There is a bucolic, brief scene of restless suburbanite Sarah (Kate Winslet) sitting peacefully under a tree, reading, in Microscopic Children. Her daughter Lucy plays happily nearby as the leaves rustle and the birds chirp. Everything is bathed in perfect light. All of the elements–the camera, the performers, nature, etc.–conspire to build an invigorating, warm shot.
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This single scene sums up the overall tone for director Todd Field’s assured sophomore grief. He chooses this image, which moves, languidly, from a tight full-body shot of the still actress to a longer, more atmospheric shot. As the first image the viewer sees on the menu page of the DVD. It is an evocative, iconic shot that speaks volumes without any words. It is pure, heavenly ambiance–something Field is shaping up to be very alive to on, and very obedient at.
A late itsy-bitsy movie that pits an acerbic script (by Field and Tom Perrota–who wrote the sizable 350 page current on which the film is based) with a brilliantly mismatched ensemble, Puny Children is a rare contemporary film that is nearly perfect in its execution. Stillness in both mood and whisk are objective as considerable to the director as lingering close-ups of his actors’ radiant reactions. Field is able to indicate, believably, a vision of bourgeois suburbia as an almost mythical netherworld. Often, dangerously, the atmosphere here can change on a dime: from roguish to sexy to deadly and attend again within the same scene.
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Sarah is sort of a terrible mother. She’s a dinky selfish about her time. She doesn’t quite connect to her adorable moppet of a daughter in the plan she expected to. The film is unafraid to debunk the stereotypes about settling down and being a “mommy”. Sarah would say that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She left a life of academia tedious to marry an older man and assume over the pristine, first wife-decorated manse located on a prized situation of land in this snobbish suburban enclave.
The other brittle, embittered young women that hang out at the park with their regimented children treat Sarah to an infuriatingly smug and pleasurable manner every day. Perhaps this is impartial an distinct tag they are jealous of her, or perhaps they are only talking to her out of pity: Sarah is more than a bit disheveled and doesn’t give a flip about appearances, and why should she? Her marriage is stunning worthy humdrum and the only person she sees during the day is Lucy. While the other gals are in chubby hair and make-up, heels, and perfect pressed diminutive dresses, Sarah goes the comfortable route in shapeless overalls.
They recoil in fear as Sarah fumbles futilely for her daughter’s non-existent snack; trying desperately to attach face in front of the group as they judgingly get nutritious treats for their perfect “diminutive children” from the bowels of their overly-priced designer bags. They viciously gossip about the neighborhood’s newest addition, Ronnie: a convicted sex offender freshly released from prison (the fabulous faded child actor Jackie Earle Haley) .
These scenes at the park (the park is apparently the hub of all socio-political action in the land of the bourgeoisie), in which the humiliating suburban hassle gets inflicted on Sarah relentlessly by this group of harpies stand out, mainly because of the highlighting of the gossipy, demeaning behavior of the bored and unfulfilled yuppie position. These patronizing women are cinematic ice queen cousins to women like Annette Bening’s Carolyn Burnham from American Beauty or Mary Tyler Moore’s Beth Jarret from Ordinary People: wicked, repressed, and filled with venom. The displaced Sarah can’t narrate to their malaise. She believes she is grand different from them.
When “the Prom King” (stay-at-home dad Brad, played by Patrick Wilson) starts frequenting the girls’ territory with his son, the heroic Sarah decides to shock the other women by actually speaking to the dazzling father. Turns out Brad’s life is not as dreamy as he’d like it to be: even though he is married to the outrageously aesthetic documentary filmmaker Kathy (the outrageously heavenly Jennifer Connelly), with whom he has a son, Aaron; Brad has failed the bar exam twice and would rather sit and glimpse teenage boys skateboarding than survey for his third and final attempt at the test.
Fallen cop turned vigilante Larry (the fierce Noah Emmerich) ropes Brad into a secret league of brutish nighttime football players, in addition to forcing him to serve in the neighborhood crusade against Ronnie, who is detached a mere specter in the film at this point; he’s impartial whispered hatefully about.
Brad longs to re-capture his macho youth. His fire, it seems, was snuffed out by settling down in the suburbs. Taking over a traditionally female role, as Kathy becomes the family’s breadwinner, Brad becomes unprejudiced another version of a bored suburban housewife himself. Microscopic Children seems to say that only dumb people are issue with that sort of existence. Brad and Sarah are both very educated people; so naturally, they commence to gravitate towards one another. Eventually, they embark on a hazardous, erotic affair, complete with some raw, realistic sex scenes between the two plucky actors.
Forty-five minutes into the film, as Brad and Sarah start to flaunt their tawdriness all over town, the character of Ronnie makes his appearance into the film, looking every bit the creepy boogie man pedophile that every parent has nightmares about. He is pale and sickly looking, almost transparent; curiously, he resembles bloodsucker Max Shreck in Nosferatu.
The far-from discrete Brad and Sarah have a standing date to meet every day at the community pool. On a vivid, hot day when all of the kids and parents are cooling off in the pool, the ridiculously-attired Ronnie (complete with goggles and flippers), struts foolishly into the swimming pool and the camera dives disturbingly down into the water with him, as he creepily, secretly watches the kids enchanting in dumb motion underwater.
It is only a matter of time before he is spotted by the frantic mob of parents; who resemble the villagers who journey after the monster in Frankenstein with torches and a pack of rabid zombies. They openly present the kind of cruelty that leads to wretchedness. It’s also only a matter of time before Ronnie is the only one left in the pool. The police advance within what seems like seconds to pick the sex offender away from the kids.
