Pleasantville
Crossing Boundaries, Making Choices

This establishing shot of the present-day school campus
shows us a vast, soulless place that could be anywhere.
Various degrees of conformity are on display, emphasising
the loneliness of the crowd.

In the foreground (bottom third of the screen), five girls are
lined up wearing almost identical backpacks

In the middle distance, several students can be seen wearing
identically coloured blue jeans (also wearing backpacks)

The first medium close-up (MCU) of David (Toby Maguire)
shows him isolated against a blurred background, stressing
his outsider status.

This first MCU is one of many trick camera shots in
Pleasantville. David (on the right side of the screen) appears
to be holding a conversation with a pretty girl...

...(on the left side of the screen) who doesn’t speak, and
appears to be paying close attention to David, whose voice
can be heard over this reverse MCU shot.

But as the view cuts to another wide angle, we see that the
girl is nowhere near David, whose isolation against the now
nearly deserted campus is doubly accented.

The classbell rings, summoning us to class, and we get a
sequence of moving shots, showing the camera tracking in
towards a series of teachers...

...all of whom are delivering a downbeat analysis of the future
for the gathered students

As the camera tracks in, the rows of students in front of us
diminish, and we get closer to the teachers, and to David who
is (of course) seated in the front row.

This reverse shot of David shows his glum reaction to the
downbeat message about the world in which he lives

While David is seated upright and leaning slightly forward,
the body language of the other students reflects boredom,
and serves to (once more) separate David from the crowd.

David sits in his comfortable nest watching the programme,
but his eyes betray his interest in events in the real world.

The reverse shot shows David’s views of the “perfect” family in
Pleasantville, which he watches through the frame of the television
screen. The black-and-whiteness of Pleasantville is in stark contrast
to the tungsten-tinged world in which he lives.

The next shot shows what it is that draws David’s eyes. His mother (Jane
Kaczmarek) is on the phone trying to get rid of her children for the
weekend, so she can go away. Note that the distance between David
and his mother is emphasised by the threshold. David feels closer to the
framed couple on TV than he does to his own family.

To underline David’s problem with thresholds, his TV
counterpart, Bud (Kevin Connors), is first seen breezing
confidently through a doorway.

The extreme close-ups of David’s “slutty” sister Jennifer (Reese
Witherspoon) emphasise her sexuality

Close-up of the two pairs of feet as they clatter downstairs,
intent on their own versions of the “perfect” evening...

After the argument, the siblings find themselves transformed
into Bud and Mary Sue Parker, in the black and white world of
Pleasantville

The establishing (high angle) shot of the leafy, small-scale,
sparsely populated high school campus is in deliberate
contrast to...

...the opening establishing shot of the modern high school.

The body language of the attentive Pleasantville students is
another deliberate contrast...

...to the disaffection of the modern high school student seen
earlier

Our view of Mary Sue in class also contrasts with what we saw
earlier of David in school, as her own body language is more
relaxed than both David’s and the other students around her.

As we saw him from a slightly elevated angle, positioned to
the left of the screen, we see her from a slightly lower angle
(accentuating her upthrust breasts) and positioned to the
right of the screen.

The parochialism of the Pleasantville geography lesson is another
deliberate contrast to the earlier doom and gloom of a modern
geography lesson. The teacher is shot from a lower angle, underlining
her higher relative status in society (note the apples lined up in the
foreground).

David/Bud’s front porch chat with his dad (William H. Macy) is
a beautifully-lit evocation of...

...Edward Hopper’s painting Summer Evening. Note the
trailing arms of the girl, which are emulated in the
Pleasantville shot by David.

The first splash of colour in Pleasantville is seen as a red rose
after Mary Sue/Jennifer is driven home from their date by
Skip (Paul Walker)
The interpretation of the colour red varies between cultures.
In the case of Pleasantville, the idea of colour is itself more
important than any particular hue. Nevertheless, it is
significant that a red rose is the first colour object seen.

