I just rented Pleasantville and was very moved by it. If you're wondering whether to see it, please do. It's somewhat similar in feel to The Truman Show - a warm comedy that conveys social criticism. That's why I just rented them both for the first time and watched them back to back - and much preferred Pleasantville as more profound, funnier, and having more original writing.
However, at times Pleasantville is a little odd. First, it may well rub people the wrong way (it did me) that indiscriminate nightly recreational sex by teenagers is seen as causing them to flower into real people. Thus, a teenager contracting a venereal disease becomes the amusing equivalent to lipstick found on someone's collar. Well, it isn't. It's bothersome that this is seen as meaning the teenagers have somehow acquired "real life" and flowered.
Similarly, the infidelity of the perfect suburban wife is seen as completely wonderful - the horrific impact on the husband shown merely comically because dinner isn't ready.
Somehow, the town's negative reaction to a nude painting of the wife by her lover on the windows of the local hangout is seen as perverse. The writer/director sees the painting as just a wonderful expression of a long repressed artistic sensibility. Hmmm - imagine YOUR mother painted naked on the storefront window! You wouldn't want it to remain there!
Similarly, character after character responds enviously when presented with the idea that there is a more "dangerous" world out there. Well, I wish there were less danger in the world - less likelihood of disease, of murder, of ruinous bankruptcies of people's hopes, of litigation that drives people under, of unemployment, of infidelity. These are terrible things - they ruin and end lives. That doesn't mean I want a controlled environment - but only that it is hard to imagine anyone wishing for life to be MORE dangerous.
Moreover, much of the social criticism is blunted by the fact that many of the oddities the characters find about their situation are not because they are in the 1950s, but because they are in the midst of a television show rather than real life. Thus, ALL books have blank pages, there is no known place outside that town, all basketballs swish through the hoops, everyone's routine is so rigid that the soda fountain worker is unable to cope when a worker fils to show up in time to fold the napkins while he begins cooking.
The question thus becomes whether the director is satirizing merely television shows. But if it is merely a satire of old television programs, it is strange. On Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best or Donna Reed or My Three Sons, the characters OFTEN failed - and the inevitable moral lesson about trying again or keeping one's chin up was the point of the show.
If instead, it is social commentary about conformity and repression (as the movie's point appears more to be), then the oddities of being inside a television program unfortunately vitiate the point of the movie.
I also have a problem with a movie that confuses expression with libertine behavior. It's one thing to be free to draw any picture - it's another for teenagers to contract venereal diseases through indiscriminate sex. They AREN'T the same things, and making it appear that those who are confused when their wives have simply abandoned them and their children without even a note, with those who are violent book burners or utterly rigid conformists, is really hitting too broadly.
All that said, the movie was terribly moving in showing those in a conformist society finding themselves bloom, and the confusion and shock and anger that this causes among others. It's sweet and funny, and I particularly liked how well drawn the two leads were - quite distinct people who react very differently to the situation.
It's interesting that Toby McGuire begins by trying his utmost not to upset the existing conformist social order (his sister doesn't care at all), but ends completely believably as the revolutionary subverter of that order. The movie is well worth seeing even if you think the director insists on throwing out the morality of fidelity along with the bathwater of mindless rigid conformity.
However, at times Pleasantville is a little odd. First, it may well rub people the wrong way (it did me) that indiscriminate nightly recreational sex by teenagers is seen as causing them to flower into real people. Thus, a teenager contracting a venereal disease becomes the amusing equivalent to lipstick found on someone's collar. Well, it isn't. It's bothersome that this is seen as meaning the teenagers have somehow acquired "real life" and flowered.
Similarly, the infidelity of the perfect suburban wife is seen as completely wonderful - the horrific impact on the husband shown merely comically because dinner isn't ready.
Somehow, the town's negative reaction to a nude painting of the wife by her lover on the windows of the local hangout is seen as perverse. The writer/director sees the painting as just a wonderful expression of a long repressed artistic sensibility. Hmmm - imagine YOUR mother painted naked on the storefront window! You wouldn't want it to remain there!
Similarly, character after character responds enviously when presented with the idea that there is a more "dangerous" world out there. Well, I wish there were less danger in the world - less likelihood of disease, of murder, of ruinous bankruptcies of people's hopes, of litigation that drives people under, of unemployment, of infidelity. These are terrible things - they ruin and end lives. That doesn't mean I want a controlled environment - but only that it is hard to imagine anyone wishing for life to be MORE dangerous.
Moreover, much of the social criticism is blunted by the fact that many of the oddities the characters find about their situation are not because they are in the 1950s, but because they are in the midst of a television show rather than real life. Thus, ALL books have blank pages, there is no known place outside that town, all basketballs swish through the hoops, everyone's routine is so rigid that the soda fountain worker is unable to cope when a worker fils to show up in time to fold the napkins while he begins cooking.
The question thus becomes whether the director is satirizing merely television shows. But if it is merely a satire of old television programs, it is strange. On Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best or Donna Reed or My Three Sons, the characters OFTEN failed - and the inevitable moral lesson about trying again or keeping one's chin up was the point of the show.
If instead, it is social commentary about conformity and repression (as the movie's point appears more to be), then the oddities of being inside a television program unfortunately vitiate the point of the movie.
I also have a problem with a movie that confuses expression with libertine behavior. It's one thing to be free to draw any picture - it's another for teenagers to contract venereal diseases through indiscriminate sex. They AREN'T the same things, and making it appear that those who are confused when their wives have simply abandoned them and their children without even a note, with those who are violent book burners or utterly rigid conformists, is really hitting too broadly.
All that said, the movie was terribly moving in showing those in a conformist society finding themselves bloom, and the confusion and shock and anger that this causes among others. It's sweet and funny, and I particularly liked how well drawn the two leads were - quite distinct people who react very differently to the situation.
It's interesting that Toby McGuire begins by trying his utmost not to upset the existing conformist social order (his sister doesn't care at all), but ends completely believably as the revolutionary subverter of that order. The movie is well worth seeing even if you think the director insists on throwing out the morality of fidelity along with the bathwater of mindless rigid conformity.