| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| turrell |
Posted - 12/11/2006 : 17:36:32
Anyone seen this one yet - Stars Kate Winslet. I don't want to dissuade anyone from this film with a review, but since this movie has received a lot of good reviews and I had several problems with it, I was curious if anyone had a frame of reference that could help me understand why they thin kit is good.
Kate Winslet is very good in this role, there are some interesting things about the film, but for me ultimately it failed. |
| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 04/19/2008 : 20:05:43
Although I'm more than satisfied with it, it's probably not the best endorsement of the film that the thing I now remember most strongly is that Patrick Wilson looks damned nice. He is FIT. |
| Demisemicenturian |
Posted - 04/19/2008 : 20:01:47
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
The pedophile scenes are much better, but even then -- I read an interview where Haley said he didn't understand why audiences felt so bad for his character during the swimming pool scene. He went there to ogle children in swimsuits, after all! The reason audiences feel that way is that Field films it from the wrong perspective, so that you feel Haley's pain and not the wrongness of his actions.
But surely that is the only perspective that needs exploring. Everyone knows that paedophilia is wrong. A much less simple issue is people's struggles with their paedophilic tendencies - which, let's face it, they almost always have as a result of being fucked up as children. Of course it's their responsibilty to not act on their paedophilic feelings - but that doesn't make it magically easy for them. |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 03/24/2008 : 06:10:17
FWIW - here's my original reaction, and why I think the film doesn't work:
Little Children definitely comes high on this year's pick, despite a major flaw, about which more later. Former actor and indie director Todd Field broke through with In the Bedroom, a claustrophobic piece dealing with what lies beneath the surface of relationships. Little Children's themes overlap enough to show you what drew Field to the material. The film is about frustration, the consequences of fulfilment, and release - extremely interesting ideas for a mainstream movie. Particularly since the narrative extends itself beyond the expected extra-marital affair into real and perceived threats to the status quo, to the desired ideals of family life and relationships.
Though Field's work is deft and ably supported by both cast and crew, what doesn't really work is the story's translation from book to screen. Someone in this 4UM was discussing the difficulty/impossibility of successfully telling literary tales in cinematic form; Little Children reminds us of the pitfalls in attempting it. The book follows selected lives of a small community to create in the microcosm a convincing picture of wider society. Among the town's residents are two couples, each under pressure of repression; an ex-cop with explosive rage issues; an older woman hungry for intellectual stimulation and missing the emotional fulfilment of a loving family with grand-children; and a paedophile on release after serving time for exposing himself to children who lives with his overly doting mother trying to protect him from a growing vigilante campaign. A novel has the leisure to pick apart these complex and often intertwining threads, to follow each person less with a sense of stalking than of embracing, a drive to understand.
Cinema cannot afford such luxuries of wandering away from a central focus, so it must crown certain characters as worthier of screen time than others. It's inevitable. And that means the story is forced to take on another shape, and the sense of the whole so integral to the book doesn't work onscreen, can never really work onscreen. Instead it becomes a series of stories that sometimes rub up against each other either like a friendly cat nosing your leg, or with a jarring shove from a street nutcase. Compare that with Alan Ball's original screenplay for American Beauty -- it's similar territory, but conceived as a cinematic story.
Field tries to mitigate the disparity by emphasizing the script's literary roots, introducing a narrative voice over to set things up. And extremely witty and clear it is, too. What he also does to highlight the discomfort oozing from these characters' lives is cast deliberately mis-matched leads who become attracted to each other - in this case Kate Winslett and her husband Gregg Edelman, and Winslett and her lover Patrick Wilson. Edelman's almost as creepy as the paedophile, and Wilson never truly sparks either with Winslett or his wife Jennifer Connolly. I think this is deliberate. Any real screen chemistry would have us rooting too much for easy resolutions, would be manipulating audience emotion, and above all lift the unremarkableness of this town's outer life into the realms of romance which each of the characters craves. We're left at the end not with any empathy that things didn't work out for any of the these people, certainly not in the way they wanted, but with a sense of the inevitability of the mundane.
