Normally, it is not good critical practice to judge a movie about what it is not--usually it's better to analyze what a movie sets out to do, and evaluate how good it does it. Sometimes, the premise of a movie itself is not acceptable to a viewer, and the critic will take on that question.
Here's where I feel PLEASANTVILLE should be criticized for what the filmmakers did not attempt to do: it missed an enormous opportunity. Its plot deceit is creative if far-fetched even for a fantasy--two teenagers from the 1990s being stuck in a 1950s black and white sitcom, and manage to liberate the town from 1950s sitcom thinking by introducing color, and, apparently, sex and art.
The opportunity missed--and I believe it to be one very close to the heart of the film's main idea--is that the entire question of race was absent.
Perhaps one can bring up the "Technicolor" aspect as suggesting race, as it suggests racial prejudice. But ... the transformations our society was to go through post 1950s has largely or everything to do with race--the music, the liberation, the insistence to change and include.
It was really the Civil Rights Movement, and the gradual change in r attitudes that really changed us, made us different from the 1950s. The women's movement, sexual liberation, a critical analysis of America's role in the world through the anti-war movement, all had vital roots in Montgomery and Selma and Watts.
What if, for example, the film were to end by introducing to black-and-white land a true "colored," an African-American? The all-racially white world of Pleansantville would have had a whole new set of dichotomies to deal with.
PLEASANTVILLE is clever, technically adroit, has some good performances, and a number of other things going for it, but it misses an obvious chance to add a dimension that was definitely there in the 1950s but left out of a film depicting the era.
I also agree with some of the critiques of the film: it's preachy; it seems to embrace sexual infidelity as liberating non-conformity; it wrongfully shows the 1950s to be far more devoid of passion than they actually were. Even some of the sitcoms criticized, as one commenter pointed out, had more heart to them than was given credit to in Pleasantville. The filmmakers had every right to show things their way, and it's a legitimate position, I suppose, but one that rings a little hollow and facile.
PLEASANTVILLE is a good movie, with some extreme strong elements and even some touches of magic, but it is hard to forgive it for ignoring the question of American apartheid, as if that had nothing to do with the limitations and blindnesses of that era.
Here's where I feel PLEASANTVILLE should be criticized for what the filmmakers did not attempt to do: it missed an enormous opportunity. Its plot deceit is creative if far-fetched even for a fantasy--two teenagers from the 1990s being stuck in a 1950s black and white sitcom, and manage to liberate the town from 1950s sitcom thinking by introducing color, and, apparently, sex and art.
The opportunity missed--and I believe it to be one very close to the heart of the film's main idea--is that the entire question of race was absent.
Perhaps one can bring up the "Technicolor" aspect as suggesting race, as it suggests racial prejudice. But ... the transformations our society was to go through post 1950s has largely or everything to do with race--the music, the liberation, the insistence to change and include.
It was really the Civil Rights Movement, and the gradual change in r attitudes that really changed us, made us different from the 1950s. The women's movement, sexual liberation, a critical analysis of America's role in the world through the anti-war movement, all had vital roots in Montgomery and Selma and Watts.
What if, for example, the film were to end by introducing to black-and-white land a true "colored," an African-American? The all-racially white world of Pleansantville would have had a whole new set of dichotomies to deal with.
PLEASANTVILLE is clever, technically adroit, has some good performances, and a number of other things going for it, but it misses an obvious chance to add a dimension that was definitely there in the 1950s but left out of a film depicting the era.
I also agree with some of the critiques of the film: it's preachy; it seems to embrace sexual infidelity as liberating non-conformity; it wrongfully shows the 1950s to be far more devoid of passion than they actually were. Even some of the sitcoms criticized, as one commenter pointed out, had more heart to them than was given credit to in Pleasantville. The filmmakers had every right to show things their way, and it's a legitimate position, I suppose, but one that rings a little hollow and facile.
PLEASANTVILLE is a good movie, with some extreme strong elements and even some touches of magic, but it is hard to forgive it for ignoring the question of American apartheid, as if that had nothing to do with the limitations and blindnesses of that era.
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