Review of Pleasantville (1998) by Alex A — 13 Nov 2011

An amazingly clever and satisfying retro-look at America exiting its imagined 1950s Eden, headed east for the more-troubled, far less black-and-white world that would be its future.

Maguire and Witherspoon are magically transported back into that Eden, as immortalized in one of Tobey's favorite Mid-Century B&W sitcoms. It's the perfect world such television created - where it never rains, the fire department's never needed, couples sleep in twin beds, toilets are never actually seen - and where everyone's middle class and white.

The duo tote with them societal questions borne of the future, questions no one in Pleasantville really wants asked. Questions about banned books, sexual freedom - and the serious racial and socioeconomic divide so clearly skirted in such sitcoms. Slowly as the townsfolk begin to ask the same questions and to find answers for themselves, little bits of beautiful colors begin to seep into a Pleasantville for so long safely built only of shades of grey.

And it's a palette the town's Luddite forefathers would much rather not see disturb their bucolic 'burb. Soon enough the status quo's up in arms and ready to take action to put the toothpaste back in the tube, mirroring the stances actually taken by such folk in the tumultuous 1960s.

There's many lush, bold scenes not to be missed, two of them: the aproned, sexually-neglected housewife (Joan Allen) finally 'discovers herself' while in the bathtub, blossoming into full color and exploding the outside shrubbery into flames - and an idyllic lover's lake bursting with 1950s convertibles and blowing cherry blossoms and Etta James' gorgeous "At Last.".

However the film's end is also filled with many an ugly reality of Pleasantville's future. As was America's own.

RECOMMENDATION: Smart, brutally honest, well spent viewing.