DIVERGENT
“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”
This outstanding quote that makes the audience think, is the driving force behind 2014 box office hit: Divergent.
Divergent premiered in Australia on the 10th April 2014; it was an immediate success, reviews and praise buzzed from one corner of cyberspace to the other. Director Neil Burger has turned this bestselling novel into a motion picture to remember, and when you’ve got Kate Winslet on cast, can you really go wrong?
For those of you who haven’t seen it, Divergent is the story of a girl, Beatrice Prior a.k.a Tris. Set in a walled dystopia that was formerly Chicago and still looks, strikingly, like a semi ruined concrete-playground version of that city. In this Post- apocalyptic world, society is diverged (you see what I did there) into 5 factions, Amity, Abnegation, Dauntless, Candor and Erudite. Tris was raised in Abnegation.
Only problem is when she takes the test to learn which faction she's best suited for, it turns out that she's in the rare forbidden category known as Divergent, which means she has the qualities of three factions at once: Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. It may sound silly to say she's an outlaw because she's self-sacrificial, brilliant, and strong all at the same time, but what's really forbidden is independent thought.
This amazing character is portrayed by Shailene Woodley, a young upcoming actress that has talent to lead her to many opportunities in her career. Her character, spends most of the film learning to leap, toss knives and risk death like a badass, and when she puts those skills to the test battling her society's corrupt leaders, there's no doubt that she's a superior, market-tested YA role model, like Katniss in The Hunger Games. But she is also, as Woodley plays her, an intensely vulnerable and relatable character. Woodley, through the delicate power of her acting, does something compelling: She shows you what a prickly, fearful, yet daring personality looks like when it's nestled deep within a kind of modest, bookish girl. Tris chooses to become part of Dauntless not because she has any special athletic skill but because it's her nature to go for things she wants, not is expected to want. The first half of Divergent is a lean, exciting basic-training thriller, with Tris willing herself to do things like jump aboard speeding trains and fight with her bare knuckles. Woodley, at every turn, lets us feel as if we're in her shoes, not so much Dauntless as thrillingly daunted.
The second half of the movie goes on a bit, with too many combat scenes. Yet the director, Neil Burger, keeps you invested, staging a rise-of-the-saviour-heroine plot so that it seems less ritualistic than it does in the Hunger Games films. It helps that the drill sergeant, named Four, is played by Theo James, he brings off the neat trick of playing a hardass who is also a heartthrob. And it's nice to watch Kate Winslet go full ice-blood fascist as the Erudite leader who makes a scarily smart case for a society rooted in the fine art of control. Finally we see Tris’ brother, played by Ansel Elgort and her arch nemesis in the film, Peter, played by Miles Teller. These additional characters add depth to the film, though I was surprised these secondary characters made it to the end of the film, they certainly helped the plot along. Besides I doubt Shailene will be saying her farewells any time soon, with three more Divergent movies to come, as well as starring alongside Ansel Elgort in The Fault in Our Stars, later this film season.
This film has drama and action; it’s a flick of superb special effects, while containing a deep and meaningful message and like any good teen picture should, a love story and no critic can deny that this trilogy will make a mark on the film industry for sure.
Can’t wait for the next one!
Kayla Groombridge
VIEW THE MOVIE TRAILER BELOW:
“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”
This outstanding quote that makes the audience think, is the driving force behind 2014 box office hit: Divergent.
Divergent premiered in Australia on the 10th April 2014; it was an immediate success, reviews and praise buzzed from one corner of cyberspace to the other. Director Neil Burger has turned this bestselling novel into a motion picture to remember, and when you’ve got Kate Winslet on cast, can you really go wrong?
For those of you who haven’t seen it, Divergent is the story of a girl, Beatrice Prior a.k.a Tris. Set in a walled dystopia that was formerly Chicago and still looks, strikingly, like a semi ruined concrete-playground version of that city. In this Post- apocalyptic world, society is diverged (you see what I did there) into 5 factions, Amity, Abnegation, Dauntless, Candor and Erudite. Tris was raised in Abnegation.
Only problem is when she takes the test to learn which faction she's best suited for, it turns out that she's in the rare forbidden category known as Divergent, which means she has the qualities of three factions at once: Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. It may sound silly to say she's an outlaw because she's self-sacrificial, brilliant, and strong all at the same time, but what's really forbidden is independent thought.
This amazing character is portrayed by Shailene Woodley, a young upcoming actress that has talent to lead her to many opportunities in her career. Her character, spends most of the film learning to leap, toss knives and risk death like a badass, and when she puts those skills to the test battling her society's corrupt leaders, there's no doubt that she's a superior, market-tested YA role model, like Katniss in The Hunger Games. But she is also, as Woodley plays her, an intensely vulnerable and relatable character. Woodley, through the delicate power of her acting, does something compelling: She shows you what a prickly, fearful, yet daring personality looks like when it's nestled deep within a kind of modest, bookish girl. Tris chooses to become part of Dauntless not because she has any special athletic skill but because it's her nature to go for things she wants, not is expected to want. The first half of Divergent is a lean, exciting basic-training thriller, with Tris willing herself to do things like jump aboard speeding trains and fight with her bare knuckles. Woodley, at every turn, lets us feel as if we're in her shoes, not so much Dauntless as thrillingly daunted.
The second half of the movie goes on a bit, with too many combat scenes. Yet the director, Neil Burger, keeps you invested, staging a rise-of-the-saviour-heroine plot so that it seems less ritualistic than it does in the Hunger Games films. It helps that the drill sergeant, named Four, is played by Theo James, he brings off the neat trick of playing a hardass who is also a heartthrob. And it's nice to watch Kate Winslet go full ice-blood fascist as the Erudite leader who makes a scarily smart case for a society rooted in the fine art of control. Finally we see Tris’ brother, played by Ansel Elgort and her arch nemesis in the film, Peter, played by Miles Teller. These additional characters add depth to the film, though I was surprised these secondary characters made it to the end of the film, they certainly helped the plot along. Besides I doubt Shailene will be saying her farewells any time soon, with three more Divergent movies to come, as well as starring alongside Ansel Elgort in The Fault in Our Stars, later this film season.
This film has drama and action; it’s a flick of superb special effects, while containing a deep and meaningful message and like any good teen picture should, a love story and no critic can deny that this trilogy will make a mark on the film industry for sure.
Can’t wait for the next one!
Kayla Groombridge
VIEW THE MOVIE TRAILER BELOW: