THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT
For those who are not a fervent reader of the saga Hunger Games nor an avid spectator of its cinematographic adaptations, the viewing of this fifth part, Hunger Games. The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird promises to be a dark journey. Let’s summarize the matter: immense literary and cinematographic phenomenon, the series of Hunger Games continues the mutation perpetrated by the saga Harry Potter And Twilight by noting the emergence of a literature and a cinema for young adults (another marketing name to talk about adolescence) and works that are directly aimed at them.
We owe the creation of this dystopian universe to the American Suzanne Collins: in an undated future, the novelist follows her charismatic heroine, Katniss Everdeen, within Panem, a totalitarian state located in North America. Every year, to control its people, the central power, the Capitol, organizes a game show, the “Hunger Games”. The twenty-four participants in the game (divided into tribes) must then face each other in an arena during a fight to the death, at the end of which only one winner will remain. Katniss triumphs before leading an insurrection against Panem.
For fans of the saga
As in Harry Potterits widely copied model, the universe ofHunger Games is intended to be an autonomous world with its language woven with neologisms, its symbols and its rules of the game, which are perfectly nebulous for those who take the story along. So much refinement under which a speech that could not be simpler is deployed: the soft criticism of the society of the spectacle, of dictatorships and of injustice in general – under the veneer of protest, an entire industry is rubbing its hands .
Nothing really new in this fifth adaptation which consists of a prequel going back sixty years before the adventures of Katniss and recounts the youth of Corolianus Snow, who will become the emblematic dictator of Panem and the sworn enemy of the heroine played by Jennifer Lawrence. Let’s say it frankly: it would be naive to believe that the film is aimed at anyone other than fans of the saga. All the pleasure that one could take there seems entirely lodged in this impression, for the spectator, of holding the key to a universe in oneself, opaque to neophytes, and which never ceases to refer to other films and novels. This umpteenth part seems to be there only to maintain complicity with the public, to ensure that it is still there, and to replenish the coffers in the process – we call that “ensuring fan-service”.
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