Anyone else?

I hadn't read this in a while so I've been reading it when I have free time here. Kate Winslet is playing Sarah, which is unquestionably the lead role of the story. It's the type of part that Oscar would respond to very well, I would think. I just looked and Patrick Wilson is apparently playing Brad (which I guess is supposed to be the Todd of the book), the male lead. Jennifer Connelly's part should probably be smaller, I think she's playing Wilson's wife, who he cheats on with Winslet.

LITTLE CHILDREN

It is hard to figure out where to start discussing Little Children.

It is easy enough to say that it is the best American film of 2006 to date, since it is.

To say that this film is one of the great sophomore efforts of all time (by director/co-writer Todd Field) is no overstatement. And to write that Tom Perrotta is fortunate that this only the second film made from one of his books, since seven years after Election this is one of the few films worthy of being a successor to that unexpected achievement, would be fair, but too easy.

One could easily assert that Little Children is the film that Ang Lee and Alan Ball and Robert Redford and Paul Thomas Anderson and even Woody Allen have been trying to make for a long time. (Allen had the most success with the magnificent Crimes & Misdemeanors.) Others, like Alejandro Inarritu and Steven Soderbergh and Alexander Payne and Cameron Crowe and Jim Brooks and the Coen Brothers are working on similar canvases, but are too interested in entertaining to go somewhere quite this dry and relentless (though they often come close and achieve greatness on different levels). I love me some Malick, but he wants to let the wind blow through our hair and to allow us to reflect on ourselves even as we watch his movies. In England & Ireland, Jim Sheridan and Alan Parker and Neil Jordan and Mike Leigh have gone here and have probably come closer to this work in defining their cultures than American filmmakers previously have. But the one filmmaker whose voice is clear and clean in Little People, aside from Todd Field, is Stanley Kubrick's. This is not an imitation (in spite of some very specific steals), but Field's breathed in and assimilated extension of The Master's Voice.

But I still haven't told you much about the movie.

As much as I want to offer an easy description of the film, it's not a possibility. Confirming that is New Line's terrific, but narrow, trailer for the movie. They decided, understandably, to focus on "The Affair" in the film. But man, I am here to tell you… it's just the appetizer.

I keep finding myself singing Pete Seeger's "Little Boxes," currently enjoying renewed fame as the theme song of Showtime's first great non-niche series, Weeds, to myself when I think of this film...

"Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.

There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same."

There is something about the light heart behind that song and the simple understanding of human nature that connects to the film for me (much more than the TV series, actually). We are not all the same. And none of us is all that different. We are all made of the same ticky-tacky.

In Little Children's case, "we" are stay-at-home mothers and stay-at-home-fathers and working moms and working dads and convicted sex offenders and the mothers of convicted sex offenders and cops and the handicapped and the emotionally handicapped and neighbors and of course, lots of little children of many different ages.

We are all so unique. We are all so different. Our decision-making is so inevitably passionate and so inevitably rational.

This is the remarkable power of Little Children. And, make no mistake, it will take a lot of people more than a moment to get used to that power.

The film is very, very funny, but audiences are afraid to laugh at a lot of the humor. After all, how funny are cheating and perversion and mean-spiritedness and outright stupidity? Very funny. But it's a Kubrickian humor… tough and more than a little shocking.

One of the devices is a rather unexpected voiceover that is at first discomfiting, but which clarifies its value as it continues. (The familiar voice is Will Lyman, who does the voiceovers for Frontline on PBS… which, not so coincidentally, is the network the film's Kathy makes docs for.) But Todd Field keeps the voiceover (which is almost all directly out of the Perrotta book) within its own realm. It has a sense of humor, but it never falls into comedy.

The most talked about element of the film will be the convicted sex offender with a proclivity for little children. But anyone who would call it "that child molester movie" would be simplifying beyond reason. The character, played by Jackie Earle Haley, comes home to his mother, played by the amazing Phyllis Somerville. (She should be Oscar bait. Breathtaking work.) And this character is so complex and real that it really stands up there with some of the greats. This man knows what he is and he knows what he isn't. And he struggles. And his mother struggles. And as tough as it is to watch at times without wincing, its truth is profound.

Winslet rarely misses. And her turn here is layered in ways you can't imagine even as you watch it. She plays a character who thinks she knows her parameters… but until they are challenged, she doesn't. This probably should be her Oscar winner.

Patrick Wilson is surprisingly right in his role. Some have suggested that he is a little too much the character… a little too easy to understand. But I think it is daring to be that open.

