The Great Movies: Pleasantville
As the opening credits come up, we're watching blended colors on the screen as we hear the sounds of channel surfing going on. As we focus in on the colors and see we're watching the television as channels keep flipping by, we come to a channel called TV Time and are informed of an upcoming marathon of a show called Pleasantville. We are given some information up front. And we go into our tale with...
Once Upon A Time...
Gary Ross' fantasy is something of an original. It is a modern fairy tale as well as a social satire. His film says so much with humor and whimsy that only after watching it once do you pick up on a few details. With further watching do you really start to see more of what Ross intends to show you. And more you begin to appreciate this film for what it is really about; the value of change and the destructive force of maintaining status quo.
The film's protagonists are modern kids David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Whitherspoon), though the film is mostly about David. When we meet him, he's shy and timid. He relies on the reruns of Pleasantville to fulfill the desires for what he considers a normal family. Jennifer doesn't want that in her life. She values change too much, as we'll see later in the film. When they are brought into this new world, David is afraid of change, afraid that by doing so that they might be stuck there, but also afraid of tarnishing his perfect image of how life should be.
Jennifer almost instantly tries to find ways to change it. She is not ignorant as some people I have talked to put it. In a crucial scene where she takes the offensive in the front seat of her date's car, she is doing this not really because she's needing sex, but to shake things up.
At this point, we begin to see colors appear in the black and white world of Pleasantville. Is it the sex that's causing this? Not in the least. In fact, sex isn't even the first act of defiance in this movie. The first act is actually independence when Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels) informs the audience he's closed the store down on his own, something he's never had to do before. When the kids start to feel independence (as well as a few of the wives of this town), that's when we start to see colors. Eventually, other acts create change. The two strongest are knowledge (watch as kids enter the library in black and white and leave in color) and Passion (either romantic or in the case of David, passion of a son to a mother-figure). Notice after the rain sequence, that most of the characters who turned to color did so without showing to have had sex).
The social implications start taking root as early as the scene that David helps Betty (Joan Allen), his TV mother to hide the fact that she has turned to color. When he sees that they do have feeling towards what they have become or have not become, we also see this. When the characters start to see the walls of this repression start to shatter, it becomes violent (and realize that the violence starts with the B&W holdouts). We see racism sprout ("No Coloreds" one sign says in the hardware store) as well as segregation (The Courtroom Scene).
Now bare in mind that Pleasantville does not have a police force nor a central government, it is run by the Chamber of Commerce and Big Bob (J.T. Walsh). They meet at the bowling alley and the barbershop and lay plans not to quell rebellion, but to bring back "pleasantness". But as the citizens of Pleasantville are becoming more individual, it becomes harder to please everybody. Even to the point that a blue door is considered unbearable.
The three acts of this story are separated by two acts of the elements. The first is by a tree that catches fire. The second is by a rainstorm. This kind of reminds me of the story of the Phoenix; the old Pleasantville was burned away by one burning tree, and was washed anew in a gentle night storm.
Performances are key to this story's success. Maguire and Allen's performances are what gauges the rest of the actors. Maguire has to slowly come around from being the keeper of the status quo to a leader of opposition. He does so by finding the little events that make him see how his own fantasies about the show hurt those that actually live in that show. Allen's performance is important because she's the one who feels the changes first in her world in a way that's not exciting, but terrifying. How can she let her husband find out? What will the others think? Little at a time does she realize just how much she wants to be free to make choices for herself. And then there's Jeff Daniels who does a great Jimmy Stewart every-man thing. All he wants to do is paint. His terror is to find something he really loves and have it taken away from him.
Gary Ross is no stranger to fantasy tales. His first screenplays were for Big (about a boy who wishes to become a man and has it granted) and Dave (about a look-alike who becomes president and does the job even better than the REAL president does). Even his Seabiscuit is about a real-life fairy tale about a horse that defied the odds more than once.
Pleasantville is more conscious than those other films. It intends to tell you a story and make you think about it afterwards. It doesn't treat you like a kid and it doesn't hold your hand. Hard choices are left for all the characters even as the film ends with a character saying, "Well, I guess I don't know either."