In the age of the Buzzfeed quiz (as it’s seeming more and more likely archeologists will refer to now) it seems serendipitous that Divergent would be released. The premise lies in a future, dystopian Chicago, where survivors live behind a wall, and are divided into five factions to “prevent further fighting” based on their strengths and values.
When you turn 16, you are tested and then choose between Abnegation, for the selfless; Amity, for the peaceful; Candor, for the honest; Dauntless, for the brave; and Erudite for the intelligent. When Beatrice Prior (Shailene Woodley) goes to take her test, she’s shocked to learn she’s one of the few that’s coded as “divergent:” she could test successfully into three of the five factions.
She opts to leave her Abnegation home for Dauntless, which are like the police force, if the police force was an action hero raised as a lost boy from Hook. As she struggles to make the cut in Dauntless, Tris (as she comes to be known) uncovers a conspiracy, and gets close to the hulky and aloof Four (Theo James).
If the book wasn’t so young-adult-novel about its message, it would be more interesting. It spends so much time talking about the dangers of conformity that ultimately its a pretty nondescript dystopian imagining. Divergents won’t or don’t have to conform to the structure of the government’s thinking, but it’s never quite clear what that means, or to what extent they are “free.”
It’s indicative of a problem the film has overall: basing itself on the pacing of the young-adult series of the same name, it settles itself in all the wrong places. Hoping to keep a PG-13 rating the atrocities are minimized, end game downplayed to almost nothing, and the endless training montages of the Dauntless camp seem to drag on. Divergent really lets you feel the full weight of the 139 minutes.
I’m told that the long run time (and seemingly random plot pockets) is a symptom of its strict loyalty to the book, which may please the fans who are able to follow the inner-workings of Tris and her society that don’t make it into the dialogue.
Woodley, a talented standout in films like The Descendants and The Spectacular Now, does what she can with the character of Tris, but she ends up doing a lot of the screenwriters work for them. It’s a sort of Jon Snow principle: the inner-thoughts on page that make the character dynamic and a viable conduit for the reader. Those of us who favor big screen adaptations are left filling in the blanks.
Divergent won’t be the worst movie of the year, by a long shot. But the little it has going for it is ultimately squashed under the weight of scene upon scene of training. Which in the end yield a whole lot of message for very little pay off in the end. So when it comes to dystopian action you’ll find me browsing a different category, because it’s not nearly as different or dangerous as it asks its characters to be.
Pulp Diction 