Can we just talk about how ingenious it was that the book they're discussing is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? A book about a boy discovering his identity through his friendship with "a person of color." In a film where there is no color and individual identity is about to be discovered. The music is ingeniously incorporated too with "Take Five" by Dave Brubeck playing in the background throughout the scene until David gets asked about the book by Margaret and the music transitions to "So What" by Miles Davis. The music literally changes to color. Damn this film is fucking amazing! This is how you do layered storytelling!
The progressives have made everything more racist and pushed identity politics for virtue. What’s ingenious now is to look at this now in 2021 and see that society was destroyed for instant gratification
@@jongon0848 Lets first start with the left banning Huck Finn for racism. Then let’s discuss the film itself, the society was safe, stable and life was good, until a selfish progressive whore brought instant gratification from her world filled with divorce, crime, and promiscuity. Soon the first fire they ever saw occurred, families were split and society dissolved. This is extremely comparable to the regressives today who, like BLM, specifically call for the removal of nuclear family structures and the destruction of statues and the social fabric of society. In the 90s - when the film was made - nobody cared about race but now racial and sexual identity is everything. You are forced to take anti white training in schools and companies now. Like in the film, America is being destroyed for instant gratification by selfish whores
@@jongon0848 And I was just making an observation based on your response. I have no idea what you are talking about with militias. Not my audience? I don’t care dude, I am not pandering to an audience, and you and I both know you have nothing tangible to say in response to me except name calling. I assume you are a regressive, and I guarantee then that you are all about censorship and racial identity now.
So in the movie they had a perfect Utopia but without knowledge and the freedom of choice??? I will chose knowledge and freedom of choice any day of the week….and twice on a sunday…and three times in church hours….
Yeah - I noticed that as well. They don't cut the music to fit the scene, they literally edited the movie TO the music, making use of musical cues as edit points. If you close your eyes and just listen to the music, it's exactly as we know it. Fantastic!
Yes! And, even better, Miles Davis' So What. To think what that album was to Jazz at that time and how it revolutionized a whole new genre is so poetic.
I love this scene, and especially the music, which starts with Dave Brubeck's Take Five--a daring piece at the time, then moves on to Miles Davis's So What from the Kind of Blue album, which is, in this context and as it was at the time it was recorded, at once liberating and dangerous.
Exactly. I was describing this movie to a friend of mine yesterday after we watched a movie together with a somewhat similar theme ("The Giver"). I mentioned the way in which the music changes from the clean-cut and wholesome rock-n-roll of the 1950s to Dave Brubeck. For one thing, jazz is a musical genre which had its start in the African-American community rather than the white community...and even though at least some parts of the 1950s American mainstream community appreciated the music, that did not necessarily always translate to appreciation and respect for the artists who composed and performed it, even those like Cal Tjader and Dave Brubeck (who played what was called "cool school" rather than bebop) and were white. People who work in the arts are (not without reason!) generally regarded as being unorthodox to say the very least -- this is in part because being an artist is about both emotion and imagination, two things which the establishment generally doesn't have much use for or think much of -- and this is even more true when you're talking about forms or genres which are still considered emergent or experimental as jazz still was at that time. Jazz was also stereotypically viewed as the favored genre of "beatniks" who rebelled against convention.
My friend showed me this movie the other night and I was blown away at how little it is talked about. It's gorgeously shot and has a lot to unwrap. Truly one of the most under appreciated gems out there and I'm so thankful she showed it to me
it is a great movie. i saw it in the theatre in 98. Well worth the ticket. it is in my DVD collection now. Side note: this was Don Knotts final appearance ( i think) before he passed away.
This part always confused me when I was younger, but now I get it. These people never read, never watched TV outside the usual sitcoms, never went to parties, never had sex, nor travelled outside of town. The books being blank were them not knowing what they were about, but when they told it, the pages wrote themselves back. Giving them more of a chance to know how it ends. This was the true definition of woke. Woke up by the knowledge of what came before, in places no one dared to look, but using it rather than to go backwards, but to move forward. Keeping the memories alive and making newer and better ones.
I always thought the Dave Brubeck Quartet “Take Five” jazz instrumental was about the awe and wonder of adolescence and exploration of what was beyond the known world as a kid.
