Pleasantville 1998, Rated PG-13 New Line Home Video

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Starring Reese Witherspoon, Tobey Maguire, et al. Released to DVD on March 21, 1999.

Since the mid ë90ís, there has been a glut of film awards and ceremonies (332 at last count) for the American public to keep up with. It used to be that the Academy Awards and the Golden Globes were the two programs used to determine the level of excellence in film. Now, with the Directorís Guild Awards, MTV Movie Awards, Peopleís Choice Awards, Teenís Choice Awards and the Blockbuster Music Awards, to name but a few, the number of films named "best picture of the year" has increased monumentally.

And worst of all, there are almost as many reasons for a film to be nominated for "best picture of the year" as there are awards programs; the film may be stunningly well-crafted, the director may have been snubbed in a prior year or the organizers may just have wanted to honor a new and profitable idea. This makes it all the more important for those persons and publications choosing the best films of the year to choose carefully and insightfully. While the box office might dictate that Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Wild Wild West were some of the best movies of the year, prudence, common sense and a first grade education would suggest otherwise.

For us, for a picture to be named the best of a given year, it should be original, extraordinarily well written and conceived, filled with talented acting and, most importantly, the film should be enjoyable to watchóa caveat that immediately eliminates Life is Beautiful from consideration. In short, the film should be, and has to be, excellent.

1999 produced a number of truly outstanding motion pictures released to video. There were only two movies that served to raise the bar for the celluloid medium; Pleasantville and Run Lola Run. And of these, only Pleasantville proved to have the crisp screenwriting and acting performances necessary to garner the crown of Best of í99.

Written and directed by Gary Ross, the scripter of Big and Dave, Pleasantville follows the unusual situation that befalls fraternal twins Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) and David (Tobey Maguire). After breaking the remote to their TV, Jennifer and David are visited by a strange TV repairman (Don Knotts) who gives them a new remote with considerably more power and options than your standard universal remote. While arguing over what show to watch, Jennifer and David are accidentally transported into the lives of two characters, Bud and Mary Sue Parker, on the sit-com Pleasantville, a black and white, Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best type of show, where sex and violence are as foreign to the townsfolk as talent in a Pauly Shore movie.

Initially, the world of Pleasantville is quite foreign and, to a degree, scary to the two teens. Stuck in a strange place, with no clue how they got there, or how they will be able to get back to their normal lives, Jennifer and David have no choice but to live their lives as if they actually were Bud and Mary Sue, being content to carry on within the confines of the showís screenplay. However, as the true personalities of Jennifer and David come through little by little, they in turn begin to transform the lifestyle in Pleasantville.

The brilliance of Pleasantville though emminates from Rossí grand vision; Pleasantville is a metaphoric representation of society as a whole. When characters on the television show do heretofore new things opening their horizonsóthings most often brought about by the recent arrival of Jennifer and Davidóthey change from black and white to color, becoming more life-like and real. Those persons who remain fixed in their ways, often unwilling and unwanting to change stay in black and white.

At first, David views these changes as badóthe TV show was shot in black and white, that was the way it was supposed to beóbut as time progresses, he comes to realize, as he so eloquently points out in the filmís emotional climax, that there is no "supposed to be" or "right way". Things change uniformly and it is only natural for them to do so. The important facet of life is to work with the changes and incorporate them into our lives.

To allow the viewer to reach this metaphoric end, Ross employed a technique that, until the making of this film, hadnít ever really been employed previously: he had characters appearing on-screen in color interacting with characters and things that were black and white.

Rossí vision was unusually elegant, creative and, thus, complicated to film. Using roughly three times the amount of special effects shots used in Titanic, Ross and his production team laboriously shot and re-shot scenes in color, black and white, and with the actors in specially color toned make-up that would project a certain hue of grey when shot on a black and white film stock. Even after principle filming was finished, Ross had to stand watchfully over the special effects artists in order to make sure that the colors they were using were indeed the colors he wanted used, and that the films original print correctly captured the essence of the film from the negativesóRoss would occasionally have to reprint certain sections of the film in order to avoid a lack of crispness in the colors on the print.

Well written, well directed, with solid acting from all the members of the cast, Pleasantville was a sparkling entry into the modern annals of film. This was a picture broad in talent, creativity, originality and poignancy. With a debut like this, Ross can look forward to a long career in Hollywood. Pleasantville was, unquestionably, the best video release of 1999.