A Cinephile’s Critiques

Directed by Bruce Pittman, 1995 (Color, 4:3, Stereo, 100′)
Starring Sean Astin, Andrea Martin, and Christopher Plummer

Some movies are a little shy about their themes. They drop a few hints here and there. They skirt around the topic. They might, eventually, get around to saying what’s on their minds.

But Harrison Bergeron isn’t like that. You’ll know exactly what it’s all about in the first few minutes of the film. You’ll also know how it’s going to deal with its topic: every last bit at earnestly and cheerfully as it can manage, just like the characters in the film. And this makes the situation the characters are in seem every last bit as morbidly absurd as it is in our world, only more interesting.

You see, Harrison, our hero, has a problem. He’s just too smart for his own good. It’s not a particularly unusual problem. There are a lot of people who are too smart, too athletic, too talented, too ethical, too attractive, too nice, or, most importantly, too different for their own good. Sometimes this makes us average folks jealous. And, every once in a while, we act on our jealousy. That’s when things get ugly. Of course, we know it’s wrong. Fortunately, we also know what to do about it. We make sure things aren’t too easy for those folks who are different, don’t we? When you see exactly how we do this, in Harrison Bergeron, you probably won’t know whether to guffaw or gasp.

Luckily for us, no one seemed to make very many problems for the film makers who put this movie together. They may not have had much of a budget, but they were smart enough to use what they had wisely. The world looks real enough. And if it sometimes seems a little flat and shallow, then that’s what you would expect from a world that values mediocrity, isn’t it? The writers explore the subject entertainingly and the actors are well-cast and play their roles convincingly.

Sean Astin, for instance, wears Harrison’s earnestness comfortably enough for you to suspect he’s a little like that off camera too. And Christopher Plummer handles the villain so well that you can’t help but be a little impressed. In fact, he makes it really hard to hate his character, despite what he does.

And you’re not supposed to hate him. The guy believes so completely that treating everyone as if they were exactly the same just isn’t crippling enough that he can’t recognize the tragedy his policy creates. So, naturally, and quite believably, Harrison has to demonstrate exactly how tragic it really is.