'Chronicle' vs. Plato's 'Republic'

Book II of Plato's Republic relates the story of Gyges of Lydia, a former shepherd who found a magic ring in a cave. This ring, once worn, granted the power of invisibility, which Gyges used to seduce the queen, kill her husband, and seize the throne of Lydia.

Plato wrote this allegory 2,400 years ago. This month, 20th Century-Fox released Chronicle, a purportedly straightforward, comic book-style story about three high school seniors who acquire telekinetic powers after encountering a strange, alien-like object in a cave.

Director Josh Trank shot his film in an at-times annoying "found footage" style, whereby one of the main characters carries a video camera to record the events depicted. Surrealists invented this technique in the early 20th Century, and it has seen a resurgence in The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and a host of horror and science fiction flicks.

But this simply marketed movie masks a moral as deep as Plato's. Its strength and fascination lie in how it borrows, inverts and recasts the lesson Plato presented.

Abused by bullies

In The Republic, Plato argues that any man, just or unjust, if given unlimited power, would eventually act unjustly. In Chronicle the three teens who acquire telekinetic powers include one just man, Steve (Michael B. Jordan), an African-American student-athlete who realizes that the three must do good with their powers (when they're not using their gifts to score bikini-clad babes as they fly around the world).

Dane DeHaan plays Andrew, a self-absorbed, maladjusted teen who distances himself from others by filming his daily life. Andrew suffers abuse from bullies at school, from the drug-dealing gang on his block and from his disabled former firefighter father, who lashes out from his inability to afford proper treatment for Andrew's mother, now dying of cancer. As the most introverted of the three, Andrew most readily harnesses the trio's newfound powers, crushing cars and leveling buildings at will.

Chronicle complicates the Plato allegory with the addition of Andrew's cousin Matt (Alex Russell), who, like many teens, goes along with the flow of events, struggles to show his true feelings, and attempts to either provoke or placate others in his social circle. (In a nice twist, only when Matt chooses sides can he fully control his abilities).

At first, the three toy with their powers, scaring little girls in toy stores with "floating" stuffed animals, moving a rich woman's BMW across the parking lot, and trying to telekinetically pluck bubblegum from a passerby's mouth.

Cure for insecurity

Steve convinces Andrew that telekinesis offers him a way out of his social insecurities. During the school's annual talent show, Andrew emerges from his self-imposed shell, putting on a magic and high wire act by levitating objects and propelling himself across stage on a tightrope.

Eventually though, jealous students and one coquette push Andrew back into his old psychological corner. And this time he lashes out, proving Plato's thesis that unchecked, unlimited power ultimately leads to injustice.

Or does it? Where Plato's narrator Glaucon ultimately saw the (ab)use of power for personal gain as decidedly unjust, in Chronicle, Andrew wields his powers only against his tormentors. Since bullies, gangs and his father pummeled him with their fists, he pounds them into the pavement with his mind.

Shepherd, or slave?

Unlike Plato's Gyges, who's invisible, Andrew, confronts his tormentors openly, without hesitation and (mostly) without self-righteousness.

Here, Chronicle offers fleshed-out insight into Plato's allegory and shows where Plato missed the point. To Plato, the ring's inherent powers inevitably transformed Gyges from a just man into an unjust man. But who was Gyges? Was he merely a shepherd? Or, more likely, was he a slave? (Plato describes him as being in "the service" of the king.) So you could argue that Gyges was not a free agent but the hemmed-in victim of the entire civic structure of Greek society.

Andrew suffers similarly in Chronicle, and who can really blame him for dishing out payback when he gets the chance? This film makes you wonder: Is Plato's ring allegory ultimately about the potential abuses of unchecked power? Or is really about the human tendency to equate revenge with justice?