New Line | 1998 | 124 mins. | PG-13
Pleasantville was written and directed by Gary Ross (Seabiscuit). Though this was his directorial debut, Ross wrote Big, the 1988 hit starring Tom Hanks as a kid trapped inside the body of a kid. With Pleasantville, Ross has taken teenagers and put them in an alternative 1950’s, black-and-white universe replete with an appearance by Barney Fife himself, Don Knotts.
Its 1999, as we get ready to turn the page on a new century, teenager David (Tobey Maguire) is obsessed with 1950’s sitcom Pleasantville. In contrast to his life—where his single mom is struggling to find happiness and he’s the nerd on campus—Pleasantville, where everyone is friendly, no one is divorced, the home team always wins and mom has a hot meal on the table every night, seems like paradise.
David knows the show by heart; every detail of every episode. Just when his worship seems destined to pay off, in the form of a $6,000 trivia contest during a Pleasantville marathon, David and his slutty twin sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are zapped into their television and find themselves assuming character roles in the strange, black-and-white universe of 1950’s television.
Pleasantville is a black and white world (literally), where the sun always shines, the home team always wins, and firemen make house calls to rescue cats stuck in trees. Words like “swell”, “gee- whiz”, and “keen” are part of the regular vocabulary. Now, theirs is a world that end at Main Street, books are filled with blank pages and sex means holding hands; but alas, I guess you can’t have everything.
David (now the series character, “Bud”), is initially thrilled with the change in events. For once, he’s the big man on campus since he knows everything about Pleasantville. Jennifer (now Mary Sue), on the other hand, is horrified (“I’m pasty!” she screams upon seeing her gray complexion). She wants to go back immediately. She doesn’t like the idea of being stuck in “nerdsville” and having perfect parents in George (William H. Macy) and Betty (Joan Allen).
Resigned to her fate, Mary Sue goes about the task of awaking the sexuality of her fellow teens, and later, her television mother. Predictably, this decision changes the community in ways they could have never imagined, and makes it impossible for Pleasantville to ever be the same again. Suddenly, objects and then people in this gray-scaled world start bursting into color.
More introverted, Bud introduces the kids to books. More interestingly, Bud introduces Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels), who works at the malt shop where the kids all hang out to the world of art and painting, which inadvertently causes Betty to discover a new side to herself (After Betty turns up in color, she’s afraid to show herself; her son helps her put on gray makeup.)
George Parker, meanwhile, waits at home for his routine to continue, and the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce (J.T. Walsh, in his last performance) notes ominously, “Something is happening in our town.” Pleasantville is a film that shows what happens to people when they’re not given a chance to think. Instead, they are given a set of rules to follow with no access to other thoughts or opinions.
Pleasantville comes to Blu-ray via a MPEG-4 AVC codec. An inherent print grain gives the picture a natural, lifelike texture and a slightly gritty appearance. The 1.85:1 ratio widescreen picture quality is very good, with reasonably deep black-and-white contrasts and attractive colors when necessary.
The lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound is likewise fine, not for any dazzling sonic effects but for its realistic depiction of rain storms and crowd ambiance. Otherwise, it’s mostly smooth and comforting in the midrange dialogue the film calls upon it to deliver.
The special features from the DVD are carried over to this edition in standard definition. We get an audio commentary by writer-producer-director Gary Ross, followed by an isolated musical score with commentary by composer Randy Newman. 32-minute featurette, “The Art of Pleasantville,” discussing the special effects used in the movie; and Fiona Apple’s music video “Across the Universe,” directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
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