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| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 03/24/2008 : 03:09:16
"And so here I come, always a bridesmaid, never a bride, watching a film 2 years old for the first time. Am I to understand that all men send in for the nasty worn panties of an internet porn slut and wear them over his face while licking the crotch and whacking off?? Cuz, if that's true, then I'm really re-evaluating my occasional bouts of loneliness."
Buying pornstar panties is a bit out there, yes. I certainly don't do it, and none of my friends have admitted to it, and they've admitted to all sorts of things I didn't want to know. And I certainly wouldn't expect a wife to be particularly happy when walking in on such a scene. But my point remains -- What, exactly, is the nameless husband's crime here? That he looks at Internet porn? Hardly a crime -- get used to it, ladies. Buying used underwear for sexual gratification? Not pleasant, but it's a pretty harmless fetish and not even that weird, especially compared to something like, oh, pedophilia. It's not the end of the world, or even the end of the marriage.
God, that's such a fucking terrible scene. Watching it, one would assume that the guy had not only never looked at Internet porn, he'd never looked at pornography at all -- never even heard of the concept. What bullshit is this? There's no indication that the husband is anything but the average red-blooded American heterosexual, who can be reasonably expected to be familiar with porn. (As a side note, Slutty Kay has one of the tamest porn sites on the Internet.) His whole character is turned into a cheap, smug joke that only reveals the author's sheltered prudishness. He seems to be punished for not having problems as interesting as the pedophile's.
That's the only scene in the movie where I think the writer is to blame rather than the director. Wildhartlivie writes that both Wilson and Winslet's characters seemed to be living lives of futility. I don't buy it. Certainly that's what the characters seemed to think, that they were living futile, dead-end lives that couldn't be salvaged, but my only response is Well, try, dammit. Don't wanna be a lawyer anymore? Say something! Not fulfilled as a stay-at-home mom? Do something else! Caught your husband masturbating with a pair of Internet-purchase panties over his head? Talk to him about it!
More than anything, I think this movie demonstrated Field's failure to establish any control at all over the tone of the film. I expect this was not a failing of the book. The title "Little Children" obviously refers to the main characters -- get it, hardy har har. I expect it was far more objective and unsympathetic than Field can manage. The fact is, Winslet and Wilson's characters do not have any real problems, not the way that the pedophile and even the pedophile-hating ex-cop do, and Field's decision to present their issues directly and sympathetically, while being completely unsympathetic to the husband and the judgmental housewives, is this movie's biggest flaw. Having pedophilic tendencies and having a bossy mother-in-law are not comparable problems, but you wouldn't know it from this movie. Since the ending includes both Winslet and Wilson having epiphanies about their own behavior, it seems that the writer at least recognized this, though Field did not.
The pedophile scenes are much better, but even then -- I read an interview where Haley said he didn't understand why audiences felt so bad for his character during the swimming pool scene. He went there to ogle children in swimsuits, after all! The reason audiences feel that way is that Field films it from the wrong perspective, so that you feel Haley's pain and not the wrongness of his actions. |
| randall |
Posted - 03/23/2008 : 09:42:02
In my opinion, there's a title card that says LITTLE CHILDREN.
The "little children" are shown playing, then sitting in the corner.
The film ends, the cast list rolls.
To me, it couldn't be plainer. |
| w22dheartlivie |
Posted - 03/22/2008 : 14:46:55
quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
At least Jennifer Connelly seemed like a more real character than Kate Winslet's poor husband, who is excoriated for the crime of -- gasp -- looking at Internet porn. Sorry to break it to you, world, but that's what guys do. All of them. What does it say about a movie when it's willing to lend a more sympathetic ear to a pedophile than an average hetero porn watcher?
And so here I come, always a bridesmaid, never a bride, watching a film 2 years old for the first time. Am I to understand that all men send in for the nasty worn panties of an internet porn slut and wear them over his face while licking the crotch and whacking off?? Cuz, if that's true, then I'm really re-evaluating my occasional bouts of loneliness.
