Movie Review
By David Josselyn
We live in a great age of movies. An age when theaters have ten to twenty auditoriums to show as many individual movies as possible and accommodate the demand that blockbusters bring, enabling production companies to churn out as many ideas as they can. While some films succeed, others do not, but the profits from the blockbusters can fund the riskier stories. As a fringe benefit, they also get to make screen adaptations from their favorite books; an effort I fully endorse. “The Circle” is one of those films originally penned by Dave Eggers and published in 2013. As is customary, author Dave Eggers also had a hand in writing the screenplay for the film along with James Ponsoldt. Just like other movies, some book adaptations work and others do not. I have not read the Circle, but I can at least judge the film.
The Plot
Twenty-something Mae Holland, played by Emma Watson (“Beauty and the Beast,” the Harry Potter movies), lands a job with her dream company, The Circle. The Circle is a multi-national tech company whose foundation is built upon a social media platform by the same name. The Circle Company is a conglomerate of all the over-abundance of well-being lifestyles in today’s tech industry; on-site campus housing, restaurants, dog yoga (doga – yes, this is a real thing) classes, concerts, parties, etc. Mae is encouraged, or more appropriately coerced, into attending company activities and to actively participate in their social media site. Mae is an A-student type personality focused on scores more than wisdom, and is consumed by getting the best social score on the media site and customer service score in her job. As The Circle introduces new programs and technology that erode our privacy, the reasoning they use: to instantly track terrorist acts and possibly prevent them before they happen; to locate fugitives from justice; to reunite loved ones; to prevent child abduction; to make voting efficient (and mandatory); is sufficient to convince the masses these advances are necessary. When we are watched, we perform better and are better people. Mae takes on the challenge of total transparency by wearing a camera that broadcasts to The Circle’s website every action and word she makes (allowing three minutes of privacy for bathroom breaks) for millions of followers to see.
The next great invention released is a program called SoulSearch which uses the installed cameras and combined efforts of users to locate anyone in the world in less than twenty minutes. The demonstration went slightly awry when they tried to locate Mae’s old friend Mercer, played by Ellar Coltrane (Fast Food Nation, Boyhood), who did not want to be found. Being chased by people and drones, Mercer lost control of his truck and crashed off a bridge. Mae took some days off to deal with her grief and finally confront what The Circle’s programs may be doing to humanity.
The Good
The two heads of the company, Bailey, played by Tom Hanks (“Sully,” “Inferno”), and Stenton, played by Patton Oswalt (“The Goldbergs,” “Mystery Science Theater 3000”), are an excellent mix of opportunistic enthusiasm with an undercurrent of power hungry moguls; villainy disguised as salvation. Hanks and Oswalt pull this off very well.
Realism. All the technology and the social media advances, while accelerated, can happen in the real world. The logic and reasoning behind every endeavor is argued among politicians today. The possibilities of this coming to fruition create an anxiety as a viewer which is exactly what the movie should be doing.
The Bad
As much as I love Emma Watson, she seems to have trouble consistently speaking with an American accent. I’m not sure why the character of Mae could not be British for the movie, especially since her best friend Annie, played by Karen Gillan (“Doctor Who,” “Guardians of the Galaxy”), is most certainly from Scotland. Perhaps Ms. Watson wanted that challenge, but I found it distracting.
The story is told solely through the eyes of Mae and at times seems disjointed. I am guessing the book is written the same way, but I think the movie would have been better told through several characters.
The editing. One of the problems with book adaptations is books hold so much more information and story than can be effectively be told in two hours on film. Quite a bit of the story is left up to the viewer to fill in the gaps, which may cause some folks to be confused.
In Summary
“The Circle” is a great look into our self-centered social media world and feels very different from most movies. The dangers of this technology caused a great deal of anxiety in both my wife and daughter even after the film was done which I see as success in the production. It is rated PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language, and some thematic elements. The language is indeed brief as is the sexual situation. The movie is probably fine for younger children, but they would be mostly bored with little action or humor to carry their attention. I rate the film four out of five drones; my beautiful wife rates it four out of five antler chandeliers; and my lovely 20-year-old daughter rates it five out of five handcuff trees.