Pleasantville
1998
****
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, William H. Macy, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, J. T. Walsh, Marley Shelton, Jane Kaczmarek, Don Knotts, Paul Walker
Two present-day teenagers are mysteriously transported into a black-and-white 1950s television sitcom called Pleasantville, where their modern attitudes begin to introduce colour, emotion, and social change to its seemingly perfect world. Back to the Future meets The Truman Show in Gary Ross' original and delightful fantasy film. The funny and moving story explores repression, prejudice, emancipation, and McCarthy-era paranoia, as the symbolically and literally black white world turns to colour. This transformation is beautifully realised on screen.
