Pleasantville (1998) (#ad) is a film about fraternal twins who have a very interesting out-of-this-world experience when they encounter new people and end up bringing changes to a quiet, pleasant town.
Pleasantville can be confusing
So, what can be confusing about this movie? How exactly can Pleasantville confuse you?Well, for starters, you can try not watching this show from the very beginning. That will definitely confuse you.
I didn’t get to watch this movie from the beginning, so I found it hard to understand what was happening at first.
With regards to this film, it can be hard to infer or get what’s going on if you don’t know what went on during its opening scenes.
Normally, usually, or ordinarily, if you find that the plot or story of a show is just too confusing to understand, you’d be more inclined to stop watching it and just go and find something else to watch, right?
Pleasantville may be confusing, but it is interesting
That’s what I would have done too, but Pleasantville was able to pique my curiosity and get me interested enough to want to find out more about it even though I missed seeing the opening scenes and was having a hard time trying to figure out what was going on.
But then color suddenly started showing up, deepening the mystery of the storyline and really making the audience wonder as to what is really happening.
Is Pleasantville a fantasy?
The seemingly sudden appearance of the colors also added an element of fantasy to what, at first, appeared to be a realistic drama of sorts.Now, it seemed that magic was actually involved as part of the story. And this is reinforced when we see Bud Parker (played by Tobey Maguire), the main character, talking to the TV and having it respond to him.
There was also a scene, which showed Bud reprimanding his sister, Mary Sue Parker (played by Reese Witherspoon), for something that she apparently did.
I didn’t get that at first and had no idea what Mary Sue supposedly did, but I was curious enough to continue viewing the movie even though I was still horribly confused and said film didn’t seem inclined to clear things up anytime soon.
Could Pleasantville be a horror movie?
I even considered that Pleasantville might actually be a horror film since we saw Bud looking troubled at whatever his sister was doing and he was even worried for the guy that his sister was dating.Add that to the sudden appearance of color in an otherwise black-and-white movie and that really makes the possibility of this being a horror story plausible.
As such, I was wary of seeing something horrible and terrible since I don’t like horror movies. I was still really curious about the storyline of this film though so I kept watching it.
All-in-all, Pleasantville is a confusing movie if you didn’t get to start it from the beginning, but don’t let that stop you from watching it anyway.
Why? It’s because it has the ability to pique people’s curiosity and interest and get them to continue watching even if they’re confused just so they can try to figure out what is really going on and be able to solve the mystery of Pleasantville.
*Notes:
- Image with added text was modified by Freya Yuki (CC:BY-SA) based on the image by CoDLia (CC:BY-SA) from deviantArt
- Image is meant to symbolize how confusing the Pleasantville movie can be because of all the details in said image
- The rest of the pics are from Amazon.com; link shown above
- YouTube video features the Pleasantville trailer