The Circle (2017)

 

Through her friend Annie, call centre intern Mae Holland secures a customer support position at The Circle, a tech and social media company. Mae is wildly excited about the opportunity to work at one of the most cutting edge, innovative and successful companies in the world.  Her good friend Mercer, being something of a technophobe, is less thrilled, but understands that the new role will allow Mae to financially assist her parents, who are struggling with mounting medical bills.

Mae rises quickly in The Circle, embracing the firm's concept of 'always on' social networking, with virtually every moment of her life available to strangers to watch in real time.  The Circle is a big advocate for this 'radical transparency' for everyone, including public figures, arguing that this will ensure open and honest communication and restore trust both in interpersonal relationships and in government.

You may already have concerns about how such a policy would actually work in practice, and about the motives of anyone who push drive for it, and you would be right on both fronts.  Mae quickly begins to learn the disadvantages of 'radical transparency', and also begins to wonder if The Circle is as altruistic as it appears.  The question is, will she act on her growing suspicions, or use them to leverage her own climb to the top?

This cinematic adaptation of the Dave Eggers novel of the same name is ... an okay film. It's competently acted by a solid cast, decently shot, and doesn't drag.  It just doesn't really excite. A key flaw is that the Mae's friendship with the mysterious Ty, who becomes her ally, is rather under developed. 'This is under developed' is a problem throughout the film, in fact, possibly due to compressing a 500 page novel to a 2 hour film.  For instance, Annie's character arc lurches through a couple of rapid, dramatic steps and then just kind of gets chopped off with a quick phone conversation between her and Mae.

The film also lacks subtlety.  The fact that The Circle's corporate culture is functionally that of a cult is obvious right from the start. It's very heavy-handed; there's no sense of insidiousness to it, it's just right in your face from the very first moment Mae joins the organisation.  Plus there's the fact that the whole 'agreeing to have your life be 24/7 online' premise seems a bit ridiculous, to me. We're told Mae gets privacy to go to the bathroom, but only for 3 minutes; after that the cameras automatically turn on.  I don't know about you, but I don't always get all my business done in 180 seconds.  Also, who wants every fart or burp they ever make to be shared with millions of people?

I think the smartest choice the film does is casting Tom Hanks as the CEO of The Circle.  Hanks's basic likeability and career of playing wholesome roles makes him a good choice for selling that people might be taken in by his altruistic act.  I also like that it takes a less nihilistic approach than the original novel apparently did; I'm not wholly convinced by the film's ending, but at least it's not both improbable and thoroughly miserable, like the book's seems to have been.

This is probably only worth seeing if you are a passionate fan of one or more of the (admittedly talented) cast.