The plot is simple: A rather bland modern-day teen and his slutty sister gets stuck in a typical 50's TV sitcom. But writer/director Gary Ross takes this simple premise and exploits it for everything possible - comedy, drama, melancholia, nostalgia, adversity... you name it - it's in there.

Ross' starting point for his exploration of his theme begins in 1958. He introduces "progress" (i.e. modern thinking), in the form of the teens, into the mix. And then he explores almost every major cultural revolution that has happened since as an offshoot of the teens being stuck in this tine period. Imagine if Rod Serling wrote "Back to the Future," and you get a very general idea of what this film is all about. Ross works in topics like the sexual revolution, cultural diversity, freedom of expression, the struggle for individuality with seeming ease. What is so wondrous about the film is that "Pleasantville" becomes a microcosm of America, and then must undergo all the beauty, all the hatred, and all the tragedy that comes with the changes it undergoes. It's almost impossible to describe but watching it is like witnessing the last 40 years of American life in 2 hours. Ross has almost everything that modern life encompasses come forth and be reckoned with in his plot.

The cast is perfect. Tobey Maguire, Resse Witherspoon, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, William H. Macy, J.T. Walsh... all of them stream remarkable, perfect characters whom we grow to like and care about. Even Walsh's misguided regressionist and Macy's confused paternal figure come to be understood for their fear and for their inability to cope with change. It would have been a whole lot easier for Ross to simply make us dislike them.

It is Maguire who carries the film as a disaffected youth whose world is beyond his scope or his grasp. Unable to comprehend his daily life, he seeks solace in the 50's Tv sitcom, "Pleasantville," sort of an amalgamation of "Father Knows Best, "Leave it to Beaver" and the like. Maguire seems sweet and loveable as a rather average kid who knows endless trivia about the show. Wisely, he is not shown to be nerdy, pathetic, lonely or squirrelly. He's just a guy sort of adrift in his day to day life.

His sister, meanwhile, played by Witherspoon, opts for the social circle who values a tramp more than a bookworm. Her transformation in the film is nothing short of miraculous and it is Witherspoon's adept hand at making this rather cornball plot twist work with finesse and beguiling subtlety. She is quite good here.

As for the rest of the supporters here, Allen explores the awakening of housewife sexuality with a beauty and a delicacy that makes us extremely in awe of her. Allen has looked quite aged in other roles, but her equine slenderness helps her to exude a undercurrent of repressed womanhood that flowers at the slighted of touch right before our very eyes. She is, quite simply, beautiful here. Daniels may make his character a bit too simplistic but his awe and wonder at the unfurling colors of the world around him makes us deeply engrosses in his character's world. When he experiences the beauty of art for the first time, it is as if we are doing this also. We see art like we've never seen it before. I never understood the intricate beauty of Picasso or Monet or Titian quite as I do know thanks to this movie. It does that to you. The beauty of literature becomes as obvious as the beauty of a rainstorm to us while watching this film. The world of art and literature and music and sexuality and human emotion comes alive to us, just as it does to the characters.

Walsh and Macy have the less likable roles here because they, in a way, must play the heavies. Ross allows the protestations of his "male" and therefore "staunch" characters go to almost unbearable extremes. The film almost reaches a height of Nazi terrorism before it wisely pulls back and makes us witness the complexity and the inherent beauty in adversity and confrontation. Rather than make the antagonists villains here, Ross makes them frightened conformists, trying desperately to hold on to what little seeming "normalcy" there is left in the world. Although their conflict with the "flowering" people does come terrifyingly too close to a violent confrontational riot, Ross knows when to pull back from this precipice and how to make a plea for tolerance and understanding that leaves the aggressors, not defeated, but temperate and struggling desperately to understand what is going on in their world.

"Pleasantville" isn't just a sweet little film about a kid who longs for a simpler time, it's a modern cinematic treatise on the inherent beauty of the progression of human existence. Ross' pictures, along with his marvelous script, evoke passions in us we thought long dormant. He makes us see the world from an innocents eyes again. The beauty of the world in colors here is as beautiful as the worlds spoken to describe it. The film allows us to disengage from our modern perspectives and evaluate where we are and how we got here. It allows us to see the elegance and the importance of conflict. It values art and beauty and literature and conversation and equality and simplicity and complexity. It strives to make us understand that the struggle is oft times as wonderful as the resolution, that the wonder is not only in the triumph, but in the challenge to achieve the triumph. "Pleasantville" does this while also being cute, graceful, bold, sweet, loving and honest. This film about the struggle to achieve a world where our values within ourselves stem from our ability to accept the values of others around us, is quite priceless in it's self.

Note:

Also with Don Knotts, Paul Walker.

Produced by Ross and Steven Soderbergh. Score by Randy Newman. Pop songs by Elvis, Buddy Holly, Etta James, Miles Davis and other period tunes. Fionna Apple's rework of The Beatles' "Across the Universe" closes the film.

I'm giving the film a A- in Cinematography cause there are a few times where the black and white seems a little too slick, not grainy enough for 50's TV technology. A rather picayune complaint.

Another film named "Pleasantville" was released in 1976.

(Review written in 1998)

More of Lodger's reviews indexed alphabetically! Just click your favorite letter to go there.

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

HOME