How often do you see a film that functions as a fable? One that utilises the vocabulary of cinema itself to create a world like and unlike our own, and uses that vocabulary to convey a multifaceted message of self-realisation? What if I told you that film was American? And that it features William H. Macy as the archetypal 50s dad in a sitcom called, as the film itself is, Pleasantville.

Tobey Maguire is a contemporary teen obsessed with the old sitcom, the comforting values of which provide a welcome contrast to life in high school and with a fragmented family. A bit of handwaving involving a spooky tv repairman follows — the weakest part of the film — and next thing you know Tobey and sister Reese Witherspoon find themselves transported into the Pleasantville show, easily realised since they’re now living in black and white.

What could be a clumsy metaphor instead becomes a thing of beauty, as the presence of brother and sister in this old time community literally brings colour to the world. Pleasantville sounds like somewhere you’d want to live, but the reality is anything but; it’s a narrowly conformist town that offers no choice, no creativity, no substantial emotional experience, to its citizens.

There are moments of cinematic magic along the way. William Macy’s wife, having heard about sex from Witherspoon (standing in for and accepted as her daughter), pleasures herself in the bath, and the ecstasy she experiences not only brings colour to the bathroom, but sets the tree outside the house alight. It’s pure poetry, mixed with comedy as Maguire then has to instruct the local fire brigade in how to put a fire out — being sitcom firemen, they’ve only ever had to rescue cats from trees until now.

And that’s just the start. By connecting people with their passions, whether sexually or through art and music, more of the Pleasantville locals become colour in their monochrome world. This disturbs those who liked things the way they were, and pretty soon the town authorities are planning to shut Lovers Lane and the local library, the two hotspots for polychromal activation.

It’s not just colour that’s used to signal that the times they are a-changin’. The cafe, hangout for the local teens who are becoming colourful quicker than their elders, has a jukebox that plays a key role in soundtracking what’s going on. Two seminal late 50s jazz tunes, Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’ and Miles Davis’s ‘So What’ play in one key sequence, demonstrating the power of music to bring out passion and colour. This is the journey undergone by the cafe’s owner, who discovers his artistic side and paints a nude of Maguire’s sitcom mum that he puts in the window. That prompts violent retaliation from those threatened by the colour in their midst, the painting destroyed and books from the library burned — in an echo of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (filmed by Truffaut), the firemen are seen raking over the smouldering remains of novels, poetry collections, and art books.

There’s worse to come. The Chamber of Commerce, protectors of all that is comforting about Pleasantville, issue a decree effectively banning colour from the town. Maguire and the cafe owner are put on trial, and the latter allows fear to bring him in line, offering to paint with a Chamber-approved palette. The youngster makes a stand though, realising that by now people turn colour when their passions are ignited, and provoking both Macy and the prosecutor into doing exactly that by knowing what buttons to press.

Of course, Maguire has to return to his real life, and does so. Having gone through what he has, he can for the first time play an active role in his family and support his downhearted mother. And in a delightful glimpse of what’s happening back in Pleasantville, William H. Macy and his wife are seen pondering their future in the company of his wife’s lover, the cafe owner, all bemused by their new freedom and aware that things could go any which way between the three of them. It’s a bravura ending to an excellent film, which I caught almost accidentally on Fiver, a channel whose existence I’m grateful for if only for this fine movie, written, directed and produced by Gary Ross.