Skip’s curious gaze takes in the colour red. This close-up shows his
knitted brows. Red can mean danger, passion, blood. A rose is a thing
of beauty, but of course carries thorns which can themselves draw
blood. Skip is the first person to see colour, after Jennifer/Mary Sue
had raised his sexual consciousness.

In Pleasantville, colour carries a lot of metaphorical weight. Although
the “black and white” images are actually shades of grey, it is colour
that brings nuance and difference into the enclosed world.

The gradual introduction of coloured elements parallels the
gradual raising of consciousness in the town.

The elders outside the barber shop reserve their greatest concern not
for the sexual activity at the Lake, but for the book fad introduced by
David. The colour red here is not merely sexual awakening but a
newfound confidence borne out of learning.

In one of many touching sequences featuring Bill Johnston (Jeff
Daniels), David introduces him to an art book. Note how the angle
of Bill’s head in the reverse shot mirrors the changing angle of the
book

Jennifer, left of screen, David’s POV, says, “Why are we still in black and
white?” Her choice of D H Lawrence is of course significant. Lady
Chatterley’s Lover was a banned book - until 1963 in the UK. The
Chatterley trial heralded the true beginning of the 1960s.

David, right of screen, Jennifer’s point of view, says,
“Maybe it’s not just the sex...”
“Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three /
(Which was rather late for me)— / Between the end of
the Chatterley ban / And the Beatles’ first LP. “
- Philip Larkin

This begins the most breathtaking sequence in Pleasantville,
as David/Bud and Margaret Henderson (Marley Shelton) –
both still black and white – head out to the Lake together.

This pivotal sequence plays out the colour story of the film in
microcosm - beginning with an entirely black and white
scene.

The first hint of colour is shown in this close-up (David’s POV)
of a piece of pink blossom.
Colour indicates awakening – which can be related to sex or
consciousness. The burden that colour carries in Pleasantville
includes the sexual revolution, the Civil Rights movement...

...and feminism. Colour, in shorthand, represents political
correctness in all its forms.
This long shot foregrounds the pink blossom on the nearer
trees, with those in the distance still showing black and white.

This two-shot shows David and Margaret’s delight in their sensual
experience as the pink hue spreads around them. Being “in the pink”
carries a sense of ambiguity: it can mean both the pinnacle of health /
happiness and that David/Margaret are wallowing in an excess of
sensuality.

As they approach the lake, this wide angle shot shows a
further hint of spreading colour. In this sequence, David
finally realises that he has left his old, isolated self behind...

...and has formed close connections with other human
beings. The intensity of the colour deepens as it sweeps like a
transitional wipe across from the left of the frame.

As Pleasantville experiences colour, the major social changes and
conflicts of the last 5 decades of the 20th Century are played out in the
microcosm of the town. The black and white world of Pleasantville
represents the stultifying lack of choice of the immediate post-war era.
With freedom comes choice, but also the need to accept difference.

This sequence climaxes with a splendid establishing shot – a
final, Edenic moment before the storm breaks and deep
conflict and division erupts in the Pleasantville community.

The film is not
without its heavy-
handed moments.
Shots like this serve And in case we didn’t “get” that the
to dumb-down the Lake represented Eden Before the
message, anchoring Fall and that raised consciousness
it with slogans also means lost innocence, this little
tableau (Margaret/Eve hands David/
Adam a red apple) hammers the
message home.

David’s own transformation waits until he steps in to defend his mother
from a gang of boys. Until now, he has been passive, accepting, and
diffident. By entering the fray he becomes active, aggressive, and
colourful. The film strongly suggests that pacifism is not a viable option.

The explosion of Big Bob’s (J T
Walsh) latent aggression
signals his own colour
change.
Pleasantville’s mirror held up to society does not
glorify violence but instead argues that it is essential
to be active in the pursuit of both knowledge and
freedom. To participate in society, you must make
choices – lest other people make them for you.

David’s final choice, back in the real world, is to switch off his TV,
indicating that he is at last willing to participate in the real world. (It’s
always ironic, though, when Hollywood attempts to blame “too much TV”
for all society’s ills, as it has tended to do since the 1950s.)