Monday, March 24, 2014
"Divergent": Being unlabeled means being different, which means being dangerous to the powers that be
After my 2001 layoff, I took enough personality tests
online, and was briefed on Myers Briggs during the outplacement process. There’s nothing new about classifying people
or pinning labels on them. Maybe the
ultimate system was the “polarities” of Paul Rosenfels – personality types on a
matrix of masculine and feminine, and then objective and subjective, with all
combinations.
In “Divergent” (directed by Neil Burger), based on the young adult novel by Veronica
Roth, there are five classes: erudite, amity (mostly farmers), candid,
dauntless, and abnegated. The last of
these, supposedly selfless, administer this post-apocalyptic Chicago where Lake
Michigan has drained and grown in. Even
teenager takes an intrusive medical test to determine which class they belong
in, but everyone is allowed to choose a different one.
The heroine, Tris (Shailene Woodley) gets an inconclusive
test result, and is told she should choose her parents’ class, abnegation.
Instead, she rebels and chooses dauntless. She also told about a community “don’t
ask, don’t tell” policy for divergents.
Because society fears them, they are hunted down and are mostly
homeless. (It’s not hard to see the
parallel with the situation of homosexuals in Uganda, Nigeria, and Putin’s
Russia.) It’s hard to see why, as she
is hardly up to things physically for a while. Eventually, her “divergence”
gives her the edge needed to pass the tests her own way, although her
instructor Four (Theo James) tries to pressure her to conform. Their training recalls Army Basic, and the shared bunking (and co-ed) seems like an obvious commentary on women in combat and also on the defrocked military "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays. It's noteworthy also that being a "dauntless" does require "volunteering"; there is no conscription as such.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that there is a chance for hidden
romance. Or that Four is Divergent
himself. One of the tests insists of
injection of a mind-reading drug in the neck.
In one test, Four attempts intimacy with her. That’s a good parallel to my own screenplay “The
Sub” where a character is tested by temptation, but where the level of reality
is uncertain. In her case, she repels
him even in this imaginary world. In my
screenplay, the protagonist doesn’t have the same self discipline – leading to
what I’ve called the “implicit content” problem.
Tris has a good looking brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort), an
erudite who informs her of a plot for the erudites to seize control from the abnegated. Caleb is certainly one of the more likable
characters (after Four); Hero Complex in the LA Times gives Elgort's own comments on the role here. But likewise impressive is dauntless
Peter (Miles Teller), even if one of Tris’s competitors. Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn play the
parents. Aussie Jai Courtney is rather
tattooed up. Kate Winslet seems up to playing the role of a female Putin.
The official Facebook site is here. Webroot warns me on the official site from
Summit Entertainment, but I can’t tell what it thinks is wrong with it.
What makes you different makes you dangerous! But does it make you deviant? It certainly makes you "factionless". Or, the world belongs to those who know who they are, or who accept where they belong?
The movie does make obvious references to predecessors,
including “The Birds”, and, of course, “Inception”, although the parallel to
the latter is rather incomplete.
Most of my friends (social media and real life) and most of
the artists I review often in my blogs are Divergent. Erudite and Candid seem to be their strongest
qualities, with some fearlessness. Maybe
you have to be dauntless to write and sing a song asking people to imagine you
naked.
Labels:
Divergent,
indie sci-fi,
Neil Burger,
satire,
Summit,
Tree of Life issues
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