My initial thought while watching The Circle (2017) was that the eponymous technology corporation was meant to be a parody of Apple.  If you are familiar with this slightly sinister tale of a fictional evil corporation, you can understand why I might make that assumption.  I say this as a user of all their products, and I base this on their reputation as having the kind of culture that you see in the film.  For example, they both have a “campus,” and while I watched the movie it conjured things I had heard about the outfit that has brought us iPhones and smart watches, to name a few.  Yet, I have also seen The Social Network (2010), and it looks like The Circle is equal parts hardware and software developer.  Put differently, if you think Apple and Facebook are bad, imagine them combined?  At the same time, there are some important issues raised in today’s film that had my Catholic gears turning.  Thus, I look forward to taking you through this one.

Mae Holland (Emma Watson) is your average, struggling, working stiff, and not yet part of The Circle.  She labors at a call center making a lousy wage.  Her escapes consist of renting a kayak to paddle out into San Francisco Bay.  Her rickety car is in poor shape, prompting a call to her best friend Mercer Regalado (Ellar Coltrane), who is handy but shy.  She also lives with her parents, which is made difficult by the fact that her father, Vinnie Holland (Bill Paxton), has multiple sclerosis (MS).  Her outlook does not look great until she gets a call from Annie Allerton (Karen Gillan), another one of her friends.  Annie is employed at the aforementioned company and has phoned Mae to tell her that The Circle is hiring 100 new employees.  Given the fact that Annie is calling from an exotic location and the corporation’s stellar reputation, Mae leaps at the opportunity.  After preparing herself for the interview, and answering some pretty interesting questions (favorite member of the Beattles?), she is hired to work in a fairly similar position to the one she left.  Still, she attends the first “Dream Session” given every week by the founder, Eamon Bailey (Tom Hanks), and is entranced by his talk of making society better for everyone.  The gathered there seem to be on board until she meets the standoffish Ty Lafitte (John Boyega).  Though Mae does not immediately get his name, he asks her whether she buys into everything Eamon had to say.  Because her last job is so fresh in her mind, her response is basically that she is happy to be in a new environment.  What she is not prepared for is just how much The Circle wants you to physically be in that environment.  Remember what I said about it having a campus?  Well, after spending the night away, she is visited by two other associates who are there ostensibly to set up her social media.  Really, they are there to passive aggressively get her to stay on company grounds, citing all the interactions she can have with her co-workers.  Because she does not want to go back to her previous job, and with the thought of being able to help with her dad’s condition, she dives into their world.  As she settles in more, she is once more visited by Ty, who this time identifies himself as the creator of The Circle’s social media platform called TrueYou.  He shows her that there are some nefarious things going on at the company, mainly regarding the massive surveillance network The Circle has created.  She is also visited by Mercer, who is angry about the attention he has received when she posted a picture of the chandelier he made for her mother, Bonnie Holland (Glenne Headly).  In her desire to get some kind of perspective (I guess), she decides to take a kayak trip in the middle of the night.  She is capsized by rough seas and almost drowns, but is saved by a helicopter.  This had been sent by The Circle, and she is brought in to speak privately with Eamon and his chief operating officer (COO), Tom Stenton (Patton Oswalt).  She is grateful for their assistance, crediting their cameras that are planted seemingly everywhere for her rescue.  In return, she agrees to become a sort of face of the company, what they call going fully “Transparent.”  This means that she has a camera on her at all times.  While the notoriety does much for her image, it also comes with some consequences.  First, though it does bring some relief to Vinnie, she accidentally catches her parents having sex on camera.  Next, she has a quarrel with Annie, who is overworked and thinks that Mae is becoming blind to what is going on beneath the surface The Circle’s shiny public image.  Still, Mae presents one more idea to Eamon, further bolstering his trust in her: to require people to sign-up for the company’s services in order to vote.  Annie angrily quits upon hearing this proposal.  For Mae, the final straw comes when she is forced to use their new programs to find Mercer.  In his effort to get away from intrusive cameras and people, he accidentally drives his car off a bridge and dies, live on the internet.  A devastated Mae returns to her parents for a few days to mourn the loss of her friend.  She also gets some words of encouragement from Annie.  Of course, Eamon and Tom are eager to shift blame away from The Circle.  Yet, as soon as Mae returns to work, she sees Ty.  She asks him to provide information.  Thus, at the next Dream Session, she speaks to the whole company about how she recovered from the tragedy through connections to people who care about her.  She even credits her Transparency for making this possible.  Next, she calls on Eamon and Tom to do the same, and preempts their decision by sharing all The Circles files with the entire world.  There is a lot of evidence of misconduct and outright law breaking. We close with her back in her kayak, just one more person in the sea.

At the climactic moment of The Circle, with Eamon and Tom exposed for the monsters they are, Tom attempts to shut down the proceedings by shutting off the power.  The whole room is plunged into inky blackness until the audience uses their cell phones and other devices to provide illumination.  The idea here is that those in charge of The Circle, despite all their talk about the corrosive nature of secrets, want to keep everyone in the dark as to their true natures.  I saw in this scene some remarkable Christian symbolism.  While I would not call Mae a type of Jesus, I would say that she is fundamentally a good person who is being deceived.  Still, I make this comparison because she wants to bring light to the world.  Ultimately, it is God who does that, but He has also sent prophets and saints to help with this process.  I would put Mae in this mold.  At the same time, we need to explore the concepts by which she is duped.  As I alluded to, Eamon couches everything they do for the benefit of mankind.  He wants to make people better.  We should all be so high-minded.  Mae echoes this sentiment when she wonders if there is a way to keep bad people from doing bad things.  This reaches its apogee in the film with the ironically named “SoulSearch” app.  At first, it is used to find a woman wanted for murdering her children somewhere in the world, doing so in less than twenty minutes.  It is next used on Mercer, despite Mae’s protests, leading to his death.  The notion of privacy and secrecy have some parallels in Christianity.  There are some situations in the Church, for example, where little is kept from your neighbors.  This is especially true of cloistered monks and nuns.  Yet, Eamon and Tom want to go further, to know things about people that are only privy to God.  He is the only one from which nothing can be hidden, but he does not collect information to have potentially damaging material against us.  All He desires is a relationship with us, nothing more or less.  To this end, there are some interesting ideas put forward by Eamon.  He posits that people behave more badly when they keep things to themselves.  There is some truth to this statement.  While God knows everything about us, a part of a relationship with Him is communicating with Him.  Nonetheless, we can come back to the notion that some things are between only ourselves and God.  The Circle wants that bit of data, too, and not for good, making it evil.

Actually, I could go on and on about The Circle and some of the issues it raises.  At the same time, I think this one needs to be seen in order to be truly understood.  Does this mean that if we take part in social media, we are contributing to evil?  I am not sure, but it is ultimately up to the individual.  This is the thing that is ultimately wrong with the eponymous company.  They seek to subvert our God-given free will.  What greater evidence is there of God’s love for us that He gives us the freedom to choose Him?