Pleasantville (film)

Pleasantville
File:Pleasantville.dvdcover.amazon.jpg Pleasantville DVD cover
Directed by	Gary Ross
Written by	Gary Ross
Produced by	Steven Soderbergh, Gary Ross, Jon Kilik
Starring	Tobey Maguire Reese Witherspoon William H. Macy Joan Allen Jeff Daniels J.T. Walsh Don Knotts Jane Kaczmarek
Cinematography	John Lindley
Edited by	William Goldenberg
Music by	Randy Newman
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date	17 September 1998
Running time	124 minutes
Language	English
Budget	~ US$40,000,000

Pleasantville is a New Line Cinema film first released in Canada on September 17, 1998 starring Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, and Jeff Daniels. Don Knotts, Jane Kaczmarek and J.T. Walsh are also featured. The film was written, produced, and directed by Gary Ross, who also performed those duties for the more recent film Seabiscuit (2003), which also starred Maguire and Macy. This was J.T. Walsh's last film, released after his death. The film was released in the United States on October 23, 1998.

The film received Oscar nominations for its music (by Randy Newman), costume design, and set decoration.

Taglines:

• Pleasantville- It's Just Around the Corner.
• Nothing is as simple as Black and White.

Summary

Two modern teenagers are mysteriously transported into the fictitious community of Pleasantville, the setting of a black and white 1950's television show. Through their actions the people of Pleasantville begin to experience strong emotion and consequently, events in town begin to deviate from the accepted norm.

Detailed Plot

Although David Wagner (Maguire) and his sister Jennifer (Witherspoon) are twins, they lead dramatically different high school social lives. Jennifer is concerned mainly with her appearance, relationships and popularity, while David has few friends and cannot even drum up the courage to talk to a girl he has a crush on. He spends most of his spare time on the couch, watching television. Jennifer, on the other hand, is very aggressive (as well as sexually promiscuous) and at the beginning of the film makes a date with Mark Davis, one of the most popular boys in school.

Mrs. Wagner (Jane Kaczmarek) leaves Jennifer and David alone at home while she heads on vacation with her boyfriend (who is later revealed to be nine years younger than she). The twins begin to fight over the use of the downstairs TV; Jennifer wants to watch an MTV concert with Mark, while David needs the couch in order to win a $1,000 grand prize for answering trivia questions about his favorite show, Pleasantville. Pleasantville is a black and white 50’s sitcom (based on Father Knows Best or Leave It To Beaver) and David is an expert on every episode, but during the fight the remote control breaks and the TV can’t be turned on manually. A mysterious TV repairman (Don Knotts) shows up uninvited, and quizzes David on Pleasantville before giving him a strange looking remote control. The Repairman leaves, and David and Jennifer promptly resume fighting, this time managing to get zapped into the television, ending up in the Parker's black and white Pleasantville living room. David tries to reason with the Repairman (who communicates with him through the Parker’s TV set) but succeeds only in chasing him away. David and Jennifer must now pretend they are Bud and Mary Sue Parker, two of the main characters in the show.

Breakfast in the Parker house is served by stay at home Mom Betty Parker (Joan Allen), and consists of generous servings of bacon, eggs, waffles, pancakes, ham, and other fatty foods. Jennifer, a 90’s girl, is disgusted at the thought of eating so much. On the way to school, the pair watch as a group of firemen rescue a cat out of a tree, and Jennifer meets Skip (Paul Walker), the captain of the basketball team and her soon-to-be boyfriend. David tells her that they must stay “in character,” she must make small talk with her three monochrome friends and not disrupt the lives of the Pleasantville citizens, who don’t notice any physical differences between the old Bud and Mary Sue and David and Jennifer. In order to keep the plot in line, Mary Sue agrees to go on a date with Skip, although the two have very different ideas of what a date constitutes.

The date between Skip and Mary Sue turns out to be the first catalyst for change in the town, Skip having no knowledge of sex until Mary Sue introduces him to it. The plot is further thrown out of sequence when Bud’s boss Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels), who runs the soda fountain, becomes dissatisfied with his boring, mundane life after Bud is late for work. At first Bud attempts to contain the damage, telling his boss that even if he doesn’t like his job he should still do it, without question, but he soon realizes his error and gives Mr. Johnson an art book, encouraging his true passion. Meanwhile, Skip tells the other boys about sex, and soon the teenagers begin to experiment, leading to a sort of sexual revolution. Betty is curious (leading to a reversal of the sex talk between her and Mary Sue/Jennifer) and, knowing that her husband George (William H. Macy) would never do any of the things Mary Sue describes, engages in masturbation. This causes a nearby tree to spontaneously combust, and Bud, realizing the firemen have no other duties other than to fetch cats out of trees, teaches them how to put out fires and is awarded a medal. He also gets attention from a beautiful cheerleader named Margaret, who bakes him oatmeal cookies - the same cookies she was supposed to bake for a boy named Whitey. Bud’s act of heroism has inadvertently changed the storyline, but he seizes the moment and asks Margaret out. When the TV Repairman returns and confronts him, Bud turns off the TV, relinquishing his wish to go home in the process.

