Media Event: The Circle

For my second media event, I watched The Circle. This movie received a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.3 on IMDb, so you could say I had very low expectations. However, one of the reasons this movie intrigued me was based off of it’s low ratings. I thought to myself, how could a movie with a decent cast be rated so poorly? I like to see the good in everything I encounter, including movies. The Circle happened to be a movie that I believe had potential, but somewhere in the middle, the writer got lost in the narrative and the film ended up not flowing cohesively. What I mean is that I was left unsatisfied with the way the plot played out, but I don’t think it was as bad as critics made it seem.

This was the story of a large corporation having complete control over the information they received from its consumers, but eventually the film became too immersed in a technological paranoia and how things could go bad in this particular situation. The concepts in the plot become so bizarre that it discredits the quality of the film. For example, the fact that the main character, Mae, decides to share her entire day/life with everyone seems like a crazy thing to do. The public sees and hears everything she does. In real life, the public may not have access to our daily activities, but the government does. This semester we have discussed the topic of government surveillance, and whether we like it or not, we are being watched and listened to. There is an illusion of privacy that makes us feel more at ease, but in reality we too are victims of this technological exposure. Overall, The Circle was a good movie cinematically, but narratively, it lacked direction. This movie was based off of a book. I don’t know how the book goes, but this movie seems to be a (b)adaptation.