Having said that, I didn't think that any of the characters were portrayed as particularly sympathetic. The film was more about futility to me. Every character in it was living a futile, empty life (save the children, who hadn't reached that point as of yet). I have to agree with the comment made by Randall about the childhood id. All of the adults in this were seeking a way to shrink the id, most of them unsuccessful in doing so. What is bad about this is that I have seen far too many of my fellow humans living lives just like this; staying in empty marriages, seeking the thrill one more time, going through the mid-life crisis. Not everyone can afford to buy a Corvette when that crisis strikes, some just look for a quick affair. What ultimately happens is that every adult in the storyline is emasculated in one way or another (women can be emasculated, can't they?) All of them have lost their center of power.
I really didn't care for Jennifer Connelly's character. She and her mother were more emasculating than it appears. They both viewed poor Brad as a weak failure, no more apparent than when he's told he doesn't need to have a cell phone since he's a failure (well, okay, not that pointedly), when mom-in-law and wife talk about how he isn't a success, and when mom-in-law comes to babysit the husband.
In fairness to Connelly's character, it probably wasn't the easiest thing to move from future wife of successful lawyer to bread-winner and man of the house. Still, I temper that with saying that her method of dealing with this is to try and exert tighter control over Brad, both through overt efforts and manipulation. You can't convince me that she didn't already suspect that something was going on between her husband and Winslet's character, and the dinner party was her way of trying to expose it.
Brad's apparent failure is echoed in Sarah's not completing her PhD thesis, though this isn't completely explained. We're left to assume that marriage and motherhood stopped this, and she's left to compare what she left behind when she joins the book club ladies. Her difference from them is painfully apparent and serves to highlight her isolation, especially in the aftermath of finding dear old hubby with those panties on his face. I suppose I felt the most sympathy for Sarah from that.
Ronnie the pedophile's mother was living in futile denial, believing everything could be cured by what the other characters have discovered cures nothing. She believes in his ability to be better, up to and including the moment it kills her.
Haley was terrific. I agree that in comparison to Breaking Away, he was fantastic. He was so good he made me quite uncomfortable at times, especially in the swimming pool scene and the ugly scene with his date at the schoolyard. However, we do get a glance into the home dynamics of his life and the aberrations of his personality. The consistent use of the title "Mommy", and the way it was delivered, seemed... well, almost retarded, which he specifically denied being at one point. He was, however, at least emotionally retarded, in any case. His self-punishment at the end only highlighted how little control he had over his impulses. While Randall has a good point about the influence of the absent father, I rather think that his mother's simple viewpoint served to be as emasculating as Connelly's, and her admonition to him in the note she leaves - "Please be a good boy" - while probably well-meant, also was what led him to the only option he knew to be one. Can't shrink the id?? Then cut it out.
I read a complaint on some site about the message of the film being that people can do whatever they want and still live happily ever after. I strongly disagreed with this viewpoint, since we have no hint to assume that anyone lived happily ever after. That was probably what raised the level of the film for me - the ambiguity of the ending. We simply don't know -- anything. Was Brad very badly injured? Did his wife come? Does it matter? Do Sarah and her husband ever talk? She's in bed, curled up with her daughter at the end. And did Ronnie even survive his self-disfigurement? If not, does that mean Larry won't redeem himself? Some of the most scary words ever to come from the extensive horror fiction I've read is "Nobody knows." And that's the moral of this story. Nobody knows.
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| MisterBadIdea |
Posted - 05/02/2007 : 15:26:01
Wow... just watched this movie on DVD and it is a doozy. I am not much of a fan of American Beauty, but Little Children made me reevaluate both its strengths and its weaknesses, and Little Children comes out far, far behind that movie.
Like, for example, I thought that the Annette Bening and Chris Cooper characters were not particularly well-drawn, and I thought the supposed hero Kevin Spacey was actually a complete dick.
But at least the Bening and Cooper had two dimensions, one and a half more than the bitch desperate housewives that bother Winslet at the park, or Wilson's horrible mother-in-law. The odor of smug-itude coming off this movie is never more apparent than in the narration, as if this movie is breaking the doors off of suburbia's secret sordid disorder. I'm sorry, but it's such a fucking easy target, made even easier in this movie by aggressively simple treatment of the subject matter.