People in Pleasantville begin to explore hidden talents and revel in their new freedoms. Mr. Johnson begins to paint, while Betty finds that housework no longer interests her. The basketball team loses their first game, while students begin visiting the public library and reading books filled in by Mary Sue and Bud. Ironically, Mary Sue, who never had shown any interest in school, finds she likes reading so much that she turns Skip away in favor of a book by D. H. Lawrence. New double beds become available in stores. Slowly, certain objects begin turning Technicolor, including flowers and the faces of people who have experienced bursts of passion or change. The only demographic that remains unchanged are the town fathers, led by Mayor Big Bob (J.T. Walsh) who sees the changes as eating away at the moral values of Pleasantville. They resolve to do something about the rebellious teenagers and their increasingly distant wives. A town meeting is called, and Betty leaves George and the kids - she has fallen for Mr. Johnson and cannot hide her colored face anymore.

Rioting begins in Pleasantville, touched off by a nude painting of Betty on the window of Mr. Johnson’s soda fountain. The soda fountain is destroyed, piles of books are burned, and anyone who is “colored” is harassed in the streets. Bud earns his color (Mary Sue having already gotten hers after spending all night reading) by defending Betty from a gang of toughs - he has gone from a wimpy loser to a strong leader who advocates resistance to the new “Pleasantville Code of Conduct”, a list of rules preventing people from things such as visiting the library, playing loud music, or using paint colors other than black, white or gray.

In protest, Bud and Mr. Johnson paint a colorful mural depicting the book burning and other changes in their society and are thrown in jail. They are subsequently brought to trial in front of the entire town. Mr. Johnson is repentant, but Bud speaks out, finally arousing enough anger and indignation in Big Bob to turn him colored. With this, the entire town becomes colored, and the people of Pleasantville are finally introduced to the rest of the world.

Jennifer chooses to stay in the alternate world, planning to go to college as Mary Sue Parker. David returns using the remote control and finds his mother crying in the kitchen, distraught over the way her life has become versus the way she thought it would be. David responds skillfully, stating “it's not supposed to be anything.” The movie ends with a shot of Betty and George, reunited; however, when Betty turns to look at her husband, Mr. Johnson appears in his place.

Color use

The changes the main characters cause in Pleasantville are highlighted through the use of color. As the film continues, the literally monochrome world of Pleasantville blossoms into a rainbow of colors. Color is introduced slowly and often subtly: at first it may only touch a single flower, or the tongue of a girl. Color changes are always brought on by the events of the film, particularly epiphanies experienced by the characters.

The change in color is the primary visual effect used to accent the changes to the people and the world they inhabit, changes which challenge the values and emphasis on continuity and conformity that many consider to be the hallmark of 1950s America. Much of the film's satirical tone is captured in the "Code of Public Conduct" which the Pleasantville citizens establish, trying to protect themselves from upsetting changes. One rule forbids music other than "Johnny Mathis, Perry Como, Jack Jones, the marches of John Philip Sousa, [and] the 'Star Spangled Banner'". Another rule echoes the Scopes Trial by requiring all schools to teach the "non-changist" view of history. On the DVD's director commentary, Ross noted that the film had been called "both amoral and moralistic", a contradiction in which he reveled.

Pleasantville also contains color-divided scenes (in the racist sense of the word 'color', referring to non-whites) that allude to the 1962 novel-based film To Kill a Mockingbird, which examines the conformist racial divisions in a small Alabama town in the 1930s. In particular, the Pleasantville courtroom scene in which colored people are forced into the top courtroom balcony while the non-colored are permitted seating on the main floor echoes a nearly identical Jim Crow scene filmed in To Kill a Mockingbird. Also alluded to is the temporary end of the Renaissance in Florence Italy near the end of the 15th Century where Mr. Johnson, the lead soda jerk turned Avant-garde artist, finds himself at odds with the powers that be. Convinced that he, and anyone espousing views similar to his, will bring about the downfall of proper social behavior, the majority rally around Big Bob, the town's mayor, to banish and destroy any non-conformist symbols in a giant Bonfire of the Vanities. Mirroring the famous Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli, Mr. Johnson is willing to abandon his artistic standards in order to conform to the public's viewpoint. Although the reactionary elements triumph, it's only temporary as change and progress is inevitable. It isn't long before most citizens embrace the new culture.

See also

• Pleasantville (soundtrack)
• The Truman Show

External links

• Pleasantville at IMDb
• McCarthyism and the Movies