I didn't know where this movie was going from one minute to the next. It could have been written by Rod Serling while possessed by a Dybbuk. It has touches of "A Short Walk" and "A Stop in Willoughby" in it. But Serling, brought up in Binghamton, New York, usually saw the past as something regrettably lost. A kind of cultural childhood, a Golden Age, a period of innocence, rather like Spielberg.
What are we to make of the clash of values that Bud and Mary Sue bring back to 1958 with them? Bud is happy enough to be in the black and white world of stability. (Stability? I mean obsessive-compulsive rigidity.) But Mary Sue runs around like a warthog in heat with nothing in her head except whatever impinges on her body sheath. And then there's this colorization gimmick. People change colors as they, well, "evolve" maybe. The kids' mother has her first orgasm (self induced) and a tree on the lawn bursts into colorful flame. She turns colored. Mary Sue begins to wonder, since she's been rutting with all the young studs in town, why she remains black and white, and Bud suggests that maybe it's not just the sex.
Well then what IS it? It's not simply the capacity for change because Bud's already got his dose. At one point Bud tells a townsman that people get colorized because of something human inside them, something trying to get out, and he demonstrates his point by enraging the mayor (great performance by J. T. Walsh).
But something has been trying to get out of the local soda fountain manager, Jeff Daniels, for a long time -- the desire to paint modern pictures a la Picasso -- and it finally does, but he remains black and white for a long time afterward. Cars turn color too, although something has been getting out of them fairly often. I'm stumped. Some of the incidents seem no more than arbitrary.
The clash of cultures is interesting though. It's easy to make fun of the 1950s from our current perspective and this movie, unlike Twilight Zone, milks it for laughs. Married couples sleep in separate twin beds and never have sex. (They pollinate, I suppose.) Young couples go to Lover's Lane -- to hold hands. The books in the library are all blank because nobody reads or knows anything about life outside of Pleasantville. That last is a cheap shot, and untrue. Mary Sue, of all people, introduces them to reading and studying, and the books magically fill up with text and engravings. And it's a weak argument that claims we read more now than in 1958.
Well, the two kids wind up colorizing everything and everybody and practically wrecking the town in the process. It's supposed to be an improvement, but is it? The black and white townsfolk were dumb but happy. Now they get into fights, insult one another, trash art works they don't like. They screw like minks before they're married. One can imagine what this does to the crime rate and the teenage pregnancy rate -- and taxes. (Is this what been trying to get out of them?)
Sure, it was oppressive in the 1950s. We can see that now -- all that conformism and complacency. Is it less oppressive now? Perhaps not. Perhaps we don't recognize the strictures we live under because we take them for granted. We may be in the same position as the guy Mark Twain mentioned who suddenly realized he'd been speaking prose all his life. From inside the box, the commonly accepted assumptions, we seem to have a good deal of freedom to do what we want. The good folk of Pleasantville felt the same way -- and this movie treat them as airheads.
I want to mention something about the score. It insinuates anachronistically Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" into one of the scenes, rather prominently. This is followed, again anachronistically, by a piece from an album I revere, Miles Davis's "So What." I'm glad that it wasn't drilled into the viewers' ears in 1958 because it's unforgettable. How easily it could have become a stock piece, like R. Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from "2001: A Space Odyssey," or the last movement from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I can almost hear it now, playing over and over and over on all kinds of TV commercials for shampoo, kitchen cleansers, pimple removers, and condoms.
It may be hard to tell but I kind of enjoyed the movie, although it left me as much puzzled as satisfied. Joan Allen's performance is the only one with true depth; Macy is always interesting but his part gives him less to do. The kids are routine, except for the momentous 1950s bosom Reese Witherspoon has to strap on. Jeff Daniels fits his role as a reasonable but timid person very well. The only role in which I can remember his displaying energy was that of Joshua Chamberlain in "Gettysburg."
Rod Serling didn't always have a perfect answer for his longing for the past either, but I usually felt it was the result of ambivalence on his part, not, as here, confusion.
What are we to make of the clash of values that Bud and Mary Sue bring back to 1958 with them? Bud is happy enough to be in the black and white world of stability. (Stability? I mean obsessive-compulsive rigidity.) But Mary Sue runs around like a warthog in heat with nothing in her head except whatever impinges on her body sheath. And then there's this colorization gimmick. People change colors as they, well, "evolve" maybe. The kids' mother has her first orgasm (self induced) and a tree on the lawn bursts into colorful flame. She turns colored. Mary Sue begins to wonder, since she's been rutting with all the young studs in town, why she remains black and white, and Bud suggests that maybe it's not just the sex.
Well then what IS it? It's not simply the capacity for change because Bud's already got his dose. At one point Bud tells a townsman that people get colorized because of something human inside them, something trying to get out, and he demonstrates his point by enraging the mayor (great performance by J. T. Walsh).
But something has been trying to get out of the local soda fountain manager, Jeff Daniels, for a long time -- the desire to paint modern pictures a la Picasso -- and it finally does, but he remains black and white for a long time afterward. Cars turn color too, although something has been getting out of them fairly often. I'm stumped. Some of the incidents seem no more than arbitrary.
The clash of cultures is interesting though. It's easy to make fun of the 1950s from our current perspective and this movie, unlike Twilight Zone, milks it for laughs. Married couples sleep in separate twin beds and never have sex. (They pollinate, I suppose.) Young couples go to Lover's Lane -- to hold hands. The books in the library are all blank because nobody reads or knows anything about life outside of Pleasantville. That last is a cheap shot, and untrue. Mary Sue, of all people, introduces them to reading and studying, and the books magically fill up with text and engravings. And it's a weak argument that claims we read more now than in 1958.
Well, the two kids wind up colorizing everything and everybody and practically wrecking the town in the process. It's supposed to be an improvement, but is it? The black and white townsfolk were dumb but happy. Now they get into fights, insult one another, trash art works they don't like. They screw like minks before they're married. One can imagine what this does to the crime rate and the teenage pregnancy rate -- and taxes. (Is this what been trying to get out of them?)
Sure, it was oppressive in the 1950s. We can see that now -- all that conformism and complacency. Is it less oppressive now? Perhaps not. Perhaps we don't recognize the strictures we live under because we take them for granted. We may be in the same position as the guy Mark Twain mentioned who suddenly realized he'd been speaking prose all his life. From inside the box, the commonly accepted assumptions, we seem to have a good deal of freedom to do what we want. The good folk of Pleasantville felt the same way -- and this movie treat them as airheads.
I want to mention something about the score. It insinuates anachronistically Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" into one of the scenes, rather prominently. This is followed, again anachronistically, by a piece from an album I revere, Miles Davis's "So What." I'm glad that it wasn't drilled into the viewers' ears in 1958 because it's unforgettable. How easily it could have become a stock piece, like R. Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" from "2001: A Space Odyssey," or the last movement from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. I can almost hear it now, playing over and over and over on all kinds of TV commercials for shampoo, kitchen cleansers, pimple removers, and condoms.
It may be hard to tell but I kind of enjoyed the movie, although it left me as much puzzled as satisfied. Joan Allen's performance is the only one with true depth; Macy is always interesting but his part gives him less to do. The kids are routine, except for the momentous 1950s bosom Reese Witherspoon has to strap on. Jeff Daniels fits his role as a reasonable but timid person very well. The only role in which I can remember his displaying energy was that of Joshua Chamberlain in "Gettysburg."
Rod Serling didn't always have a perfect answer for his longing for the past either, but I usually felt it was the result of ambivalence on his part, not, as here, confusion.