My main issue was the movie was that I thought they fell down a bit in emphasizing how deeply entwined the political and personal are for Katniss. In the books I felt like there was a constantly a subtext of her just trying to do the right thing by Rue and Peeta, but those basic acts of decency kept running headlong into the way that President Snow wanted to demean the districts.
In the movie they made the switch from the gift to the riot, and they also didn't find a way to effectively convey Katniss' reasoning for eating the berries at the end. She was conflicted about her romantic feelings for Peeta, but I think that her friend and ally feelings were still very centered on not wanting him to die. Those feelings fed into her sense of basic decency that killing him would be wrong, and that it was wrong for the game runners to force her to do it, which led to the wildly political act of eating the berries. In the movie it's totally possible to read that moment as entirely romantic, and the only hint that you get that there's a political angle to the whole thing is Hamish's speech afterwards.
If they had done more of what you're suggesting above, and tried to show the difference between the lived experience and the edited for tv experience, I think that they could have better conveyed the distinction between Katniss's complex personal feelings and the way that the editing created a wholly romantic story. This would also have given more context to Hamish's instructions at the end.
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Date: 2012-04-08 08:47 pm (UTC)In the movie they made the switch from the gift to the riot, and they also didn't find a way to effectively convey Katniss' reasoning for eating the berries at the end. She was conflicted about her romantic feelings for Peeta, but I think that her friend and ally feelings were still very centered on not wanting him to die. Those feelings fed into her sense of basic decency that killing him would be wrong, and that it was wrong for the game runners to force her to do it, which led to the wildly political act of eating the berries. In the movie it's totally possible to read that moment as entirely romantic, and the only hint that you get that there's a political angle to the whole thing is Hamish's speech afterwards.
If they had done more of what you're suggesting above, and tried to show the difference between the lived experience and the edited for tv experience, I think that they could have better conveyed the distinction between Katniss's complex personal feelings and the way that the editing created a wholly romantic story. This would also have given more context to Hamish's instructions at the end.