It got me to thinkin', which is a good thing for a movie to do. It didn't get me thinking about life or meaning... it got me thinking 'what is this beast'?. It's not what a movie usually is.
Take Inception, Rope, or Groundhog Day. In those films, the author(s) had an idea of what they wanted to say through the movie and they employed subtle or unsubtle devices to say it. The films had a self-understanding that you pieced together by watching. Such a process feels like getting to know someone and learning what they think and what they value.
HG doesn't know what it is. It is abstract art... a expression of self and of emotion with no addressee and no self-understanding. The movie is a pre-linguistic grunt, an *urnf* of inarticulate expression. This has advantages and disadvantages.
I did not come to this view at first. At first I thought that the film was a sort of ham-handed manipulation of teenagers by mirroring them back their angst and fears,
Hey, teenager. This is you. You are thrust into a system you didn't agree to, bound by rules you didn't write. It is a brutal contest to survive but the grown-ups, who are vacuous and disconnected, all act like its a wonderful and well-established state of affairs, telling you they hope you will survive and wishing you luck. You are forced against your will to make friends and make people like you by behaving certain ways. Some grown ups are useless and apathetic, some are sympathetic and help you, some are actively vindictive, stacking the odds against you for their sport from a secret control-room.
The teenage mirror view of the movie makes the ending unsatisfying. Your only option is to threaten suicide and force them to change. A stupid response to an incomplete, self-interested picture of growing up.
However, the movie is not merely teenage angst. I'm really starting to see it as the emotive expression of the fears of a society which lacks personal maturity. Our society is afraid that we never really grew up... and that the harsh rules of survival lurking below the surface will break upwards and snatch us. We feel subconsciously that we didn't earn our bread and that the law of the jungle will have its do eventually.
On the one hand, we are the decadent wealthy and we hate our superficiality and hypocrisy. On the other hand, we are the brave and honest and confused children, plunged back into the state of nature and afraid of the pain and horror that exist there. The movie is wise to leave this duality unresolved. The ending is nicely left in a dual mode. On the one hand, our heroine's final decision is the attempt to assert some kind of identity in the face of everything. On the other hand, the world dresses it up as a hollywood love story to make it acceptable. The movie expresses (without asking why) discontent with the way narratives are always tied up in neat little bundles that don't really apply to the unspoken depth of the situation. Society doesn't like it either. We want meaning but don't want an artificial story. However, if you want a real story, you must face the possibility that, terrifyingly, there is no meaning. Society, we, feel trapped in between.
This response is much more mature than Avatar because it wants, without knowing how, to go forward: to discover what it means to be human. Not really any clues on what that might be, though. Although I think it is interesting that being human seems to have something to do with being more willing to die than to kill another human. People want to be that but can't see how its possible.
For a more brilliant and self-understanding exploration of this problem of self-sacrifice in the face of violence and the desire to be human above raw survival necessity, see Trigun. http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Alas, whatever kind of society is speaking through HG, it doesn't really like any of the above and mistrusts them. HG remains a yolp, it doesn't speak to anyone, just shouts into the darkness. The director does a good job of this, leaving long pauses, letting events speak for themselves, letting the audience feel what is happening.
This approach does also mean that a lot of potential complexities remain unexplored.
Peta, the love interest, reunited with our heroine almost instantly after it is announced they can leave together if they win, in spite of the fact that he was working with the baddies. I wondered if his wounds were self-inflicted and that it was all a trap to lure heroine into trusting him. But all of the intrigue fizzled and went nowhere. Which is good for conveying emotion and bad for conveying meaning.
Which is pretty much my summary of the movie. Expressing a deep-rooted feeling is difficult and good for you for developing a more complex emotional life, movie. But you haven't tried to speak with me. And art helps us explore what it means to be human together. This movie was not for me. I'm not sure whether that makes me or the movie self-interested :>
