Little Children
Little Children is a literary movie in the best sense of the term. It has a fatherly narration that at times is reminiscent of the narrative voice of a children’s book mixed with John Irving. The movie is populated with people who are lonely in the midst of apparently normal suburban life and are searching for some kind of connection or reaffirmation of their existence. Kate Winslet plays Sarah, who feels disconnected from both her husband, a branding (as in advertising) executive, and her pre-school daughter. In the movie’s opening scenes she sits apart from three other suburban moms at the park where their kids are playing while the voice-over explains that Sarah has decided to treat this as a sociological experiment. She does not really belong to the group of moms, in fact, she doesn’t even feel like the same species. She observes them with a mixture of disdain and perhaps a bit of envy for their self-contentedness.
At the park she meets Brad, the handsome young dad the other women fantasize about but are too timid to approach. Brad (Patrick Wilson) takes care of his pre-school son during the days while his wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) makes documentaries. At night he is supposed to study for the bar exam, which he has twice failed, but he has no interest in studying and instead spends hours watching teenagers do skateboard stunts. One night he joins a football league with an acquaintance, Larry, a former cop who now spends his time harrassing Ronnie (Jackie Earle Hayley) and his mother. Ronnie has just moved in with his mother after spending two years in prison for indecent exposure to a child.
Both Brad and Sarah are disconnected from those around them, including their families, and neither is sure what to do next in life. Ronnie acknowledges that he has a psycho-sexual problem that prevents him from having a normal relationship with anyone. Larry, harboring his own demons from the past, is similarly adrift. Their struggles to find meaning and connection are all the more poignant because of their plausibility and because, as in life, there are no easy solutions. In fact, it is not clear that there are any truly satisfactory solutions. The script, co-written by director Todd Field with Tom Perrotta who wrote the book the movie is based on, is excellent and gets my (meaningless) vote for Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. The acting is equally compelling, making this a powerful, moving, and at times disturbing film.
February 26th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I am so glad that you finally got to see it, and that you liked it.