A future caste society based on schoolyard archetypes

Rating: 5/10 (4 May 2014)

There is nothing 'divergent' about Divergent. It's a formulaic piece catering to young adults in every conceivable way. Accusations that it was only produced to cash in on the superior Hunger Games franchise among that most lucrative demographic cannot be denied a certain degree of validity. Divergent is a predictable teen flick with overt aspirations to grow into a full fledged franchise too, and it continuously feels as such.
The greatest pleasure to be had from this film is the set-up of its admittedly ludicrous dystopia, a form of repressive civilization that feels untenable from the get-go and
proves just that. Sometime in the future the world order has collapsed. The city of Chicago has cut itself off from the world by an enormous fence, protecting the supposedly harmonious society within from the ruined outside. Life is determined by belonging to one of five factions: Abnegation (selfdenial and government), Dauntless (police/army), Erudite (science), Candor (law/order) and Amity (farming/food production). Children grow up with their parents in one of these groups, but get to pick their own faction at the age of sixteen after a harrowing personality test. Of course, rivalry and shady alliances have formed between the various factions, and nobody appears to like Abnegation as they seem a redundant part of the whole. There's your overall plot right there.
Enter Beatrice Prior, a 16-year old girl who never felt at home growing up as a child of Abnegation parents but kept her personal convictions bottled up. When the test reveals her personality not to fit into any one specific group but rather to carry qualities of all, her test agent labels her a 'Divergent' and falsifies her results, as these rare outcasts are considered a danger to society because of their mental versatility and are eliminated accordingly. You'd think the people who came up with this social pattern would have opted for the city to be run by Divergents to coordinate the other factions for the good of the whole, but that would put an abrupt ending to the following two hours of Beatrice's self-exploration. When the choice is put before her, she goes with Dauntless, because that's where all the cool kids are. This future dystopia is actually little more than a caste system reflecting a contemporary schoolyard, where the usual stereotypical classifications of punks, nerds and the like are strictly adhered to by everybody. Scary, unable to break away from the high school pecking order for the rest of your life.
After abandoning her parents and changing her name to the much slicker 'Tris', she is confronted by a rigorous training, to get rid of her former life and determine whether she's tough enough to join the warrior caste. Fortunately for her, her enigmatic tutor Four proves a likable guy with a killer body and charms to match. You know where this is going. If you're hoping to see more of the logistics of this unlikely dystopia, you're out of luck, as most of what follows revolves around Tris and Four (too) slowly but (too) surely getting romantically entangled and making that most shocking of discoveries imaginable; they're both Divergents. As much as Woodley is no Jennifer Lawrence, the chemistry between her and James is passable
but never thoroughly engaging. The same is true for the interaction with their peers, while the more experienced actors among the cast hardly get a chance to shine. Even Kate Winslet, an otherwise impeccable actress, delivers a less than stellar performance in her role as the movie's baddie, an Erudite official out to wipe out the Abnegation caste. It's a diabolical ploy nobody is surprised to encounter after the first five minutes of exposition of Divergent, which already convinced the spectator this form of government was doomed from its infancy. Our heroic duo of Divergents swiftly prove their worth as they figure out a way to halt Winslet's evil plot of assuming mind control of Dauntless to annihilate Abnegation. However, since there's three more films to follow, don't expect them to get thanked for their decisive actions.
Ideologically speaking, Divergent's plea against mindless conformation and its case for individual freedom is handled too obviously. The movie proves a teenage angstfest, laced with the pubescent search for personal identity and the development of the sense of true belonging to such an excessive degree that the plot's metaphorical value is utterly wasted. Tris gets to question her role in society through all the tests and challenges to such an extent her process of selfdiscovery starts to bore us. Whereas the fear of growing up to adulthood and the anxiety regarding the need to fit into society's repressive standards were addressed to
better results in The Hunger Games, such thoughts prove all too overt and in-your-face in Divergent. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement as much for this film as there was for the first installment of that rival series. Now that the set-up is over and done with, the viewer does wonder where the plot goes from here. The brief glimpses – limited both in terms of scope and frequency, mostly due to budget restrictions no doubt – we witnessed of this dystopian future do leave room for curiosity as to how exactly this world functions. Considering the target audience has flocked en masse to theaters to get lost from their own woes and identify with these relatable issues, those sequels are guaranteed. Hopefully a final similarity to The Hunger Games can be made in the future, as Divergent's sequel proved to be much more intricately crafted than its otherwise bland predecessor.