And moreover, Wilson and Winslet are supposed to be sympathetic characters almost by default; we've already seen how they treat unsympathetic characters, so Wilson and Winslet must be otherwise. But I have to agree with whoever it was that said they didn't like movies about infidelity when other options are easily available to the characters. Talking to your spouses about marital issues? God forbid. At least Jennifer Connelly seemed like a more real character than Kate Winslet's poor husband, who is excoriated for the crime of -- gasp -- looking at Internet porn. Sorry to break it to you, world, but that's what guys do. All of them. What does it say about a movie when it's willing to lend a more sympathetic ear to a pedophile than an average hetero porn watcher?
This movie starts badly, and it ends badly too. There's some very good stuff in the middle, there. Very believable character interactions, particularly with the pedophile character. But I could never in good conscience recommend this movie. |
| demonic |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 22:17:48
quote:
Originally posted by Randall
Roger Ebert wrote that he didn't realize it was Charlize Theron in MONSTER until the credits rolled. Same here.
Interesting that you bring that example up, as Monster was on TV the other night and I watched for the first time since I saw it on the big screen, and was just as awestruck by Theron's performance. I'm inclined to think it's the most worthy Best Actress win of modern times. But the film really isn't very good.
quote:
Rent BREAKING AWAY -- a fine film in its own right -- and prepare to be dazzled as you think about his performance in this one.
Thanks Randall I'll check it out. |
| turrell |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 21:58:22
He was also in the Bad News Bears Movies (character of Kelly) |
| randall |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 18:28:10
Turrell, thank you. And believe me, I respect your opinion too. It's just that I suffer through so many lousy movies [as a regular festivalgoer, I've seen more than my share, trust me on this] that I'm almost giddy whenever I get the chance to enthuse. I'll bet you and I agree on more flicks than we disagree.
Demon, the narrator prickled at times, absolutely, and Kate was definitely a desperate housewife. Re Haley: perhaps you need the context of his earlier performances to be fully blown away. Maybe that context made his performance more special for me than it really is: who knows? It's just that this was an actor familiar to me who busted his resume in two on this one. Roger Ebert wrote that he didn't realize it was Charlize Theron in MONSTER until the credits rolled. Same here. Rent BREAKING AWAY -- a fine film in its own right -- and prepare to be dazzled as you think about his performance in this one. |
| demonic |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 18:12:13
One more thought that just occurred to me that I thought of in the cinema - did it feel like an extended episode of "Desperate Housewives" to anyone else? I couldn't shake the feeling, especially with the slightly patronising tone of the narration and the opening sequence of the dull housewives spying on the hot man in the park (even with red, blone and brunette stereotypes!)
Randall: I agree up to a point about Haley; I've never seen him in anything else so I had no benchmark on his usual performance, but he did a good job. What ruined it for me was he looked for all the world like you'd expect a convicted child molester to look like. How much braver would it have been to make him more "normal", just as Salopian pointed out the same way Winslet, or another actress playing her part could have been plainer, and realer. I actually thought the best performance in the film came from Patrick Wilson, who looked exactly right, playing it pitch perfect and his character's motivations made the most sense, even when they were unusual. Apart from the final sequence that is - where everyone's characters behaved completely irrationally - Wilson, Winslet and Haley. |
| turrell |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 17:27:50
Well said, Randall - as I said I know a lot of people love this film and this helps explain why. |
| randall |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 14:11:51
By the way, here is my original post in my former topic, the next day after seeing the movie, October 2, 2006:
I saw Todd Field's magnificent new movie yesterday afternoon at the New York Film Festival. I can't recommend it enough. You'll probably forget this by the time it appears in theaters, but Jackie Earle Haley [yes, the guy from BREAKING AWAY] is so stunning -- and has so changed his appearance since then -- that I actually didn't realize it was he until his card appeared after the feature. He is almost certain to receive a supporting Oscar nomination. The rest of the cast is equally superb. This movie is a satirical melodrama. It will make you laugh, gasp, claw your armrest in tension, and break your heart, all in two hours and change. What a terrific job by everyone involved.
