Gary Ross’s 1998 directorial debut offers pointed social commentary about how fear of progress leads to political oppression through innovative use of colour
Who among us hasn’t fantasised about escaping the dreariness of the real world and instead existing within our favourite television show, where every day is sunny? Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon do just that, playing twins David and Jennifer who, while fighting over a TV remote, get magically transported from 1998 into the seemingly idyllic black-and-white 1950s sitcom Pleasantville, where the most pressing emergencies are getting cats out of trees.
Pleasantville is the directorial debut of Gary Ross, who wrote the Tom Hanks comedy Big, and begins by showing the US in the twilight of the 20th century – fraught by environmental problems, job scarcity and fear of Aids. Nothing seems to go David’s way; he struggles to ask a girl out at his high school and his parents have divorced. The only thing he is passionate about is the eponymous vintage sitcom. So when he and Jennifer become trapped inside it as characters Bud and Mary Sue Parker, David suggests using his vast knowledge of the show to follow its rules and avoid disrupting it.