Little Children

Written around the time of the film's release. Field's most recent film—after an extended hiatus—was Tár, which received lots and lots of attention.

Little Children (Todd Field, 2006) One I've been wanting to see but avoiding. Again, bad decision. 

 

Todd Field has the spirit of Kubrick in him. Field, as an actor, worked on Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick subjected him to "the drill" about his first film, In the Bedroom—"Why do you want to make that? What can you bring to it? How can you tell your story more compellingly? Is it worth doing, though?" 

 

But Field is a far looser director, and with a much more sure sense of humor, though that was missing in Bedroom. That razor-like humor helps in this story of a neighborhood not coping well with a convicted sex offender in their midst (he's a flasher). Everyone in the Boston suburb is on the critical edge of everyday panic and with an aversion to complacency combined with a complacent lethargy—sure, everyone is a hypocrite about something—so everyone seems determined to see how far they can push the envelope before things come crashing around their ears. 

But the film focuses on a quartet in the neighborhood: retired cop Larry (Noah Emmerich) is a retired cop on disability, who misses the job and finds some solace in harrassing the sex offender Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), who wants to live a normal life—like his Mother (Phyllis Somerville) whom he lives with wants for him—but his past is a constant deterrence.

Larry is friends with Brad (Patrick Wilson), who is studying for the Massachusetts bar (at least he should be), but has chosen to be a househusband and raise his son Aaron (Ty Simpkins) while his wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is consumed with her PBS documentary career.

Brad spends many a lazy afternoon taking Aaron to the park, giving the gaggle of stay-at-home Moms there a chance to observe appreciatively and speculate about him. One of those gaggle is Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet), who was working on her doctorate, but gave up on it when she married her now-estranged husband. All of this talk of Brad makes Sarah curious, and—as her husband is more interested in internet porn than her—they gradually "it's-only-platonic" themselves into having an affair. An affair that ultimately leads them to want to leave their respective spouses and run away together.

Every film is a bit of a "bubble-world," limited in scope to the characters featured prominently in the story. And it's the chief complaint by people who don't like particular films that they depend too much on the limited cast-members to sell the coincidences that make up a story. Little Children is one of those films. Pull out any of the plot-threads and it'll tumble like a Jenga tower.

But, that argument is so much blinkerdly cherry-picking. One of my favorite episodes of the podcast "This American Life" the author Lisa See tells of the Chinese proverb "No coincidence, no story" and the entire show curates stories from listeners with the most amazing coincidences. One is hard-pressed to think of a film...or a book where the confluence of incidences didn't create some narrative thrust. No coincidence, No story...even if it's only that these people are locked under some circumstance...if only by coincidence. 

So it is with Little Children. There is an air of clinical observation to the film that is cruel and humorous, though, for the characters portrayed, everything is of deadly earnest and has complex consequences. And its use of Will Lyman (the voice of "Frontline" as well as "Last Week Tonight") as narrator is brilliant. 

Uniformly the cast is excellent with Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson (he had the least showy role in HBO's "Angels in America" as the closeted conservative), Jennifer Connelly (restrained and never better), and particularly Jackie Earle Haley as the flasher. Absent from movies for years, Haley now has a cadaverous look like he's being consumed from the inside, and his beady-eyed pressurized work keeps you on pins and needles. He and Winslet received the lion's share of accolades at awards-time last year, but the film itself should have received more attention...certainly more than The Departed did. 

 

Todd Field is a guy to watch.

Tár

Kavanah (Conductor Unbecoming)

or

SNR (One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Noise Floor)
 

Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is a world-class conductor, having conducted "the five great orchestras" and is the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, she is an EGOT winner, composing for both film and stage, and with a teady contract with Deutsche Grammaphon, has her duties with many fellowships and programs around the world, teaches at Julliard, and is out doing press for her new book coming out called "Tár on Tár."

 

As the joke goes, she has a hard time keeping a consistent job.

 

She could tell that joke in several different languages, is world renowned, is a virtuoso concert pianist (even being able to imitate other virtuosos' playing styles) and does interviews with a breezy combination of expertise and modest self-deprecation, describing herself as a "U-Haul lesbian" married to her concertmaster Sharon (Nina Hoss), with whom she parents Petra (Mila Bogojevic), the six year old daughter. She was mentored by "Lenny" and, being an ethno-musicologist, is well-versed on music of all variations and cultures. She even makes Jerry Goldsmith jokes (how arcane!).

