Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week
The concept of characters moving in and out of film and television screens seems to have become a distinctive new genre.
Woody Allen’s fabulous 1985 comedy- fantasy, The Purple Rose of Cairo, had Jeff Daniels climbing down from the big screen, driven by his passion for a member of the audience, played winsomely by Mia Farrow.
Then there was Peter Hyams’s Stay Tuned (1992), with John Ritter and Pam Dawber sucked into “hellivision” after making a pact with a devilish network programmer.
More recently we had Peter Weir’s adventurous comedy-drama The Truman Show, with Jim Carrey as a hapless though unbelievably happy chap who discovers he’s sealed in a hermetic world and is the star of a hit television show which charts every moment of his life.
Now we have Pleasantville, Gary Ross’s ingenious feature, which is more complex and provocative than The Truman Show.
Siblings David and Jennifer (played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) are sucked into a quaint 1950s black- and-white sitcom called Pleasantville. The atmosphere there is always pleasant: the temperature is constant, married couples sleep in twin beds of a designated size (there is no such thing as sex), dinners are ready when hubby returns home and firemen exist only to rescue cats from trees.
The film’s opening scene sees a smiling high school teacher lecturing a group of horny Californian kids on Aids and global warming, informing them that their chances of getting a job after graduation are virtually zero.
In contrast, the high school students in Pleasantville have no idea about anything outside of the town. Geography lessons consists of plotting where the high street meets the other street.
But all this changes with the arrival of our modern-day hero and heroine. David and Jennifer magically become Bud and Mary Sue, the model children of paradigmatic 1950s sitcom parents George and Betty (played by William H Macy of Fargo and Joan Allen).
On their arrival in Pleasantville, Jennifer sees herself in black-and- white and says: “I’m all pasty … we’re supposed to be at home, we’re supposed to be in colour, we’re stuck in Nerdsville!”
But things change when Jennifer seduces the high school jock. Suddenly colours start appearing – first a red rose, then pink bubblegum in a school hallway, a girl’s pink tongue, a green car in front of the diner.
The people of Pleasantville are also affected by the bold new life-force that comes to the town. Books which were blank are filled with words and people start reading classics like Huckleberry Finn. Most importantly, Betty, the perfect housewife, discovers her individuality and sexuality. She even has an affair with Mr Johnson (Jeff Daniels), the owner of the local soda pop shop who discovers he’s a talented artist.
The film makes a fascinating statement about paternalistic, regimented, conformist society versus the world of real passions. Director Ross even delves into darker realities such as mob violence, intolerance and societal paranoia.
At times it is a bit ambiguous, but the neat balancing of humour and poignant drama as the people of Pleasantville discover their true selves in living colour is quite brilliant.
The film would not work if it were not for the brilliant visual effects achieved by cinematographer John Lindley, production designer Jeanine Oppewall, visual effects supervisor Chris Watts and, most importantly, colour effects designer Michael Southard.
Filmed entirely in colour, which was then removed digitally for the black- and-white portions of the film, the film-makers used more than 1 700 digital visual effects to tell the story. It is the largest digital effects movie ever produced.
An average Hollywood film might use 40 to 50 digital shots at the most, and a blockbuster like Independence Day would use about 300 to 400 computer-generated shots.
Producer Bob Degus says: “Many of the processes we used are so cutting-edge that the film could not have been made a year or two earlier because the technology simply did not exist.”
But all this technical wizardry would amount to nothing if it were not for the solid script. And Ross, who scripted the hit Big with Tom Hanks and Dave with Kevin Kline and who has also penned speeches for United States President Bill Clinton, triumphs in his directorial debut.
The film started out well in the US, but then took a box-office dive. This is most probably because it doesn’t feature a star name like Carrey in The Truman Show.
But Pleasantville is infinitely more intelligent, moving from hectic comedy to a sad and touching subversion of a hermetically sealed 1950s wonderland where the folk come to terms with themselves and the audience realise that although life is complicated and filled with contradictions, it’s a great journey.