Little Children

I started to write about this movie Thursday night after I got home from screening it, but I began to realize as I was writing that I wasn’t really saying anything positive about a movie that I thought I had liked. What I was doing instead was noting the many ways in which director Todd Field was channeling Stanley Kubrick - lingering on scenes for longer than necessary, slow-motion, cut-to-black cuts for some scene breaks (like Kubrick used in The Shining). I also noted that some of those elements, especially the lingering on scenes for longer than was strictly necessary, in some ways helped to elucidate the second layer of the theme - the anesthetizing effect of settling for a life in middle-class suburbia despite strong inclinations toward a more dynamic and adventurous lifestyle.

(That second layer of the theme applies only to Brad and Sarah. The primary layer of the theme, that being an adult does not always mean one has actually grown up, applies more generally to the rest of the characters.)

Beyond that, I was not sure what I wanted to say about the movie - especially about the Ronnie McGorvey character, whose place in the story bothered me because he did not seem to fit. Then I talked to Hillary about it at work tonight, and something she said made me realize what it was I wanted to say about the characters, and what I thought of Ronnie. Hillary said that she hated all of the characters in the movie, and that they were all despicable people.

It is in my nature to play the devil’s advocate in a lot of cases just because it amuses me - thus, my first inclination was to disagree with Hillary; as soon as it occurred to me do so, however, I realized that it was not an argument just for the sake of argument. It was also correct - the characters are not all despicable people. Ronnie is - and acknowledging that instantly gave me Ronnie’s place in the story.

All of the main characters in this movie are flawed, to one degree or another (except for the actual children). Ronnie, a paroled sex offender with strong inclinations toward recidivism, is not just flawed - he is a despicable character. His place in the story, then, is to provide perspective with respect to the flaws of the other characters, especially Brad and Sarah, who are sympathetic characters - tragic characters, but sympathetic ones.

Brad and Sarah each have two flaws - one is that they are each on the cusp of settling for a suburban family life that does not suit them, and the other is that they choose to rebel against those choices by pursuing a love affair (sex affair?) together, rather than take the issue up with their spouses.

Their spouses, Kathy and Richard, are flawed because they are emotionally unavailable to Brad and Sarah; Kathy pressures Brad to pursue a career that he does not want because she is stuck in a career that she does not want, and Richard, well...Richard is off in his own selfish little world and losing whatever tenuous grip he still has on reality.

That Brad and Sarah fall into an affair with each other is hardly surprising, even if societal convention would say that it is wrong - and from a technical point of view, it is wrong...they commit adultery together. But it is an adultery committed at least as much out of desperation as it is out of real desire. Todd Field is not at all subtle with his use of ticking clocks to indicate that time is running out on Brad’s and Sarah’s dreams, and the meticulous progression of the film serves to illustrate the desperation of the characters, to help the audience to see how close Brad and Sarah came to getting it right, through the lens of how badly they got it wrong. There is an amiguity to the end of the film that I find thought-provoking - what is the real motivation behind why Sarah asks her daughter if she would like to go home, and why Brad asks the paramedic to call his wife? Are those the things they really want to do? Or do they do those things because they know that doing them will be safe?

Patrick Wilson, playing Brad, and Kate Winslet, playing Sarah, give fine performances, occupying those lingering scene’s of Field’s in such a way that it is almost impossible not to think of Thoreau’s brilliant line - “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” The affair they have re-ignites the passions that have begun to fade out of their lives - and yet...the moment is fleeting. Real life gets its hooks into you, and there comes a point in your life when you set down roots and those roots take hold, and then there is nothing, no passion or trifle or flirtation, that can uproot you.

This is the tragedy for Brad and Sarah - that they discover the full truth about the lives they have made for themselves, and the natures of the people living those lives, far too late to do anything about it. By the end of the film, real life has snuffed the flame of passion for Lysander and Hermia - er, Brad and Sarah. And you can almost hear Field, somewhere off-screen, whispering:

“If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended;
That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme, no more yielding but a dream,
Gentles do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.
And as I am an honest Puck, and if we have unearnèd luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue, we will make amends ere long.
Else the Puck a liar call. So good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.”