Dante’s Suburbia:  Little Children

by Christian De Matteo

Super

            If Wes Anderson were to take a happy-go-lucky tour of some of the nicer spots in hell, the result would look a little something like this.  The first truly dynamic, deeply character driven, successful look at the American suburbs since American Beauty, Little Children is a highly effective and effecting piece of work.

            Starting from an excellent script by book author Tom Perrotta and director Todd Field, the story builds around the characters, all motivation for all actions coming from decisions made by the characters as opposed to all action being dictated by characters having to respond to a situation.  With good writers, this immediately creates a situation in which excellent actors can do excellent work.

            Which they certainly do.

    No single performance in the movie is lacking, each as at least as nuanced as screen time will allow, some, like Oscar-nominated Haley Joel Osmet, no wait, Jackie Earle Haley, much, much more than that.  But don’t assume only the great performances were nominated.  As incredible as Mr. Haley is at being disturbingly creepy and sympathetic and sympathetically creepy, Phyllis Somerville (last seen by me in Bringing Out the Dead) manages to steal a few scenes away from him.  In fact, whenever she’s in a scene with anyone in the film, the scene belongs to her.

            Frankly, with few exceptions, any actor in this movie receiving a nomination would have surprised me as everyone in the film is clearly on their own character’s path to making the movie work as a whole.  Perhaps this is what most struck me during my viewing.  Little Children is truly the product of an excellent director with a deep understanding of humanity and an ensemble cast who all desperately want the movie to be about their characters and their stories more than about themselves and their performances.  Human to the point of distaste at times, each actor and actress imbues their character with non-screen qualities embracing imperfections as easily as most Hollywood gods and goddesses accept the mantel of perfection.  But not here.  Here there is a visible (only in the sense of the result, mind you) intention to tell the story of these multi-flawed but not beyond all hope characters in the most real way possible.

                    Of all the main characters and most of the supporting ones, few will garner your overall approval.  In fact, in the hands of a lesser director and writing team, the goal would perhaps be for you to decide who is the least stained of all.  Thanks to the script and the heart put into it by actors like Patrick Wilson (excellent and brave in his performance in Hard Candy), Jennifer Connelly (clearly in a role this time worthy of her talents as opposed to the putrid drivel she was forced to spew in Blood Diamond), Noah Emmerich and those mentioned above, the movie is entirely about that huge gray area between black and white, but not in the preachy, don’t judge kind of way most movies are these days.  There is not message here beyond a very basic, very grade school one, and even then, only if you seek it out.  There’s no brutalizing of the audience with commentary and example-based learning.

            All there is is passionate story.

            All there is is passionate life.

            All there is is passionate emotion, love, hate, even passionate indifference.

            And passionate it is, containing some of the most erotic sex scenes I’ve seen in a very long time.  The shot of Kate Winslet’s foot on Patrick Wilson’s chest, post-coital says so much by itself and is intense, even within the ease of the scene.  Ms. Winslet is stunning in the movie, so real and gorgeous, much of which comes from what she is imbuing the character with.

            Yet, what much more of the passion comes down to is our frequent inability to recognize other passions of ours that might be less obvious.  The children in this movie, all good actors and very well directed, provide the quiet, barely noticed heart of the film, only noticed by the one person who shouldn’t and knows he shouldn’t.

            When all is said and done this is a movie about passions, the passions of human interaction and when those are worth the fall their indulgence often brings.

            With extremely fun, funny and sometimes haunting narration by the un-credited Will Lyman, Little Children soars both as an entertainment and a film to carry along with you the next day at work, or, if you’re lucky, in the diner later with your viewing companion over a piece of pie.

            Between this and In the Bedroom, Todd Field has a fan in me.