2017 Movie Review - "The Circle" Snoozefest Hits No Followers
SYNOPSIS:
A woman lands a dream job at a powerful tech company called the Circle, only to uncover a nefarious agenda that will affect the lives of her friends, family and that of humanity.
Please note that the following review may contain some spoilers:
FIRST ACT (THE HOOK):
Gone are the days Emma Watson casted as a rebellious teenager in The Bling Ring. Her popularity obviously has brought her to be a typical do-gooder protagonist for a majority of her career. This movie serves no exception for her. After a breakthrough indie film of Spectacular Now, the director James Ponsoldt, unfortunately, also does nothing particularly special to elevate his main actress' performance and the subject material. I even noticed how Emma Watson slipped her British accents in many occurrences. The first act goes too forgettable as it is a dragged down introduction to our main character in her uninteresting world.
SECOND ACT (THE PROMOTION):
The Circle (a hybrid of Google / Apple community with ratings-driven system) draws too many similarities from the most recent Black Mirror episode, Nosedive. It is always exciting to explore the flaw of a modern dystopian society but we, as the audience, are smart enough to figure out the Big Brother's plot without need to emphasize its corruption practices. I believe scene such as conversation in the basement between Ty (John Boyega) and Mae (Emma Watson) was just there to accommodate a longer running time.
As we learned how quickly Mae rises up to her recognition, we do not see it as a payoff from her real efforts but more of a mere luck. Had she not gone kayaking in the middle of night, she probably would have not been under the Circle's attention. Other than her father's disability condition which is played masterfully by the late Bill Paxton, it is definitely hard for me to sympathize with her life.
THIRD ACT (THE ENDING):
Talking about how tensions keep building up until the ending, I found the aftermath of Mae's decision in embracing her transparency really illogical. Knowing that her best friend was killed directly as the result of The Circle's conviction, she eventually has not learned a single lesson. Even without her action of exposing the corruption and hypocrisy of the two co-founders (Eamon and Tom), the movie is already heading towards the said direction. In the end, I keep asking myself this question: how can we root for an easily swayed, narcissistic Mae who in her potentiality chooses the democratization of privacy over its downfall?
THE VERDICT (NO SPOILER):
I believe that the film should've and could've made a provoking discussion point on the privatization of the transparency measures instead of beating us over and over again about its social implications of panopticism in a digital age. What I noticed from James Ponsoldt's latest work is its "unfulfilled potential", which ironically also uttered in words by Emma Watson's Mae in one of her scenes. If one has a zero knowledge about the implication of a surveillance state, this film could serve as an eye-opening flick. Otherwise, in this day and age, it is at best, just another iteration of Netflix's Black Mirror episodes.
