George between 1927 and early 1929, but the relationship doesn't quite get romantic before their live start to drift apart. During their last conversations in the twenties, George makes it pretty clear he hates her. But in 1931, she buys up all his things and then his Clifton. All to make him happy. When she takes in the injured George in 1932, we are getting into Misery territory. All of this could be dismissed as not totally unrequited love, if it wasn't for one little thing: her mole. George first drew on her beauty mark early on in the film and we see her apply it a few times later on before going to work, but towards the end of the film she is wearing it all the time in scenes where she is clearly not in costume or had her hair done. The perpetual mole and her obsessive tendencies towards a man she has not talked to in three years indicates a clear break with reality.
After George fired Clifton, there were a couple minutes I thought Clifton might get preserved in dolomite, baby.
The silent nature of this film also made me keenly aware of a grave threat to our nations multiplexes: Old people pointing out the obvious. What is it about being over 50 that gives you the license to talk during a movie? Is it one of the benefits of AARP membership? It might be different if they felt the need to point out subtle gags such as George waking under a sign which reads "Lonely Star" or they were making acute and cutting observational comedy. But senior citizens only feel compelled to speak when what they have to say is incredibly obvious. Here are some peanut gallery observations I was treated to during The Artist: "That's the dog.", "Noise.", and "It was her car hitting the tree, not the gun, that made the bang." Thank you, geriatrics, I could not have gotten those on my own.
The Artist is not truly a silent film. In fact, it uses sound more effectively than any film I have ever seen. The music is so engaging and the actors are so expressive that dialogue feels unnecessary and unwanted. Sound effects are rare and where they are it is typically as an outward expression of the protagonists fears. The first sound effects we hear are literally a nightmare with the cacophony reaching deafening levels while George is himself silenced. (See, I can do serious analysis. I choose not to.)
Up next for discussion: Is Peppy insane? She flirts with George between 1927 and early 1929, but the relationship doesn't quite get romantic before their live start to drift apart. During their last conversations in the twenties, George makes it pretty clear he hates her. But in 1931, she buys up all his things and then his Clifton. All to make him happy. When she takes in the injured George in 1932, we are getting into Misery territory. All of this could be dismissed as not totally unrequited love, if it wasn't for one little thing: her mole. George first drew on her beauty mark early on in the film and we see her apply it a few times later on before going to work, but towards the end of the film she is wearing it all the time in scenes where she is clearly not in costume or had her hair done. The perpetual mole and her obsessive tendencies towards a man she has not talked to in three years indicates a clear break with reality.
After George fired Clifton, there were a couple minutes I thought Clifton might get preserved in dolomite, baby.
The silent nature of this film also made me keenly aware of a grave threat to our nations multiplexes: Old people pointing out the obvious. What is it about being over 50 that gives you the license to talk during a movie? Is it one of the benefits of AARP membership? It might be different if they felt the need to point out subtle gags such as George waking under a sign which reads "Lonely Star" or they were making acute and cutting observational comedy. But senior citizens only feel compelled to speak when what they have to say is incredibly obvious. Here are some peanut gallery observations I was treated to during The Artist: "That's the dog.", "Noise.", and "It was her car hitting the tree, not the gun, that made the bang." Thank you, geriatrics, I could not have gotten those on my own.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Die Welle- Lost in Translation
I will keep this short because I'd much rather you read this account by Ron Jones, the teacher who started The Third Wave, than anything I could ever write.
Die Welle, or The Wave for those of us that don't know German, is a dramatization of an accidental social experiment which got out of hand as a teacher created a dictatorship in under a week. That part of the film is completely true and is incredibility frightening. Unfortunately, instead of telling a true to life accounting of events, like this one, the filmmakers felt it was necessary to crank the drama up to eleven.
Die Welle could share an opening scrawl with The Men Who Stare at Goats: More of this is true than you would believe. The problem with films that are based on actual events is the farther away from the real events the story drifts the more the audience believes that none of it is real. And, what happened in during The Third Wave was remarkably terrifying in its simplicity and the events should be much better known than they are.
The most obvious change from the real events was changing the location from Palo Alto, California in 1967 to modern day Germany. And while my personal prejudices says that this relocation, makes the story more likely and thus less scary, but Germany has its own unique history which makes it particularly cautious of dictatorships so all-in-all the change in location is basically a wash. And of course, this is a German film, so the German setting would have a greater impact on its intended German audience.
The movie was filled with obviously dramatized events: the logistically impossible graffiti, the financially improbable embroidery, the physical violence, the murder-suicide, and the teacher's arrest. And since none of these things actually happened and could be so readily picked as fictionalizations, it undercuts the reality of the true story at the base of the film.
Read it already.
Die Welle, or The Wave for those of us that don't know German, is a dramatization of an accidental social experiment which got out of hand as a teacher created a dictatorship in under a week. That part of the film is completely true and is incredibility frightening. Unfortunately, instead of telling a true to life accounting of events, like this one, the filmmakers felt it was necessary to crank the drama up to eleven.
Die Welle could share an opening scrawl with The Men Who Stare at Goats: More of this is true than you would believe. The problem with films that are based on actual events is the farther away from the real events the story drifts the more the audience believes that none of it is real. And, what happened in during The Third Wave was remarkably terrifying in its simplicity and the events should be much better known than they are.
The most obvious change from the real events was changing the location from Palo Alto, California in 1967 to modern day Germany. And while my personal prejudices says that this relocation, makes the story more likely and thus less scary, but Germany has its own unique history which makes it particularly cautious of dictatorships so all-in-all the change in location is basically a wash. And of course, this is a German film, so the German setting would have a greater impact on its intended German audience.
The movie was filled with obviously dramatized events: the logistically impossible graffiti, the financially improbable embroidery, the physical violence, the murder-suicide, and the teacher's arrest. And since none of these things actually happened and could be so readily picked as fictionalizations, it undercuts the reality of the true story at the base of the film.
Read it already.
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