And the most underappreciated performance in those three fronting leads will surely be Jennifer Connelly's. But it really is one of her best ever. She plays The Perfect Woman. But as we all know, no one really is perfect. And while we never get too much range from the character, Connelly breathes her in a daring and unselfish way that I really admired. It's one of those roles that feels so real that people won't realize how structured a performance it is.

Todd Field has made a big step as a director here. He has taken his In The Bedroom skills and his passion for Kubrick and added his own twists of style and skill. There isn't a shot in the movie that feels wrong. Whether it's a table scene with four characters who are each in a completely different place emotionally or a scene underwater meant to force/allow us to see through the eyes of a sex offender or a satirical take on football, Field uses the whole toolbox with assurance and detail. And any time you get the feeling that maybe he got the wrong performance out of someone, the reason why it is perfection is right around the corner.

Little Children is the first American masterpiece of 2006. We'll be chewing on this one for a long time to come.

Little Children

A-

In his sophomore effort, "Little Children," Todd Field fulfills the promise he showed in his 2001 debut, "In the Bedroom," which premiered at the Sundance Film Fest and went on to win major critics awards (LAFCA) and five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Though "Little Children" is not perfect--it has structural, tonal, and acting flaws--as of late August, it is one of the most interesting American movies of the year. The movie likely will divide critics and audiences, and New Line needs to come up with a brilliant marketing campaign to put this one over and separate it from other good movies of the past decade about suburban malaise (See Film Comment).

As a take on American suburbia, "Little Children" offers a darkly humorous view of a dozen of characters whose paths crisscross in unexpected ways, both comic and tragic. In scope and ambition, the film recalls Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson's large ensemble pieces.

Since "Little Children" is set in suburban New England, inevitable comparisons will be made with Sam Mendes' "American Beauty," which swept the 1999 Oscars, including Best Picture, and more specifically with Todd Solondz's "Happiness," due to some similarities in characters, prominent among which is a pedophile in both features.

Yet a deeper look at "Little Children" suggests that it's a different kind of movie than those two, with a different narrative strategy, visual style, and characters. The movie is at once more ambitious and complex than "American Beauty," but also more problematic and less enjoyable, perhaps because of its complex structure and ambitious goals.

Give it a chance. In moments, "Little Children" is a tough movie to sit through, due to its emotional intensity and uneasy shifts in tone, but you will find yourself upset if not haunted by specific images and dialogue lines long after the experience is over—which can't be said about most American movies these days.

As co-written by Field and Tom Perrotta, based on the best-selling novel by Perrotta (who also wrote "Election," made into a great picture by Alexander Payne), "Little Children" centers on twelve fully-developed characters, whose lives intersect in surprising, even dangerous ways when they meet in various places of their small, intimate community: the playgrounds, the town pool, the supermarket, and of course, their homes.

Like most good movies, the text of "Little Children" is dense and the tone is rich enough to be interpreted in different ways by different viewers. On one level, the movie could be taken as a modern-day fable that explores the turbulent emotional landscape beneath the surface of a seemingly conventional suburban neighborhood, one in which the denizens struggle with juggling marriage and children, desire and infidelity, personal and public lives.

On another level, the movie could be seen as an anatomy of consciousness, intertwining characters that embark on personal and collective journeys, at the end of which they reach some emotionally startling revelations about themselves and others.

The yarn's protagonist is Todd (Patrick Wilson), a handsome house-husband affectionately known to the stay-at-home moms of the neighborhood as “The Prom King.” He’s every woman’s sexual fantasy—all the women in the neighborhood cast lusting glances at him--except for his wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly). The family's breadwinner, Kathy is a documentarian (there's a wonderful scene in which she interviews a boy whose father had died in Iraq). A bit of a shrill, she puts pressure on Todd to pursue his legal career, since he has failed not once but twice the bar examinations.

The film's female protagonist, sort of Todd's counter figure, is the young, beautiful, and alert Sarah (Kate Winslet). Once a passionate feminist, aspiring to become a PhD in literature (but never wrote her dissertation), Sarah is stuck in a listless, sexless, run-of-the-mill marriage to Richard.

Sarah is the only mom in the neighborhood who has the courage to introduce herself to the "Prom King.” Sparks fly from their very first meeting, in which Sarah asks for Todd's phone number in order to impress her friends and win a five dollar bet—bit also to prove to herself that she can do it.

Gradually, amid talks at the neighborhood pool and walks in the park with their kids, Todd and Sarah delve into a heated affair. Todd sees a light in Sarah that her husband hasn’t noticed for years, and Sarah fills the emotional void that Kathy has created in her pursuit of more stable, upscale life, one defined by conspicuous consumption and materialistic possessions.

