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The Circle (2017)
It’s interesting how some movies can trigger a tsunami of negative commentary that is disproportionate to the film’s cinematic qualities. The so-called sci-fi thriller The Circle (2017) is one such movie. Perhaps any film that satirises the seductions and power of techno giants like Google, Apple and Facebook is treading on sacred ground. While it’s not a masterpiece, the film does its job in airing some chilling issues about political and corporate accountability in the ever-expanding digital domain.
Stuck in a dead-end job, Mae Holland (Emma Watson) gets the chance of a lifetime to work with the world’s biggest intelligence surveillance company called The Circle. It’s a dream workplace with thousands of employees and every conceivable benefit, but it also expects 24/7 commitment and social involvement. She comes to the attention of the guru-styled CEO Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks) who nurtures her advancement in the company. It turns out that she is a natural at selling Eamon’s ideas for increasing employee surveillance and she even volunteers to wear a constant monitoring camera. She becomes the company’s high-profile propagandist for transparency and the dispensability of personal privacy. The company introduces automatic voter registration for employees and its own preferred congressional candidate. It wants to extend Circle accounts to the entire population and link everyone to the electoral process. Unexpected things happen when the transparency lens is turned inward on the company.
So why is this film being thoroughly trashed? Emma Watson is difficult to watch without seeing her Hermione halo, but she is perfect for a role that calls for naïve understatement. Tom Hanks plays a likeable baddie with his usual over-reliance on those adorably furrowed Scully eyebrows. But describing this film as a futuristic sci-fi thriller has raised expectations that are impossible to meet when its narrative suspense curve is mostly flat and its technology already available. Then there is that feeling where someone is lecturing you about the dangers of believing technological masterminds with a script that often sounds somewhere between melodrama and corny.
There is one redeeming feature that makes this film undeserving of universal panning. It modernises Orwell’s 1984 into a techno-dystopia with a core premise that is not as absurd as some might think. The sheer scale of economic and political power of today’s mega technology empires surpasses that of contemporary government and they have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to distort democracy everywhere it exists. If fake news can sway elections, what can real-time online manipulations of voting behaviour do? Audiences and critics do not like being mocked for their willingness to be herded like sheep into digital dependence. The warnings in this film hit home.
Director: James Ponsoldt
Stars: Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, John Boyega
A United Arab Emirates & USA production
CineMuseFilms 
A very fair review!
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I made the same point months ago, people think this couldn’t happen in real life as Google, Facebook, etc gains more and more power and we let them.
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I thought the idea was interesting and had a lot of potential, but it was poorly executed. I would rather have seen how the technology affects her personally than some vague threat of a “sinister plan”. Maybe a jealous coworker uses the system against her to get revenge? Might have been more interesting.
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I agree Michael; the sinister conspiracy trope is not enough to lift this film. Your plot twist could have worked well.
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Perhaps I’ll watch this when it comes out on Netflix, and that only because I adore Tom Hanks. I tried to read this book when it first came out. It is one of very few books that I simply gave up on. (Actually, there may be more of these, as I get lured into indie e books that simply don’t measure up.) Yeah…the lecturing thing. I got that from the book. I felt that I could see where it was going and that was no place I haven’t been before in a much more effective narrative. Of course, since I failed to finish the book, perhaps I don’t know where it was leading me….I’m not sure I care, though.
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You’ll be glad to know the ending did not lead anywhere; the film just ran out of ideas. A bit like a junior school essay which ends with “and then I woke up”.
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I was very surprised when I started seeing this book on people’s lists and then was even more surprised to see Hanks associated with the film. He must of needed to beef up his retirement portfolio.
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