The Hunger Games

What a film! I am not a fan of sci-fi films, though I enjoyed "The Thing", the black and white version many years ago, and was not expecting to enjoy "The Hunger Games" but I did. More than just enjoyed it as if it was something nice like ice cream; I felt it had an intellectual element that lifted it above the usual sci-fi films. The action takes place in a future America which is now - then - a totalitarian regime run from a city called Capitol and run with a demonic ferocity and control that is excitingly frightening. There has been in the past an uprising by the poor people in the various outlying parts of the country, an uprising which was put down ruthlessly so that the people now live in terror and severe poverty. For the entertainment of the mass of those in control, a decadent-seeming lot of dandies, perverts and dolls, every year two young people, a boy and a girl, are taken from each of the 12 districts and forced to fight to the death in a large wooded area until only one of them is left alive. It is not only a way the dictator has of maintaining his control over the people but is also shown on TV to entertain, like some ghastly reality programme.
What gave it, to me, an extra element of interest was that, due to the masterly way in which the society was presented in the film, it made me think of the way some societies we know now, like Syria or Iran or The Sudan, function. Not just some which now exist but many of those in history. The Romans, The Pharoahs, The Chinese. It made me feel that I now know something of how it must have felt to a person in, say, China during the Gang of Four's horrific reign of terror.
I wished for some kind of solution or even just a glimpse of a solution to the state which held its people in such dreadful subjection but the film didn't give it: at the end things went on as before. And, in a way, this brought home the horror of it more scarily.