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Emma Watson struggles against the surveillance state in shockingly bad adaptation The Circle |
Director: James Ponsoldt
Cast: Mae Holland (Emma Watson), Tom Hanks (Eamon Bailey),
John Boyega (Ty Lafitte/Kalden), Karen Gillan (Annie Allerton), Ellar Coltrane
(Mercer), Patton Oswalt (Tom Stenton), Bill Paxton (Vinnie Holland), Glenne
Headly (Bonnie Holland)

Mae (Emma Watson) is thrilled to land a job at The Circle,
an all-powerful, Google-style
corporation with a virtual monopoly over the internet. However, she discovers
while she works at the Circle that there are (of course!) dark secrets at the
heart of the company, and that its charismatic CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) may
not be all that he seems.
Imagine an adaptation of 1984
at the end of which Winston Smith defeats Big Brother but decides there are
positive sides to living under a dictatorship, so carries on doing so. That’s
exactly as ballsed-up as this total misreading of Egger’s gripping critique of
our internet age. In this terrible adaptation, the novel is neutered beyond
recognition into just another bland “Big Corporations Acting All Corporation-y”
nonsense. The film is pretty much exactly as awful as the book is brilliant.
Where did it all go so completely and utterly wrong? Did
they not understand the book? The novel is not only a critique of the pervasive
power of its shady Google-like organisation. It’s also a savage attack on our
own tweeting, social media obsessed world – the sort of world where private
actions are theft as they rob everyone else from experiencing them vicariously
through tweets, photos and posts. It’s this part of the story the film
completely (and almost wilfully) misses the point of.
They seem terrified at the thought that the social media Twitteratti
might take against the film if it too openly attacks the actual users of
systems like this, with their (at times) shallow, demanding and entitled
pushing of their own opinions, and intrusions into others’ lives. Instead the
film gives a complete pass to all the users of the systems, while attacking the
corporation providing them. So we get the bizarre set up of a film that seems
to say it’s totally fine for normal people to record everything and push it all
onto the internet, turning their world into a judgemental surveillance state,
but it’s evil for a corporation to create the devices they use to do it.
Even the film’s criticism of corporations isn’t very clear, largely
because we never get a sense of the Circle’s power and its hunger for getting
more and more control. The film throws away its involvement in politics and its
control over everyday lives. Perhaps because it knows so many of the viewership
love gadgets, there is no exploration of the creepy, controlling aspect of the
many tracking and recording devices the Circlers wear throughout the film, as
there is in the novel. Instead the target is the shady business people at the
top (not that we learn anything about what they want) because everyone hates
businessmen don’t they? Nice easy target. I can tweet my loathing of them very
easily.
It’s a film devoid of any challenge. A character’s suicide
from the book is changed to an accidental death. The more vulnerable and
desperate of the characters from the book have been deleted. The obsessive
self-definition the Circlers gain from what other people tweet about them is
downplayed. The ending of the film completely inverts the novel, and leaves us
with a bizarre final image of our hero kayaking on the lake, but warmly smiling
at the drones watching her, even after she has destroyed the “villains” who run
them. It makes no sense whatsoever. My jaw literally dropped when this happened
by the way.
Mae is a character who now has no consistency. Her growing
obsession with the power of social media – and the destructive effect it has on
her actual human relationships – is completely ignored. It’s the key part of
her character from the book, and its removed here to try her as traditionally ‘likeable’
as possible. An anti-hero becomes a flat out hero. The film shows the impact of
actions she carries out in the book – particularly on Annie – but removes these
actions from the film. Why do people slip into depression or depart from the
film? Who knows. Left with nothing to work with from the original book, Emma
Watson gives a bland and forgettable performance. No one else really makes an
impact, playing dull, neutered versions of the characters from the source
material, devoid of depth or interest.
The Circle might
be one of the worst literary adaptations I’ve ever seen. It guts the original
book and removes any of the most challenging and interesting content. It’s terrified
of criticising in any way anyone who might be watching. It’s a satire on the
social media age that has no satire in it, and is desperate not to talk about
social media. Worst of all it will discourage people from reading the original novel. In the words of the modern age: #uttershit.
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