public meeting: Drynam Hall

If it was raining soup, the man would be out with a fork,’ famously said a disgruntled Fine Gael backbencher many years ago, in reference to his party leader’s tendency to always choose the wrong policy option.

The depiction of a deranged dystopian realm is not an un familiar one to cinema goers. Last year there was the chilling Never Let Me Go with Kiera Knightly and Carey Mulligan, and the re-discovery of V for Vendetta (2006) by the “Indignados” and “Occupy” protesters. The Hunger Games, a film adaption of the first novel of a bestselling teenage trilogy by Suzanne Collins, in that sense is not groundbreaking or exceptional. However, with the captivating appeal of its feisty heroine, Katniss Everdeen, played with subtlety and intelligence by Jennifer Lawrence, and its portrayal of themes such as extreme inequality, lack of democracy, dictatorship, the depravity of the tabloid media and reality television that echo many of the themes of the ‘Occupy’ movement, mean that ‘Hunger Games’  packs quite a punch.

Usually it takes some years for a new government to develop a haughty arrogance toward the people who put it in power. With the current Fine Gael/ Labour Coalition this time span has been shortened to less than one year, something to do no doubt, with its huge majority of sixty in the Dáil.