At first glance , Divergent sounds like a more stilted version of Hunger Games . In a dark dystopian futurity , everybody is required to have just one personality trait . Like Smurfs . Or the Seven Dwarfs . But the film version does a good job of revealing how this story is in reality about societal engine room . Plus , it ’s actually fun !
Spoilers in the lead …
Even though Divergence clearly desire to be the next Hunger Games , it ’s not really cut from the same fabric at all — Hunger Games has a reasonably open subject matter about the disconnect between the full-bodied and everyone else , and the way in which the muscular use media culture and the spectacle of violence to control dissent . Meanwhile , Divergent is nowhere near as red , or as grim , as Hunger Games , nor does it have quite the same level of societal relevancy .
Unless you ’ve been living under a rock , you ’ll already get it on the basic premiss of Divergent : In a ugly , no - skillful future , the world is a wasteland except for Chicago , which is a walled urban center . Inside Chicago ’s wall , everybody belong to one of five “ factions ” that represent different virtues : bravery , kindness , honesty , self-sacrifice and intelligence service . Whichever faction you belong to to , that ’s the trait that you live by .
But as the film interlingual rendition makes clear in its opening move instant , this arrangement is much more about segmentation of labor — the fearless faction of audacious masses is the soldiers and cops , the Abnegation faction of altruistic people pass the regime , and for some intellect the Amity faction of tolerant people are the farmers . ( Why are farmers kind ? No clue . )
And thus , this whole baroque allegory becomes much more of a comment on the dangers of extreme specialization , and letting your line of work define you . And the society that spawned this bizarre structure becomes an example of societal engineering taken to ruthless extreme . As we ’re tell over and over ( and over ) , this stress on categorizing everybody is all about control .
So in Divergent , Beatrice ( aka Tris ) is born into the Abnegation junto that theoretically runs things while eat gruel and being generally trembler - ish . One Clarence Shepard Day Jr. , Tris goes off to the personality - examination center to retrieve out which junto she ought to join , now that she ’s sometime enough — and after a trippy episode of stare at herself in a shifting hall of mirrors that seem like a mid-80s stinging video , she finds out that she does n’t on the nose fit into any of the five factions . She is … Divergent .
In other words , Tris has an inner animation and a complex worked up landscape , but all the mass around her are one - dimensional and exactly who they come out to be on the control surface . This is the purest materialization I ’ve ever attend of the fantasy that many of us raising in our most secret places : I ’m a multi - layered someone with a plentiful inner life that nobody else could possibly realise , whereas the rest of you people are just single - tending drone .
But in a sense , Tris is meet the same function as the Savage in Brave New World , or the one foreigner in countless other dystopias — audience surrogate and provoker of objection .
So when the big sidereal day comes and Tris has to choose a faction , she does n’t pick the humble ego - effacing camarilla her parent belong to . alternatively , she chooses the audacious faction , who roleplay like one of the gangs in West Side Story except that they dress in coolheaded jumpsuits . If you ’re in Dauntless , you ’re forbid to walk anywhere — they only travel by jumping on and off move trains , or by rapelling across the metropolis , or by jumping off buildings . Etc . etc . etc . The extremity of Dauntless never actually break into birdcall , but I kept expecting them to . ( Note to producers : “ Dauntless ” almost rhymes with “ hotness . ” )
So at this point , Tris has two challenge : She has to make the cut in Dauntless , even though she ’s not course unafraid like the quietus of them . And she has to check that nobody get out she ’s Divergent , because Divergent people are kill on the smear for the threat they constitute to the social order . ( This is explained at some length by Tori ( Maggie Q ) , who parcel out the personality tests but also work as a tattoo artist — basically , if there ’s futurist poking and goading involved , Maggie Q is there . )
Once Tris joins the Dauntless fry , she ’s hazed like crazy , and scram the crap kicked out of her over and over . In fact , what saves Tris from feeling like a Mary Sue ( i.e. , a too - unadulterated paragon whom everybody loves ) is that she ’s pretty much a giant perforate bag for the volume of this flick . She gets tenderized . And she closely gets dropped from Dauntless , which would mean becoming a stateless social outcast , because the mean trainer guy Eric ( Jai Courtney ) has it in for her .
fortuitously , not only does Tris make a few friends among the other trainees , she also strike it off with one of the other trainers , a guy rope describe Four ( Theo James ) . And even though being Divergent is supposed to be the large crime in this evil future society , Four has a whale tattoo all over his back show the signs of all the factions , just to broadcast to everyone and anyone that he ca n’t be pigeonholed because he is a Free Spirit .
It ’s soft to poke golf hole in Divergent or to level out the joyously nonsensical elements — but the thing that is consecutive - up admirable about this film is how it draw the way that mechanism of social controller endeavor to coopt your sensory faculty of indistinguishability and your dream to reshape you into a monolithic entity . A lot of this photographic film ’s imaginative powerfulness comes from the manner that it endeavor to show , visually , the procedure of cooptation , through weird artificially induced ambition chronological succession as well as energizing action prospect . Director Neil Burger previously directed the fresh - drug movie Limitless , and he get the same focus on change states and upcountry landscapes to this film .
In other areas , though , Divergent fall a piece flat — a surprisingly gamey proportion of the picture consist of close - up shots of citizenry ’s face , often as they ’re explaining a plot of land point . Also , rather a lot of the non - closeup shot are either muzzy or stomach from trembling - cam . In some elbow room this is borrowing the “ documentary ” style director Gary Ross used for the first Hunger Games , but without the explicit sense that you ’re check someone on boob tube . ( There are a few really overnice “ money guessing ” of the future Chicago , but I also wondered if the blurry / shaky thing was partly to cover for a lack of money . )
It ’s well-situated to see why Divergent has already become such an habit-forming phenomenon : it parcel out with two major anxieties : making the class , and sympathize your own identity . Tris seems to think that joining Dauntless will mean exemption , because they ’re the faction that laugh in the face of peril and reverence , but before long discovers that she ’s only chosen a dissimilar kind of incarceration . As long as she ’s inside the faction system , she ’ll never be her own individual .
There ’s also an interesting train of thought track down through Tris ’ chronicle about the nature of bravery — her “ superpower ” is that she can deal with fear rationally , alternatively of just inhibit it the room the other kids in Dauntless do . There ’s something kind of heartening about a heroic fantasy where being capable to argue with veneration is portray as a marvellous trait .
In the end , the movie ’s resolution depends on a random confederacy that seems reasonably shoe - horned in , and which show up that the “ faction ” organisation Tris lives under was always going to collapse under its own weight . ( On the plus side , that conspiracy pushes the mind of operate people through hyper - specialization to its furthest extreme . )
But the thing that sticks with you , after watching Divergent , is mostly that jumping onto moving trains is really fun — and that people who attempt to pigeon - golf hole you as a mean value of turning you into a cog in their economical machine are kind of frightful .
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