Uncomfortably thrilling

THE phenomenal success of Suzanne Collins's “The Hunger Games”, the first part of a bestselling dystopian trilogy for teenagers (and others), made a film adaptation a near certainty. But this posed a problem: what defines and underpins the horrific nature of this imagined society is that its citizens take pleasure in watching young people fight to the death on broadcast television (ie, the so-called Hunger Games). Yet this is disturbingly close to taking pleasure in watching young people fight to the death on screen, which is what the film audience of "The Hunger Games" presumably needs to do. How can such a film divorce the thrills it delivers from the fictional thrill-making that it has to deplore?

The most obvious solution hits the audience pretty early on: an overdone devotion to shaky-cam techniques, quick cuts and fairly extreme close-ups. Gary Ross, the director, clearly intends to immerse and disorient his audience, to ensure we feel rather different from the audience within the film. They see a polished version of the Hunger Games, edited and packaged; we, these camera techniques assure us, are seeing things from the oppressed inside.

The plot also helps. At the beginning of the actual games about a third of the characters are killed. Removing them allows the film to have basically a set of good guys and bad guys, rather than a full moral spectrum. By depicting this murderous culling as a montage, the film creates another distinction between cinema viewers and the audience within: we perceive the event as a loss, whereas they take it as a thrill.

The film, like the books, also plays up the outlandish appearance of that in-film audience. This not only leads to what must surely be the longest-ever list of hairstylists in a film's closing credits, it also helps to ensure that we never identify with the in-film audience. While the logic of the film demands that many in both audiences are rooting for Katniss Everdeen, the story's hero (played in the film by Jennifer Lawrence), we never really see such support on screen. Essentially, “The Hunger Games” never wants to be confused with Michael Haneke's “Funny Games”, which directly confronts the titillating, sadistic thrill of watching violence in film.

The only character who goes some way towards crossing this divide is Caesar Flickerman, the TV presenter of the Games, played by the reliably wonderful Stanley Tucci (pictured). Because he must explain what is going on to both audiences, he is the hinge between them. And his performance is a gem; he is clearly a monster of cruelty who is remarkably good at his television job.

But the performance that defines the film is Ms Lawrence's. By refusing to be likeable (for the most part), she rejects the affections of the in-show audience but firmly wins ours. Katniss Everdeen is a terrific character, brave and decent but also forced by circumstance to be disingenuous and indeed hurtful to some who love her. She is self-critical and confused yet thoroughly admirable. In her books, Ms Collins is able to show this by entering Katniss's head. Ms Lawrence remarkably manages to illustrate this complexity in a near-silent performance.

And the best may be yet to come. In the first of Ms Collins's books Katniss's narration performs very well the function that Mr Ross tries to fulfil with shaky-cams and the like—putting us in her world as she sees it. Later on this unique perspective becomes a shackle, as the story needs to grow beyond her. The film's sequels should let Ms Lawrence's performance grow, too, if the screenplays allow it. The books tail off from the first, and the films may well do likewise. But there is a possibility that, over four films, Jennifer Lawrence's already impressive performance will grow into something great.