Divergent
Directed by: Neil Burger
Written by: Evan Daugherty, Vanessa Taylor, based on the novel by Veronica Roth
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zöe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q, Mekhi Phifer, Kate Winslet, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Amy Newbold, Ben Lamb
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 139 min
Written by: Evan Daugherty, Vanessa Taylor, based on the novel by Veronica Roth
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Ray Stevenson, Zöe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Tony Goldwyn, Ansel Elgort, Maggie Q, Mekhi Phifer, Kate Winslet, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Amy Newbold, Ben Lamb
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 139 min
Early in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), all the new students stand in front of the magical sorting hat and are assigned their respective houses; the whole event only takes a few minutes before putting Harry in Gryffindor and all the villains in the wonderfully named Slytherin. Now imagine an entire movie based on that one scene and you wind up with Divergent.
Post-apocalyptic Chicago divides itself into personality-based factions rather than on family or some other discriminating basis to ensure humans do not fall back into the habit of slaughtering each other. Each faction name is a Scrabble triple-word score such as Amity, Erudite, and Abnegation. Some of the factions are employment based such as the farmer/hippie folks in Amity. There is the civil servant class who live like the Amish, the geeks have their own faction as do the jocks, and then there is one called Candor, who only tell the truth – as in, they say the first thing that comes to their minds. This means, there is an entire faction of assholes.
As our heroine, Beatrice ‘Tris’ (Shailene Woodley), describes the factions in her opening voiceover, she had me until Candor. Do all the leftover people who are neither nice, strong, nor smart fall into that one? Based on a trilogy of young adult novels by Veronica Roth, the faction explanation immediately distracted me because the various behaviors they are divided by are ridiculous. There are a lot of rules about testing for, choosing, and then remaining only with your faction. Instead of “blood is thicker than water”, their mantra is “faction before blood.”
Tris is not like everyone else though. She is a very rare person who does not classify into a faction; her personality contains bits and pieces of all them making her a divergent and what the ruling authority views as a rebel who will disrupt and collapse the system. If her divergent self is discovered, the penalty is death. In the movie’s more interesting parts, Tris explores the idea that the factions are there to manipulate the populace and keep in them in line so no one will ever rock the boat.
Ah, but skullduggery is afoot. Tris chooses the jock faction, Dauntless, and goes off to transform from a meek wallflower into Katniss Everdeen. The majority of the movie is a long form training montage where Tris finds courage, gets the snot kicked out of her, and then rises up to shine above the rest as her divergent skills help her think outside the box.
We have no idea what sort of war blew up the world and why this set of leftover humans hide behind massive walls in a shell of what was Chicago. Perhaps that is for the sequels to illuminate. In Divergent, audiences get another strong female character to root for against all odds and it remains a breath of fresh air even though it comes on the heels of The Hunger Games (2011). Captain America and Transformers will be here soon enough to put Baby back in the corner.
The acting by the leads including Woodley and her awkward student/instructor relationship with a guy who calls himself Four (Theo James, Underworld: Awakening, 2012) is well done. Woodley was fine in her Oscar nominated role in The Descendants (2011); however, she was truly remarkable in The Spectacular Now (2013). The difference between shy Aimee and Tris is night and day but Woodley appears at home on the screen. Miles Teller, Sutter from The Spectacular Now, also shows up here but as a background annoyance; he was born and raised in Candor after all.
I enjoyed Divergent a bit more than this review makes it sound like. The problem is, when Divergent falls off the tracks, it does more than spark and skid a few degrees off; it catapults off a cliff. The climactic gunfights in the streets and Realpolitik takeovers are a U-turn from the rest of the film’s focus on transformation, self-improvement, and getting to know thine ownself. Here’s looking forward to the sequels, which hopefully answer some questions and cut down on the campy crushes and adolescent angst.
Post-apocalyptic Chicago divides itself into personality-based factions rather than on family or some other discriminating basis to ensure humans do not fall back into the habit of slaughtering each other. Each faction name is a Scrabble triple-word score such as Amity, Erudite, and Abnegation. Some of the factions are employment based such as the farmer/hippie folks in Amity. There is the civil servant class who live like the Amish, the geeks have their own faction as do the jocks, and then there is one called Candor, who only tell the truth – as in, they say the first thing that comes to their minds. This means, there is an entire faction of assholes.
As our heroine, Beatrice ‘Tris’ (Shailene Woodley), describes the factions in her opening voiceover, she had me until Candor. Do all the leftover people who are neither nice, strong, nor smart fall into that one? Based on a trilogy of young adult novels by Veronica Roth, the faction explanation immediately distracted me because the various behaviors they are divided by are ridiculous. There are a lot of rules about testing for, choosing, and then remaining only with your faction. Instead of “blood is thicker than water”, their mantra is “faction before blood.”
Tris is not like everyone else though. She is a very rare person who does not classify into a faction; her personality contains bits and pieces of all them making her a divergent and what the ruling authority views as a rebel who will disrupt and collapse the system. If her divergent self is discovered, the penalty is death. In the movie’s more interesting parts, Tris explores the idea that the factions are there to manipulate the populace and keep in them in line so no one will ever rock the boat.
Ah, but skullduggery is afoot. Tris chooses the jock faction, Dauntless, and goes off to transform from a meek wallflower into Katniss Everdeen. The majority of the movie is a long form training montage where Tris finds courage, gets the snot kicked out of her, and then rises up to shine above the rest as her divergent skills help her think outside the box.
We have no idea what sort of war blew up the world and why this set of leftover humans hide behind massive walls in a shell of what was Chicago. Perhaps that is for the sequels to illuminate. In Divergent, audiences get another strong female character to root for against all odds and it remains a breath of fresh air even though it comes on the heels of The Hunger Games (2011). Captain America and Transformers will be here soon enough to put Baby back in the corner.
The acting by the leads including Woodley and her awkward student/instructor relationship with a guy who calls himself Four (Theo James, Underworld: Awakening, 2012) is well done. Woodley was fine in her Oscar nominated role in The Descendants (2011); however, she was truly remarkable in The Spectacular Now (2013). The difference between shy Aimee and Tris is night and day but Woodley appears at home on the screen. Miles Teller, Sutter from The Spectacular Now, also shows up here but as a background annoyance; he was born and raised in Candor after all.
I enjoyed Divergent a bit more than this review makes it sound like. The problem is, when Divergent falls off the tracks, it does more than spark and skid a few degrees off; it catapults off a cliff. The climactic gunfights in the streets and Realpolitik takeovers are a U-turn from the rest of the film’s focus on transformation, self-improvement, and getting to know thine ownself. Here’s looking forward to the sequels, which hopefully answer some questions and cut down on the campy crushes and adolescent angst.
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