By Emilio Frenk.
Director: James Ponsoldt
Cast: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, Patton Oswalt, John Boyega, Karen Gilan, Ellar Coltrane, Glenne Headly and Bill Paxton.
Rating: Poor.
James Ponsoldt, director of “The Spectacular Now” and “The End of the Tour” brings “The Circle”. This is so far Ponsodt´s most ambitious project to this day but delivers unfortunate results.
Based on the novel by Dave Eggers, the movie tells the story of Mae (Emma Watson) a young girl whose life will change when she lands her dream job at The Circle, a powerful tech and social media company.
Once she is in the circle she will meet the founders Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) and Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt).
In there she will find out that the decision that she makes in the company involve a matter of privacy, surveillance and freedom. Eventually Mae will realize that every decision she makes will determine the future of humanity.
The main problem that I saw in “The Circle” was the characters. They were too vague and I didn´t see any conflict at all in this film. This is one thing that surprises me the most since James Ponsoldt is a filmmaker who gets deep in inner conflict in all the movies he has done since “Off The Black”, but here I didn´t see any.
The screenplay was too predictable and also one of the things that I didn´t see was that there wasn´t a villain which surprised me as well.
The novel I do think is a great piece of modern literature and for people who are interested in tech and social media it´s worth a read. Also the theme with human rights and privacy it´s very touchy and I wanted to see a full criticism or the consequences of not using social media wisely but I didn´t see that here.
On a positive note the movie is very well shot by Matthew Libatique, who has worked with Darren Aronovsky in movies like “Black Swan”, “The Wrestler” and “Requiem for a Dream”. The way he played with the lighting and colors of the film were really good and it´s the only good thing I saw in this film.
“The Circle” is a movie that without a doubt I was expecting good things since I am a big follower of Ponsoldt´s work and all the movies he has done are really good, in fact “The Spectacular Now” I consider it as one of the best films of 2013 since it´s a very powerful drama that not only it was well directed, but it delivered brilliant performances by Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller.
I believe if the movie would have been written by Ponsoldt only instead of him writing with Dave Eggers could have been a different result. I do believe that Ponsoldt try to do his best effort on making this film good but I think that he was more focused on making the film look good than in story.
Here he had a more ambitious cast and unfortunately they could not save the movie since the characters were too vague and I didn´t see any emotion in here.
James Ponsoldt is one of the most talented filmmakers today and I hope this is a huge learning experience for him.
“The Circle” is a big disappointment this year andunfortunately I cannot recommend it.