Movie Review—The Circle

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by Peter J. O'Connell     

The Circle. Released: April 2017. Runtime: 110 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a sexual situation, brief strong language, and some thematic elements, including drug use.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is a somewhat shy, yet spunky—she kayaks solo—young woman who works in a cubicled call center in California but longs for better things. She would like to help her mother (Glenne Headly) and father (Bill Paxton, in his last film role). Her father has MS. So when Mae's application to work at The Circle, a massive high-tech corporation with many projects, is accepted, she is very happy.

The Circle, directed and co-written by James Ponsoldt, explores the world of The Circle with Mae. Mae soon discovers that The Circle, many of whose staffers are sort of human drones like the mechanical ones that fill the skies over the corporate campus, seeks to envelop her in a round of group activities both at work and after hours. Her independent spirit and the influence of Mercer (Ellar Coltrane), an ex-boyfriend who lives “off the grid,” make her a little standoffish. 

Like other staffers, however, Mae is entranced by the periodic talks given by Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), head and co-founder of The Circle, along with portly Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt). Bailey comes across as brilliant but very friendly and casual—sort of a warm-and-fuzzy version of Steve Jobs. Or maybe an “everyman hero” type like those played by Tom Hanks in the movies. Watson is lovely, with an expressive face, but the best thing about the film may be the way in which Tom Hanks plays a character who places a “Tom Hanks character” persona over his true self.

Bailey promotes the global distribution of The Circle's visual and audio products that transmit and record whatever is happening, wherever the device is. This is in fulfillment of his statement that “Knowing is good, but knowing everything is better.” The company's slogans are: “All That Happens Must Be Known” and “Privacy Is Theft.”

Mae is converted to this way of thinking when the devices help her out of a dangerous situation. She allows herself to become the poster-child for making all activities (except bathroom ones) known to all the world. She says that “Secrets are what make crime possible.”

But Mae comes to realize that what The Circle is really seeking to bring about is not a better future but an updated version of Orwell's 1984, with the pleasant-seeming (but only “seeming”) Bailey rather than glowering Big Brother as its presiding dictatorial presence.

Aided by Ty (John Boyega), a staffer who knows that The Circle's abhorrence of secrets is a lie and also knows where the corporation's own secrets lie, Mae faces a momentous decision.

The Circle raises very interesting and important questions, but the way that it answers them is rather lacking in the necessary intensity. A more “visionary” director—say, David Lynch or David Cronenberg—might have been a better choice for helmsman instead of the somewhat pedestrian Ponsoldt. But some audience members might disagree. Why not ask them as they leave the theatre and go out into the parking lot under the surveillance cameras while absorbed in their digital devices?