Writers: James Ponsoldt, Dave Eggers
Stars: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega
Based on the book by Dave Eggers.
Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is a young woman who lands a job at The Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company. Think of it as a mashup of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Apple. Its signature product is TruYou, an ill-defined piece of software that’s every social media platform and cloud service all rolled into one convenient online identity. The Circle’s company motto is “Sharing is caring”, and CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) advocates for a form of radical transparency, which he intones with the words “Knowing is good, but knowing everything is better.” Eamon is first spotted at one of the company’s regularly held Friday meetings, run like a typical slick keynote staged within a large auditorium. Hanks applies his trademark charm when plying his character’s own version of a reality distortion field. So is he supposed to be another tech visionary freeing the world from its petty vices, or a rapacious business person who will end up destroying it? Or is he just failing to practice what he preaches? The film never comes to any answer. Its message becomes increasingly muddled until it arrives at an ending that apparently wants to play it more than one way.
This is seen in Mae’s journey through the film. At first she’s a little incredulous of The Circle’s corporate culture. This part of the film plays like a satire of contemporary Silicon Valley, which is presented as a hive mind passive-aggressively encouraging every employee to maintain an active online presence, then rates the quality of those interactions. Any dip in quality or drop in activity sends some other employee concernedly scurrying towards Mae to enquire if anything’s gone wrong with her life.
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But the story takes a half-hearted turn towards conspiracy thriller when Mae befriends Ty Lafitte (John Boyega), the creator of TruYou. The disillusioned co-founder has become suspicious of his company’s increased monopolistic presence. He seems intent on recruiting Mae for... something, while she still hasn’t fully drunk the kool aide. But nothing comes of it, and Ty is reduced to a scowling presence in the background. On the contrary, Mae turns into a full-blown evangelist for The Circle’s goals, even becoming a guinea pig for the company’s latest experiments in total transparency. A couple of plot twists later, and Mae has changed her mind again. Or has she? Mae is always looks very earnest, but also exists in a state of perpetual confusion. In the end, she doesn’t seem to know what she wants.
The Circle is the second Hollywood feature this year to explore similar themes. The first was the critically panned Ghost in the Shell. Both are stories about the hero's conflict with a powerful technology corporation peddling an attractive form of utopianism while hiding a more unsavory underbelly. The latter follows a much more formulaic route. It ends with the clear defeat of the bad guys and the validation of a triumphalist brand of individualism. The Circle aims for greater social relevance, but mostly succeeds at being broadly alarmist. It hints at philosophical introspection, but is a little too wedded to our present. I get the impression the filmmakers were made to write a more conventional ending instead of logically following the premise to arrive at a more interesting conclusion. Or maybe they suffered from a loss of nerve.
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| via cinema vine |
