Pleasantville Biblical Refrences Essay - 1108 Words

The movie â€Å"Pleasantville† (Produced and directed by Gary Ross in 1988) is more than just your ordinary film. Pleasantville sends a message within a message. Not only is it a great film, (made popular by New Line Cinema) it contains numerous biblical references. Some of the biblical references in this film may be easier to see and understand than others. But when asked to analyze this film and critique the biblical references you will understand just how many there are. To me the most obvious relation to the bible is in a scene where the main character David (Tobey Maguire) is the first to see a fire that breaks out in a tree in his front yard. Ironically enough, the tree is on fire, but is not consumed by the flames, it’s burning but†¦show more content†¦The serpent eventually persuades Eve to eat from the â€Å"Tree of Knowledge†. After she eats from it, she has Adam eat from it. Shortly after, they finally notice they are naked and become self conscious and cover up. God then asks about what they have done and Eve blames Adam, while Adam blames the Serpent. God curses them, and makes Eve suffer through labor and banishes both of them from the Garden of Eden. The relation in the movies comes from a scene in the end involving David and another girl from his school. Color starts to fill Pleasantville, and the girl he is sitting with in the lawn gets up and grabs a fruit of off the tree, and then she hands the fruit to David to eat, much like Eve did with Adam. As soon as they ate the fruit, it started to rain in Pleasantville for the first time ever, symbolizing God’s anger, and color now completely filled Pleasantville. The discovery in books also reminds me of the â€Å"Tree of Knowledge of good and evil†, the books being good, and the reading of them being evil because it made people curious to as what else was out in the real world. Therefore there is an effect in both cases, the biblical one, and also the movie. Pleasantville, (before David and Jennifer) is a â€Å"dream world† if you will, everyone is always happy and there are never any conflicts with anyone. Once the two of them arrive however, everything changes. In Pleasantville everything is black and white, but after Jennifer has sex