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Wednesday, October 19, 2022

PLEASANTVILLE (1998)

Undersold as merely clever on release, twenty-five years of ideological & social polarization have only added depth & emotional resonance to writer/director Gary Ross’s political parable about a pair of modern siblings (Tobey Maguire; Reese Witherspoon) sucked into the b&w world of a ‘50s/’60s family tv show.  Alternately amazed, amused & appalled at the happy conformity and absurd common-sense lacunae they find, the film celebrates disruption, knowledge & spontaneous unpredictability against this sterile, all-knowing Garden of Eden world (more trap than paradise), as unbidden longings (sex, maturity, artistic leanings, violence) trigger free-will/anti-Theist eruptions of healthy color, discontent, hormonal desire & complexity.  With an exceptionally well worked out plot structure by Ross that largely avoids a preachy tone.  (Though he does telegraph gags & morals; and it’s a bit unfair to have used LEAVE IT TO BEAVER as the main template since that show holds up so much better than others of its ilk; think OZZIE AND HARRIET, DONNA REED SHOW, FATHER KNOWS BEST, ROOM FOR ONE MORE, et al.)  Technically, the early digital effects all but faultless, seamlessly mixing and exponentially growing into colorful maturity as backlash from b&w conservatives threaten to stop the unstoppable.  With a real Frank Capra climax set in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD’s courtroom to close the narrative circle before everyone gets their just, if open-ended, reward.  Among the plus-perfect cast, Jeff Daniels, as a diner operator coming out of his shell to discover the artist inside, allows Ross to put on a magical mini-art history sequence as heartwarming as anything in here.  Plus Don Knotts as a magical TV Repairman!

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Watch b&w cinematography raise good looks to myth as the young Paul Walker, all sharp angles and facial planes, is naturally abstracted past simple realism with color removed from the picture.  Enlarged thru reduction.  It’s why Orson Welles called b&w the actor’s best friend.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Composer Randy Newman grabs a hunk of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s BETWEEN TWO WORLDS/’44 for one of his main themes.  It works perfectly, but is uncredited.

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