I saw this in theaters when I was 11 years old. I remember seeing trailers and ads for it and at that point I think the only actor I was that familiar with was Jeff Daniels since he’d been in various family films plus Dumb & Dumber. I was shocked to find out the movie bombed at the time. Extremely underrated! ^__^
This hot chick I knew in high school and college once told me that this film was good...but in like an English teacher's way. Lindsey you were so wise back then, hope you're well.
If i had a pretty blonde like her smile at me asking "Whats outside of Pleasantville?" And "How does it end?" Id suddenly decide to explain things as Bud or David did here too!
As Bud/David, I would take some appropriate things from the real world, go back into the show and give them to Maggie. If she asks, I, with the help of Jenny would bring Maggie into the real world and tell Maggie everything she wants to know about the real world. To help Maggie fit in, Bud/David (if he had the money to do so), would help her rent an apartment or stay in a motel room for as long as she wants.
Seems troublesome but good. It’s not profane as it is. People do curse like that back then, I’ve seen old Hollywood bloopers where actors say “son of a bitch” and “goddamnit” when they screw up a line before 1951. I knew about it when John Lennon’s killer was influenced by the book and I started reading it when I was doing a 1001 books list, Holden seemed troubled and was looking for fulfilment even before he was kicked off of boarding school. He seemed like a charming James Dean but with some issues.
So I need a really big movie nerd to look into something, pleasantville seems to me to have some connections to nightmare on elm st. Besides the elm street, the house where Toby is living in looks alot like the elm st house, then the ending, Toby took out the jacket into the real world, much like Nancy did with kreuger's hat.
It'd be interesting seeing a sequel with David and Jenny bringing characters from the show into the modern world. Of course David and Jenny would have a lot of explaining to do.
Examples: Computers and modern technology such as cellphones or social media like Facebook. Populations of homeless people. The show's characters are always kind and generous. That's a good thing, but how much generosity would be too much for homeless people to take? Gun control. There is no violence in the show, but it obviously would be a shock for a character from the show witnessing a shooting or learning about a murder. Illegal drugs such as cocaine or Fentanyl and the ongoing debate of recreational use of weed.
Now how would David and Jenny stay connected? An idea IMO would be Jenny in flashback scenes visiting David on a regular basis so he can tell her about the progression of the modern world after the events of the movie including about events that changed everything.
Peter Parker in the 1950 television show and decided to save the world from being in black and white and returns to the real world and became Spider-Man. Reese Witherspoon had decided to stay in the tv world and became a singer and a dancer and started to married Joker
I really hate how they treat 50s kids as stupid when they were probably more educated than todays teens. Even if they were stupid they were happy. Why interrupt that? I feel like people from miserable or lacking backgrounds like this movie because it’s some kind of revenge against people who figured it out.
You clearly didn’t see the movie so I’ll spoil it for you. These 50s kids are not from the real world but in a TV called Pleasantville. Their entire world is their town Pleasantville and how pleasant it is. They’re not stupid, their innocent. And as the movie points out, they weren’t truly happy until they looked inside themselves much like how it is in reality,
The clock is in color because people are changing. Change happens over time, meaning time can’t be standing still. It has to be moving forward. And because time is moving forward, perishable goods like milk and lettuce are now actually perishable.
Hang on, aren't Huck and Jim trying to go DOWN river once they get the raft? They have to go down river to Cairo in order to catch a steam boat up river to the free states?
This movie never made any damn sense. 50s black and white sitcoms had fire and rain, and rodes let places out of town and books had words in them!!!!! The writer did NOT do his homework!!!!
The TV show "Pleasantville" within this movie is a parody of 1950s sitcoms, not an accurate representation of them. The point of the film is to show that a life that is simple and predictable is almost totalitarian, void of pain, yes, but also void of art, literature, religion, intelligence, and critical thinking. The world of "Pleasantville" reveals itself as less like "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver", and more like "Brave New World" controlled by Standards and Practices.
The characters in Pleasantville are in a "pocket universe", each part of which is defined only to the extent it was shown on the old show. Thus it's made up of strictly of stereotypes and characterized by lack of detail, repetition, and boredom. It has a changeless quality, and not in a good way. The two "injected" characters -- Bud and his sister -- break them out of that pocket and help them experience a larger world through art, etc.
