Movie Crush Monday: Little C and Pleasantville

Readers, it's time for another rant from a Kleppinger girl about a movie. Last week CT regaled you with her love for the indie darling Away We Go. This week I want to talk about one of the movies that made me fall in love with a strong visual style, so I'm following Jeff Daniels to Pleasantville.

It's a weird story about two modern siblings, David and Jennifer, who get sucked into the world of a fifties TV show and slowly begin to change it with their presence. The black and white world slowly begins to be technicolored with mixed consequences for the native residents of Pleasantville. The whole world transitions as the people do. It's a brilliant visual style that makes the visuals perfectly match with a story that has a lot of different layers.

Pleasantville is sort of an exploration of culture. Was the world ever as perfect and innocent as it was when the only kind of TV was black and white? Was it actually better back then or was it just simpler? As you watch the characters in this movie react at first with fascination, and then with fear to the people in the town who have changed to technicolor it makes a beautiful visual metaphor for so many of the issues we are still struggling with. And all set to one of the best soundtracks ever assembled. 

Also I do want to take a moment to mention that this film marks one of the first times I saw Paul Walker on screen. It's hard to think of him outside of the Fast and the Furious and his other action films, but his character in this movie is the perfect way to track the progress of this tiny fictional town. His character is naive and selfish, and slow to change the way a lot of people are when they're confronted with change. He gave a beautiful performance and a rare peak at a skill set he didn't always get to use. 

Happy watching,

Little C