In Continuum.

Little Children



I know, this blog is - in a incredibly rapid speed - turning into a movie reviewing blog. That was not my intentions when I first started this blog, back in January of last year after an incredibly long hiatus on my part. Back then, I remember being inspired by the fireworks that marked the beginning of 2006, the way it waved goodbye in the cold winter air in Taiwan, sparked off an urge of sorts inside to write something. So there I was, sitting before my computer the moment I touched down in Singapore, starting up a brand new blog after sinking into a hiatus for a full year. I never expected my blog to end up being a movie review blog as well, but I guess it'd only make sense to be a part of everything, since movies are as important to me as writing and music.

When I saw the posters of Little Children plastered all over the walls in Cineleisure, I didn't think too much about the film. Sure, it had Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly in them. But they weren't enough to set me into the excited mode back then. It was a film I was willing to give it a pass, and that was exactly what I do until yesterday night when I suddenly had the urge to catch it. The fact that it was directed by Todd Fields must have kept me from watching the film I suppose, because I didn't exactly enjoy his last work with In The Bedroom. I thought that movie was a little slow, and ended off on a dark tone that I didn't particularly enjoy. But times have changed, and I might actually enjoy In The Bedroom if I do watch it all over again in the years to come. In the meantime, I had my blankets hugged tight against my chest when the credits of Little Children started to play at the beginning of the film, and I sat there in much anticipation and excitement.

Little Children is set in a quiet suburban community, where the people are closely knitted together in their beliefs and ideas. It is one of those typical suburban towns, with most of the men off in the cities working while the wives stay at home and take care of the children. The story takes place around the married couples in these towns, whose lives intersect on the playgrounds, at the public pool and the streets of the neighborhood in potentially dangerous ways. The balance of the peace became even more imbalanced when Ronnie J. McGorvey came home from his prison sentence, after exposing his privates to an under-aged child a few years ago.

I have little recollection of Todd Fields' work in In The Bedroom, which may be hard for me to compare the style of his film-making. However, the story of Little Children is perhaps one of the most compelling piece that I have ever watched. It has the similar themes to one of my favorite films, The Hours, which explores what it would be like to break through the normality of everyday life and do something outrageous for once. At least that was the theme observed in the storyline that involved Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson's characters respectively. In this subplot, it takes about the refusal to accept what life has given to the characters, and attempts to answer the question of "What if?". Clearly, the lives that the characters led in the film were suffocating the both of them, and the film successfully explored this aspect of an average suburban married couple.

The genius of this film lies in how it managed to weave different stories of various themes into one coherent whole. In The Hours, all three stories had similar themes with one another, but that is not the case for Little Children. For the story of Ronnie, it wasn't so much about breaking the norm, but about being accepted back into a society that condemns him as a human - if they consider him a human at all. His face is plastered all over the town, as a warning to the parents that there is a sex-offender living in the neighborhood. With all the oppression, the viewers begin to have sympathy for the character, maybe even rooting for him in the first part of the film. It became tragic that this man - seemingly harmless - should be condemned for this one mistake that he made in the past, and it was sadder to see that the only person that supported him wasn't himself, but his mother who never gave up on her son.

We begin with Patrick Wilson's - or Brad's - story. Brad is a househusband, with his wife being the financial support of the family instead. He takes care of his son mostly, taking him for walks in the playground and to the swimming pool every weekday, with the desperate housewives treating him as an eye-candy always from afar. In the playground was where he met Sarah - Kate Winslet - the mother of one daughter. She is married to Richard, but she isn't terribly happy with her married life. That was made worse when she discovered her husband's fetish for internet pornography one day while he was masturbating to images on the computer screen with a female underwear on his face. Sarah finds it incredibly hard to fit in the neighborhood, simply because she was not the ordinary neighborhood housewife, like the ones she usually hang out with with much pretense. She longed for something different in her life, something to break the mold once and for all. Brad to her, was the tool to break her mold. Their relationship became closer and more intimate, and it caused both their lives to break down as a result.

The director invests a lot of time when it comes the investigation of the couples' relationship with each other, as well as the relationship that slowly broke down with their current partners. It felt like the plot of a John Updike book, which capitalizes on forbidden love affairs most of the time. Brad and Sarah both knew what they were doing wasn't actually the right thing to do, especially with all the things they had to lose. However, they cared little about the consequences and went ahead with their wild and perilous venture into the unknown spaces within each other. Oblivious to their very intimate relationships, the people around them lived their lives unknowingly and clueless. I thought it was very effective how the idea of this love affair being foolish and pointless, was shown through the most subtle of imagery on screen.

The same can be said for Ronnie's plot, as he desperately tries to fit back into the society where he came from. It was a little heart breaking to see how the whole town became terrified of him, just because he was swimming in the public pool with all the other children. But as the film progresses, we see that a leopard can never change its spots, and Ronnie slowly sinks back into the self that he was, disappointing himself and his mother. His life is also made worse by Larry, the neighborhood peace committee formed by concerned parents - though there is only one member - as he constantly disrupts his life as well as his mothers'.

To be honest, there are so many little stories in this film explored, and most of these issues can be picked out and made into a feature film by itself. However, I liked how the director took a slice of suburban life, and magnified the issues on screen with such detail and accuracy. It can be said that not enough emphasis are placed on every issue because of the limited screen time, but I feel that the director truly allowed the characters as well as the storyline to breathe. I like how he took his time with the story and never rushed in any point of the film - perhaps the ending was a little bit so - but still retained that tension in the characters as well as the viewers. It was interesting to explore the various aspects of suburban life that we may not have noticed before, and how the tradition of this life contributed to the eventual breakdown of the characters we see.

This film is not meant for people who expect a happy ending, and that certainly wasn't what I had in mind when I watched the film. You can see where the film is going at the beginning, but that is not to say that this film is predictable in anyway. I must say that when Larry confronts Ronnie in the playground towards the end, what Ronnie revealed was both shocking and disturbing at the same time. You begin to sympathize with him all over again at just how far a man is willing to go in order to please his loved ones as well as the people in the society. Like children, Brad and Sarah decided to elope together, and that was when the wild dreams became a wild reality and became dangerous to both their lives.

I won't agree that this film is the most depressing film of the year, but I must say that it does put the word 'depression' into your face as a viewer. There are realities that cannot be ignored in this film, and these things do happen around us whether we like it or not. There are themes that can be related to everybody in this movie, and it is possible to relate to the characters as they go through their wild fantasies like little children. The true impact of the film sinks in a few hours after viewing, at least that was how long it took for me to fully grasp the film. I was surprised at how long the movie actually is, when it didn't feel as long at all. Still, I admired Todd Fields' care for details, and also those subtle hints as mentioned before despite the narration.

I cannot say that I'd recommend this movie to everybody out there, because it is not a film meant for the general audience. After all, themes that deal with adultery, pornography and pedophiles may offend viewers to a great degree. However, I must say that underneath those layers, it is possible to view this film from any perspective, one that has the ability to relate to us as people, and not as audience. It takes as that much closer to the morales of the stories, and also the message that it is trying to get across.