When it appears on fwfr, LITTLE CHILDREN will get as many stars as there are from me.
EDIT: It opens in New York and LA this Friday. MguyX, cool, other Left Coasters: get your butts in there asap.
--------
Mid-December 2006 edit:
The first noms were the Golden Globes, and LITTLE CHILDREN was nominated for Best Picture - Drama, Best Actress - Drama [Winslet], and Best Screenplay. As you can see above, I thought Jackie Earle Haley should have been there too, but Best Supporting Actor - Drama included such heavy competition as Eddie Murphy from DREAMGIRLS, Ben Affleck in HOLLYWOODLAND [support?!], and Jack Nicholson in THE DEPARTED. At the very least, though, these nominations keep LITTLE CHILDREN on the radar for Oscars. |
| randall |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 12:17:00
Well, I am Randall, and I preferred LITTLE CHILDREN to BEDROOM, though the performances in the latter are certainly laudable. [Maybe it helps that Field himself is an actor -- that's him as the piano player in EYES WIDE SHUT -- and perhaps he knows what actors need to hear.] I think it's possible to like or dislike different films by the same director or screenwriter; don't you have a favorite Robert Altman or two, and don't you just hate some others? [I have no idea which particular movies would be in which category for you, but I still believe my statement is true for just about everyone.]
Don't read any further if you haven't yet seen LITTLE CHILDREN and think you would like to.
There was nobody to root for in LITTLE CHILDREN because virtually everyone was letting go that childhood id which most of us learn to repress [without which repression we'd have pretty much an anarchic society; see Jerome Bixby's much-adapted story "It's a Good Life"]. This is unattractive, even in basically decent people, and only tolerated in children because we understand their lack of development and automatically cut them a little more slack than adults get. What we needed -- and what we got -- was a catharsis in the major characters, a reaffirmation of the id-dampening fact that actions have consequences. Knee-jerk hatred of the pedophile and its resultant vandalism -- repulsive as he was, but was he really a victim too? -- is wrong and can be overcome. The couple in the foolish affair could come to their senses. The skateboard accident could knock out the silly youth-wish that's hampering the lawyer wannabe. [Or is it the law part that's really hampering him?] Etc etc etc. That to me is a satisfying narrative. Regarding pace, the story is indeed told at human speed, but I don't understand how anyone could find the last twenty minutes slow.
The characters each lazily descend into childlike behavior because they're guided: the Internet porn-loving husband and the other couple's distant, self-absorbed wife add up to an affair which begins almost imperceptibly [Field's one-shot summer, which I referenced above, is a master stroke], as I would imagine most of them do. God knows what the pedophile had to endure from his father. And on and on.
Once again, standout performances. Kate Winslet makes it look easy; it's not. [I fully agree with whoever said that the movie version of "plainness" would be absolute walking-into-lampposts hotness in real life.] Haley, as I said before, is award-worthy. I actually did not know it was he until I saw the title card at the end.
I can certainly understand why LITTLE CHILDREN might not be everybody's cuppa. For me, though, it was the highlight of the 2006 NYFF. |
| turrell |
Posted - 12/15/2006 : 01:20:53
The reason I asked was I didn't like Little Children and I didn't know until later that Todd Field directed it and then it was a light bulb going off. I agree with you to a degree - I hated In the Bedroom and mildly disliked Little Children, but there is a one note tone to both films that make them Todd Field films. I wondered at the time why so many people thought In The Bedrrom was so great and the only thing I can think of is it is serious and the acxtors portray misery well, but there is a lack of dynamics in both films in my opinion. I thought this film was boring too, it dragged, it didn't have much to say and the main character was so flawed (she had no Earthly reason to stay in her marriage so why should we care whether she leaves or not or gets caught, etc.)
I think style-wise they are very similiar and I would guess that Randall would have liked ITB given his comments on this film. |
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