Factions, Tests — Really Just Teen Life

Sitting through the unending, if sometimes diverting, “Divergent,” I was reminded that teenage girls suffering through the high school caste system and parental pressure to conform, feeling first intimations of sexuality and, maybe, romance, harboring notions — perhaps fantasies — of doing great things, of saving the world, identify with heroines of young adult fiction. “Divergent” is based on a first novel — part of a trilogy, it turns out — by then 22-year-old Veronica Roth aimed at that reliable category of reader and moviegoer for “Harry Potter,” “Twilight Saga” and “The Hunger Games.” Life is hard and mostly ugly after a cataclysmic war has left Chicago in semi-ruins. (Roth was a student at Northwestern when she wrote the book.) The war-scarred city is fenced off from a hostile outer world (which looks entirely pacific whenever we see it). To keep the peace, society is split into factions that live and work as groups based on human virtues and traits: Abnegation (selfless), Amity (peacemakers), Candor (honest), Dauntless (brave) and Erudite (intelligent). Children grow up in a group, but at 16 they are tested — injected serum helps reveal their inner thoughts and fears on a video screen — to show where they really belong. (The test is actually designed to find and eliminate, in its most lethal meaning, divergent children, those with dangerously independent minds.)Yet at the great Choosing Ceremony, they can select a group for themselves: self-determination and rebellion, or staying safely with the family. Once they choose, they can never go back. Got all that? Our heroine, Abigail (Shailene Woodley) was raised in Abnegation, but has chosen to join Dauntless, the exuberant group charged with protecting the social order. Renamed Tris, she undergoes the longest, bloodiest, most boring training since Demi Moore (remember her? – in “G.I. Jane”). All of this takes place in the hulking remains of the Sears Tower and its subterranean caverns, great dark spaces full of foreboding. During training, Tris is confronted by a near-sadistic trainer (Jai Courtney) and saved by the mysterious Four (Theo James), who becomes her lover. (Oh, it’s but a kiss or two, dear reader, and the mere hint of more.) Then quite suddenly, Tris discovers a plot by the leader of Erudite, Jeanine (Kate Winslet, who clearly did this for the money), to take control of the factions. The battle to defeat the conspiracy is too little too late, and too puny at that. Of course Tris and Four triumph. (For adults forced to see the film, they might think about Roth’s obvious conservative disdain for intellectuals.) Woodley is a fine actress. She was splendid in “The Descendants” and “The Spectacular Now.” But the material and direction defeats her. Her subtlety is lost in the slugfest of training, in the humorless, prosaic screenplay and in the camera-in-your-face style of director Neil Burger, who may not even know the word grace. James (fans of “Downton Abbey” will remember him as the Turkish diplomat who died in Lady Mary’s bed in Season 1) is a hunky foil to Woodley’s vulnerability, but with a single, brooding expression. Their chemistry is as hot as a leftover cup of tea. “Divergent” is rated PG-13 for violence, action, thematic elements and some sensuality. It is showing at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY, and elsewhere.