In her lectures, she is passionate and esoteric (but makes sure that she couches it with the common touch for the masses) and encourages her students to be fully involved, and embrace music free of strictures of time-period and cultural origin...or comfort. She really does deserve that "acute" accent in her surname vowel as she is, per the definition (Oxford—only Oxford): "having or showing a perceptive understanding or insight; shrewd." 

Well, maybe leave that last part out. Because she also fits the other definition: "(of a bad, difficult, or unwelcome situation or phenomenon) present or experienced to a severe or intense degree." Intense, certainly. Severe, but muffled in the language of the polite, business-like and the erudite. Still, having a well-considered background can't always save you from being ground in the gears. People can be dazzled by the highbrow, but they get defensive when only one of those eyebrows is raised.

The film starts with Tár being photographed on a cell-phone while snarky comments are posted back and forth. We then hear her encouraging a native singer while the technical credits play out over the screen. This is unusual; the long credits are usually saved for the back-page of a movie (here the cast is saved for last). It's an acknowledgment of just how many souls are involved in a "singular vision," which, despite Tár's fame (or the director's) and their image as ring-master, rely on the hired hands to bring it to reality.

We get an interview with her as part of a media blitz which provides a lot of background, then we see her talking to a smitten fan while her assistant Francesca (Noémie Merlant) checks her watch for the next "go-to" moment. We see her in lunches with associates, mentors, and patrons. We see her teach a conducting class where she instructs, informs, lectures, cajoles and condescends to her students until one of them just walks out in disgust. Meanwhile, there are the details—one of Tár's protégés has been trying to make contact her only to be ignored and spurned until the young woman commits suicide. Lydia instructs Francesca to delete all of her e-mails. Her daughter is being bullied at school, so Lydia drives her to school, singles out that child and threatens her (in German!) that if she does it again, she will "get" her, and if she tries to tell somebody in authority about it, no one will believe her. Then, there are suspicions that Tár is grooming a Russian cellist (Sophie Kauer); it's happened before and the consequences were dire. Tar's orchestras are in lock-step and sound harmonious. Her staff and associates and lawyers are starting to rebel.

Todd Field—this is his first film since 2006's Little Children—is closely associated—too closely, I think—with Stanley Kubrick. He appeared in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and, while on-set, was subjected to the Kubrickian "grilling" of why he wanted to make a film of In the Bedroom (which he directed in 2001). Too much is made of the connection between the two as their "styles" are very different. But, Tár does share a certain thematic kinship with a thread running through Kubrick's films, that of people being too smart for their own good. Of brilliant people (and systems) being undone by character flaws or unanticipated consequences, or by the mere vagaries of Fate.

There is also the stringent way that Field refuses to "stack the deck" in his screenplay: you see the good in Tár as well as the bad and you see the good intentions and the bad consequences of the forces that undermine her. There's no judgment here. It's simply the environment in which the character operates, one that she has exploited to her gain and utilized to her detriment. One can rail against "cancel culture"—and those on the receiving end of it always do—but, there's always some hurt feelings and wounded pride mixed in when those in power come to the realization they don't have power over people's money or people's time (and how they spend both) and that, however high their intentions, they're just another stall in the marketplace of ideas.

Any artist must consider their audience—just as writers do—even as they bring their own ideas to the fore because nothing exists in a vacuum. If one is going to present music, one must consider the acoustics of where it will be played. And, as is made clear throughout the film, Tár never considers her acoustics, her surroundings. Little sounds annoy her—and the sound design of the movie is brilliant. In the majesty of her work, her interpretation, one wonders what she'd do to the person in the audience who coughs.

 

The film makes no judgment; it just tells a story. It's up to the viewer to draw their own conclusions on what's what. There will be arguments and counter-arguments. Everyone will have their own singular interpretation and reaction. There's no "right" answer, no matter how learned and studied yours might be. Or how prejudiced. For me, it brings up several uncomfortable ironies: how the cultured can be very uncultured when dealing with things that scratch people's sensitivities and how the liberal arts can piss off the disenfranchised and how the fringe can be very parochial.