Reviews

The designation of "Pleasantville" as a comedy was perhaps a marketing necessity, but there's much more to this film than the laughs generated by the juxtoposition of nineties teenagers into the sterile Eisenhower era of the fifties.

While following the "Yankee in King Arthur's Court" formula in the same manner as the "Back to the Future" movies and other stuck-out-of-time entries, "Pleasantville", to my surprise and enjoyment, took on a deeper and stronger meaning as the story progressed. Whereas Woody Allen uses black-and-white cinematography to capture the ambiance of the cinema of the past, Gary Ross, who directed and wrote this film, used the lack of color as a symbol for rigidity, sameness, and intolerance. Between the sight gags and the innuendo, the message emerged with gathering force throughout the film: the fifties were not so "pleasant" for those whose ideas were not mainstream, and whose ideology didn't conform to the close-mindedness of the times.

Images borrowed from many other films depicting the ugly middle-American penchant for intolerance are used throughout "Pleasantville", and although a bit too obvious, they worked well enough to trigger a shudder in me. I thought that the casting of Joan Allen as the robotic Stepford-like wife was a coup, considering her former role as Pat Nixon (in the 1995 film "Nixon"). William H. Macy, as the Father who apparently didn't know best, was superb, and the late J. T. Walsh was once again perfect as the intimidating small-town bully.

Many will see "Pleasantville" and enjoy it purely as a comic portrayal of the stodgy fifties vs. the cool nineties. It works fine on that level, if you're willing to resist allowing the strong images of intolerance from making their point. However, this film should be seen for the more important messages it delivers, and in that endeavor, it succeeds enormously.

Interestingly enough, most of the gangs portrayed in the film were neither symbolic nor imaginary, but were based on various real gangs who existed at different periods throughout the fifties and early sixties.

Many of these gangs were not real gangs in the common theatrical sense, but were specific ethnic groups of teens from different Bronx and Manhattan neighborhoods. Of course, each group developed its own mythical idea of what the other groups were like, and in his novel, Richard Price used much of this teenage myth and lore.

Of all the well-embellished epics common to the teens in the Wanderers' neighborhood , those dealing with the Duckies were the most detailed and commonly accepted. The Duckies, whether or not they were truly an organized group with such a name, were "the guys across the tracks", insofar as The Wanderers were concerned (the tracks being the NY Central's Harlem Line). They lived in the predominantly Irish neighborhood directly across Bronx Park. I believe their frightening, near demonic quality in the movie was based on a single actual event when two of the Wanderers were actually attacked in the park. Since The Wanderers had never really engaged in any real "gang wars" (or any significant fighting for that matter), that particular episode was the source of most of their perceptions of the Duckie Boys' penchant for unbridled violence.