Sarah’s wayward attentions don’t seem to bother her husband Richard, who's He’s far too obsessed with an online stripper, Slutty Kay, to even notice. Richard becomes so enamored of this Internet exhibitionist that he lets himself get caught by wife Sarah in an uncompromising position that would embarrass every man, let alone a married one.

The specific reactions to Todd and Sarah’s infidelity cannot be described, but suffice is to say that it's steamy erotic affair with full nudity (of both) and daring sexual positions, at least as far as bourgeois sexuality is concerned. In a reading group session, the movie suggests an inventive parallel between the tragic heroine of Flaubert's seminal novel "Madame Bovary" and Sarah's adultery and predicament.

What rallies the community's characters together is the appearance of Ronnie (brilliantly played by Jackie Earle Halley) a convicted sex offender, who returns to the neighborhood after a stint in prison. While his mother May is still convinced that her baby boy could never do such terrible things, the rest of the community thinks otherwise. As Ronnie´s attempts to lead a “normal” life begin to falter, the neighborhood is quick to organize against him.

The scenes between May and Ronnie, and between Ronnie and the other town members are intense and disturbing, though not exploitational or gratuitous. Touching on a timely issue, Field and Perotta succeed in humanizing the pedophile and his predicament.

It also happens that two of Ronnie's scenes are among the best in the movie. Field shows a masterly touch in staging a pool scene, in which Ronnie shows up, irritating the other residents who, one by one, leave the area. In another great scene, Ronnie goes on a date (with the brilliant Jane Adams), under the initiative (or rather pressure) of his mother that goes expectedly very very wrong.

With all my enthusiasm, it's impossible to ignore some of the film's flaws. First and foremost is the character of Kathy, which, as written and as played (poorly) by Jennifer Connelly, makes no sense. Another actress might have done better with such underwritten part, which feels chopped; some crucial scenes might have ended on the editing room floor.

Another important scene, in which the two couples, Kathy and Todd and Sarah and Richard gather for dinner, is also a miss due to Connell's inept interpretation. The spouses are unaware of the illicit affair—that is, until Sarah spills the beans with one tiny remark. Whereas Sarah's husband is oblivious, Kathy gets the point—it's a great moment of realization, with dark humor that Connelly totally misses.

Watching this scene brings to mind another movie about adultery, "Heartburn," in which Meryl Streep, while having her hair done in a beauty parlor, suddenly realizes that her husband (Jack Nicholson) is having an affair with a socialite she knows well. A close-up of the Streep does marvels for her and for the scene, whereas with Connelly, it's completely lost.

Connelly might have been misdirected for her scenes with her mother, a bright woman who's suspicious of Tom, lack the humor and poignancy that they must have had on paper; Kathy's suspicious mother (whose husband also cheated on her) proposes to accompany Todd to wherever he goes.

The film's other major flaw is the voice-over narration, which feels arbitrary. Unlike "American Beauty," in which Kevin Spacey's protag narrated the story subjectively and ironically, here the commentary is sporadic and comes from the outside, from a third-person, thus creating an unnecessary distance between the characters and the viewers

Like "American Beauty," "Little Children" displays dark humor, though Field is not particularly adept at shifting the story's mood from the serio to the comic, and from the funny to the horrific between scenes, and often within the same scene. The movie's last reel is problematic due to the need to bring all the story strands together in more or less satisfying manner.

Despite these problems, Field has made a picture thast will linger in memory for a long time. Benefiting from consistently sharp writing, meticulous direction with at least half-a-dozen masterful set pieces, and three strong performances, "Little Children" is a work that flaunts in equal measure wry humor and irony, pathos and melodrama, above all brutally candid emotional truth that cuts to the bone.

Unlike the theatrically stylized "American Beauty," "Little Children" is both more original and authentic in its attention to detail; that film was like a pastiche of updated cliches of 1950s suburban movies. Though critical, "Littel Children" doesn't pander or judge any of its characters, not even the pedophile.

Hopefully, at year's end, Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, and Jackie Earle Halley will be seriously considered for awards by the various critics groups and the Academy.

I could actually see this winning, to tell the truth. They haven't awarded a movie like this for a while, the 00s has been Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Return of the King, Million Dollar Baby, and Crash. Creepy family drama, a touchy subject like pedophilia, it's something that's due.

Winslet will be this year's Senn Penn, after her four previous noms.

The reviews are indeed great after an early uncertainty at RT, especially among COTC critics; however, the box office is killing its chance at major awards. The screenplay nom is still a lock since that's least dependent on gross (e.g. Before Sunset, The Squid and the Whale), but I believe a win is out of question now. And Winslet, once competing for the win, may need to sweat out for a nom. I don't see other opportunities outside these two categories.