I recently watched the Hunger Games, which was a movie I was long overdue to see, and I have to say it was a lot better than I thought. *Spoiler Alert*The plot involves a young girl named Katniss who volunteers to take her younger sisters place in an event that takes place once a year called the hunger games. After struggling to impress the heads of the games, she receives the highest score out of all the other competitors the day before the event begins. She is then dropped off in a large forested arena with 23 other kids to fight to the death, most of which die immediately. Death after death things begin to look up for Katniss until she realizes she might have to kill her friend from the same district as her. They are then informed that there can be two winners, as long as they are from the same district. After killing all the other kids, they are regretfully informed that the rule has been changed again and that there can only be one winner. Neither of them could live without the other so they decide to kill themselves with cyanide like berries. The heads then stop them just as they are about to ingest them and tell them they both won.*End Spoiler* The movie was directed by Gary Ross who also directed Pleasantville, a movie I saw back in 7th grade.
Most of the shots are done in away to show the intensity of what the main characters are doing. what else is very interesting is its use of colors to depict mood. For example, the first 30 minutes of the movie take place in District 12, the poor miners district, and it is composed of almost all black, white and grey colors. However, the lavish capital city is full of different colors and so are the people.
*Spoiler Alert* One of my favorite scenes is where Katniss and Peeta are about to kill themselves at the end of the movie. The use of light and shadow bring out all of the hard edges of the characters. The thing that makes this scene so great is that it uses all close ups. In fact the camera almost never shows anything but close ups of people. The music is almost enough by itself to evoke tragedy. I believe this is the most powerfully scene in the movie because it shows just how much talent Ross has in his directing.