What unfolds in the film’s second half is a complex, meditative drama that offers some biting insights on the art routine. The film deftly explores the everyday perversions of those who we assume are the most normal (Winslet catching her cuckolded, mysterious husband masturbating in his home office is one of the funniest, most awkward scenes in a fresh film) . Despite the undercurrent of genuinely comical cynicism running through its acid narration, Cramped Children serene remains a correct tragedy at heart; and a tightly-wound, emotionally suspenseful one at that.
At its core, the film is about mothers and their deep, formative bonds with their children. Sarah is jealous of the super-mommy gang, but she doesn’t really want to do grand danger into her relationship with Lucy; she’s more alive to in escaping her duties into her fantasy world with Brad. Ronnie lives with his fiercely devoted, obsolete mother May (a scene-stealing Phyllis Somerville) ; a tough conventional neighborhood stalwart who believes her son to be innocent as she excitedly sets up a personal ad date for him. Aaron is constantly wearing a jester’s cap around Brad, but takes it off as soon as his beloved mom Kathy gets home from work.
Each mother in Itsy-bitsy Children is able to assign a new gallop on the theme of things not turning out quite the intention one might have pictured, and each finds a blueprint of coping and soldiering on. Tough senior citizen May is forced to physically defend her adult son from bullies in her enjoy home, while Kathy is quietly more enamored of her job and son than she is of her clearly poor husband. Sarah turns out to be almost as black as the rest of them: she cruelly ignores her daughter to imagine a life with Brad. As the film builds to a breathtaking climax, she is seen in the shaded park, leisurely at night, alone with Lucy; waiting for a romantic getaway that is never going to happen.
Winslet’s skillful handling of these almost wordless scenes is masterful in what she is able to stammer through her eyes: Sarah is going to be abruptly thrown proper abet into her wearisome aged routine reach early morning, like all that transpired before had never happened. It is a vague ending (complete with one ugly Shakespearean-level catharsis), and Field leaves a lot of hanging plots’ resolutions up to his viewers; who should easily be able to build the pieces together thanks to the cast’s lived-in, seamless performances and Field & Perrota’s lean, eloquent script.
Following the success of 2001’s distinguished darling In the Bedroom, Field proves again that he has a gift for capturing, strikingly, the complexities of cramped town unfortunate. Puny Children also demonstrates his distinct gift and affinity for the art of guiding his actors to giving gloriously still, devastating performances. Sissy Plot, Marisa Tomei, and Tom Wilkinson were all rewarded with Oscar nominations for their work in In the Bedroom; while Haley and Winslet were nominated for their work here–Winslet earning her fifth career nomination.
From the smallest supporting role, to the powerhouse leads, Field imbues each character with soul and flavor; as he does with every other technical detail of the film. His see for the minutiae of the everyday is impeccable.
“Tiny Children” is a perfect movie: intelligently directed, lavishly produced, beautifully photographed, gloriously acted, intricately plotted and logically set together.
Director Todd Field’s first film, “In the Bedroom” (based on a narrative by Andre Dubus) was also effective, attractive, and brutal: a kitchen sink drama about a kill, the families keen with that destroy and the repercussions eager therein.
In “Dinky Children,” Fields has ratcheted up the living circumstances to upstate, suburban Massachusetts: dead jane, Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) unhappily married to a porno -obsessed, mostly absent husband, the topple monotonous heavenly couple of Kathy and Brad Anderson (Patrick Wilson and for once not playing a victim, the intellectual Jennifer Connolly) who have reached an impasse in their marriage as Kathy is it’s sole provider and Brad is conflicted about taking the Law Bar exam for the third time. Thrown into this mix is a recently released from jail for exposing himself to a child, Ronald McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley) and his loving, doting Mother (Phyllis Somerville) .
Sarah and Brad, both with their children, meet in a park one day: attraction is inevitable though neither is the other ones “type.” That said, what they do contain for each other are those voids that tend to obtain bigger and deeper as we grow older, grow more disappointed with our lives and realize that our dreams will probably not advance accurate. Fairy-tale romance this one? Hardly. Fields is too considerable the realist, his psyche and artistic intuition too noteworthy about the realities of contemporary life to go that route and Winslet and Wilson give Sarah and Brad their all: vulnerable, romantic, crazy-in-lust even but again always looking over their shoulders for that “thing” that will rupture them up. Their sex scenes are filmed with this kind of tension and though they acquire adore in private, they may as well be outdoors on a busy street because, though they are definitely into it…both have one seek commence…waiting for the door to inaugurate, waiting to be discovered, caught, unveiled.
Though there is a lot of sex and violence here, there is really not mighty appreciate except that between the “sex criminal” Ronald and his Mother. Ronald’s Mom loves him without reservation though she is more than aware of his shortcomings. She even goes so far as to arrange a computer date for him as “you need to meet a nice girl, Ronald.” What ensues is inevitable and funny/sad.
Jennifer Connelly plays Kathy as an icy-cold *itch, seemingly in control, career-minded, needing Brad to step up to the plate financially and professionally but at the same time needing him to be adrift, lost, emotionally wounded so that she can abhor and pity him, be her whipping boy, her child yet her husband. In many ways, Kathy needs Brad to fail so that she can feel capable, to have a vessel into which she can pour her bile. When Connolly intuits the affair between Brad and Sarah at a dinner at her home, she does it with barely a nod of her head and a deep, burning flick of her blooming eyes: you actually feel her eyes gouging a hole into you as you gawk.
“Miniature Children” is about unbiased that…but not the chronologically appropriate ones. It’s about supposed adults who carry on without thinking like adults, without weighing or really caring about the consequences of their actions. And like Ang Lee’s masterful “Ice Storm,” “Tiny Children” is psychically site in a spot in which we must tread very carefully always aware that what he is saying here might impartial apply to our very occupy lives.
