LITTLE CHILDREN

The postings of my responses to recent movies are obviously just matters of opinion and taste, perspective and personal history, interpretation and understanding—mine.

Some friends and family liked THE DEPARTED and THE GOOD SHEPERD, for instance, or had objections to LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS.

But a clash of opinions and taste and all the rest is what makes me learn, leads me to insights I might otherwise not have. So here we go again:

LITTLE CHILDREN is disturbing, has faults I think are obvious, and yet also has an impact I can’t deny. It “works”—at least for me—in ways I was surprised by.

Since it begins with narration, I immediately became suspect. In my years in Hollywood, I wrote a lot of screenplays, some of which I was paid for, none of which got made.

The only time I heard my words coming from the screen (not counting when lines of mine were ripped off without my consent) was in narrations—voice-overs—that explained or clarified story elements the scenes and dialogue otherwise didn’t do.

I was often hired after the fact, when the movie was already shot and put together but needed something extra to make it work, or to cover up bad performances, or writing, or directing.

Several films had never had any narration until the “rough cut” made clear the movie didn’t work. I like to think I helped make them better.

The one I was most proud of helping, had narration before I got involved, but the director, Gus Van Sant, had heard me read my poetry and wanted what I brought to my own work injected into his film adaptation of the jailhouse novel DRUGSTORE COWBOY.

It was a challenge that I thought I came up to, especially since a couple of lines of mine from the narration were quoted in several reviews, including in TIME magazine, if I remember correctly, or maybe it was THE NEW YORK TIMES (attributed to others of course, to Gus or his co-screenwriter, Dan Yost, or most often to Matt Dillon).

At any rate, I thought that narration worked, as I did all the narration I did for every film I was hired to help that way.

And I thought the narration in the films of my youth, especially the film noir of the 1940s and early 1950s, always added a level of mystery and sophistication that made me, as a kid, even that much more susceptible to the story line and the charm of the art form.

But as an adult, I was taught, and from my own experience grew to expect, that narration was used only to cover something up, to improve on bad choices or outcomes.

So when the narration started in LITTLE CHILDREN, I was wary, suspected that the film hadn’t been fully realized and the narration was an add-on to make it work. But it didn’t take long for the disembodied voice to win me over, despite its ironic stance.

It worked—but not just to draw me in and help explicate the story line and delineate the characters beyond what I was seeing and hearing from them, but like a Brechtian device, to remind me I was watching a story unfold, not real life, as Brecht used devices of his own to make sure audiences were constantly reminded that they were witnessing a play.

I’m glad the filmmakers (Todd Field & Tom Perrotta) chose to do that in LITTLE CHILDREN, because the suspense of worrying that something bad was going to happen, and possibly to innocent children, made me so uncomfortable I had to get up and move around my living room as I watched the film (on a disc provided for members of the screenwriters guild).

There were some casting choices I might question, but overall the actors were superb. Kate Winslet deserves to be nominated for all the honors given out this time of year.

As does Jackie Earle Haley, the kid from BAD NEWS BEARS most of us haven’t seen since then. His performance is so bravely uninhibited, so poignant yet matter-of-fact, accepting the reality of his creepy character, I can’t imagine anyone else in the role.

Winslet, as often happens in Hollywood flicks, doesn’t quite fit the description of the character given by the narrator—“boyish” figure etc.—and is too beautiful to compare poorly to Jennifer Connolly’s character, as she is in the film. (Connolly is superb and lovely to look at as always.)

But, Winslet pulls it off, because she is so brave in her portrayal, not just in choices like letting her eyebrows grow out—if indeed they are really hers—but by allowing her character to be sometimes unappealingly self-centered and indulgent—a writing choice, but one many stars would resist or undermine.

Likewise, the ending is what used to be called “a Hollywood ending” when I was young and there was a morals code that forced filmmakers to tie up endings in a neat little bow. And yet it works, because it is such a relief from the pressures of the suspense and fear and general uneasiness generated by the story line and character portrayals.

Worth seeing, if you prepare yourself to be uncomfortable—and maybe even angry, or is that just my response to anxiety and fear.