Little Children: A Review

Sadness reigns in Little Children. We begin with a summer playground populated by three bored housewives and their children. This is their daily ritual, a morning at the playground, engaging “conversation,” which is more a series of anecdotes and opinions delivered to nobody in particular. In brief glimpses, we know the basic unhappiness that seems to define each of their lives.

Alongside this conversation, we meet Sarah Pierce, Kate Winslet’s too-bright mother, struggling to find some place in this universe. A doctoral candidate in English Literature, her bright mind is unchallenged by the life she has chosen, and finds the playground a small solace that gives her a change of scenery, if not a real escape from the madness she feels lurking below the surface of her life.

While we come to know Sarah more than the other women, she seems at home with them in dealing with a malaise about her life. Having fiercely fought to stay home as the primary caregiver for her daughter, she questions why she took that stand, and finds herself desperate every day for the small amounts of time she has to herself when her husband comes home. Her marriage, though, is becoming increasingly strained. Her husband, presented to us as a dreadfully dull advertising executive, excuse me, “branding” executive, has himself become lost in a fantasy world. One click of the button began his slow seduction into the world of internet fantasy, and we observe one of the most realistic depictions of the comic-sadness that is internet pornography (a $4.9 billion industry, by one count). While Sarah catches him in the act, we never watch them fight through the issue. Instead, Sarah seeks her solace elsewhere.

For awhile, that solace will be found in the arms of Brad. We first meet Brad as the “Prom King,” dubbed so by the Playground Three for his frequent visits to the park with his son. He is the handsome stranger, and on a whim and a bet, Sarah meets him, and finds herself drawn to him. Their first encounter has its own strange ending, but eventually they come back together, and forge a “public friendship,” spending afternoons at the pool while their kids play.

Brad has his own struggles. A law school graduate, he is studying for his third attempt at the bar exam. While he readily accepts and talks about that failure in his life, he also finds himself drawn to various things, whether watching boys skateboarding or playing night football, that offer the hope of rediscovering his own since of masculinity. He’s married to a bombshell wife, played by Jennifer Connelly, and she pours herself into her job such that we sense a basic distance in their marriage from the very beginning.

Brad and Sarah find in each other a fantasy that they can live out. For Sarah, she sees in Brad a handsome lover who finds her engaging. He sees in her someone that believes in him, that sees the man in him that he no longer sees in himself. Their affair has been played out in their minds long before they ever act on it. When they do, it is nothing more than the raw expression of the pent up fantasies they have been living out in their minds since they met.

Then there’s the sex offender. In one of the stranger subplots in recent memory, we are introduced to Ronnie, a sex offender recently released from prison and now living in the neighborhood with his mother. Our first glimpse of him is only through the posters that the “Committee for Concerned Citizens,” actually just one unemployed ex-police officer, is putting up around the neighborhood. The town is abuzz about his presence. Everyone has an opinion about him, opinions he seems to confirm with every turn throughout the film.

We first meet him when he comes to the pool and swims around with goggles. When the police remove him from the premises, he protests that he was only there to “cool off,” but we know otherwise. In perhaps one of the saddest dating scenes in recent memory, he shows the depth of his sickness with the blind date his mother setup for him. He is a deeply disturbed man, and creates a level of discomfort any time he is present in the film.

While one might get lost in the increasing diversity of these characters, the film finds its heart in a single discussion. Invited to a book club to discuss Madame Bovary, Sarah endures a rant from the most arrogant of the Playground Three, who dismisses Bovary’s wanderings as the actions of a “slut.” Enduring the rant, Sarah responds with her gracious assessment of the character. She sympathizes with her for the unhappiness that defines her existence, and her willingness to fight against it. While she understands that she fails in her efforts, she admires her effort.

Hence, the film gives us characters who are each dealing with a defining kind of disappointment with life. For each, redemption comes not in a destination or a solution to the problem, but in a willingness to fight against that unhappiness.

Director Todd Field wisely resists a Hollywood solution to this drama. I found myself cringing through much of the last 20 minutes of the film, expecting a mundane turn in the plot. Despite several chances to do so, though, Field opts to stay true to his premise. This is not a film that gives easy solutions to its drama. I don’t even know if Field has an answer to the questions he’s asking, which allows him to find a more honest conclusion than he might otherwise have offered.

I expect that Little Children is the kind of film that a lot of Christians would have trouble seeing, but it may be just the kind of movie that many of them should see. It’s understanding of the despair that can take hold in a prosperous life is something that is probably familiar to many of us. One need only observe the balding 40-something in his convertible, the sports-obsessed at any weekend game, the conversations at a local Starbuck’s or at the local mall to see the reality of angst in the midst of success and the power of escapism to offer a salve for this angst. Perhaps we would easily dismiss the solutions these characters find for their problems, but I don’t know that we are always leading the way in finding better solutions.

The piece that I admire most about the film is its unwillingness to settle for despair. This is the necessary first step in the fight for joy, a fight that to my mind defines the Christian’s existence.

As I write this, I’m awaiting a phone call from my wife to tell me that she has gone into labor with our first child. I await word on her grandmother’s heart surgery and my cousin’s chemo treatments. I recall my conversations with friends in recent days over their frustrations over their jobs and their excitement about their pregnancies, coming weddings and graduations.

What is the outcome of this constant mix of joy and sadness, pleasure and pain all played out in a life that can move from seeming terminably long to dreadfully short in a span of hours? For many, the outcome is the kind of malaise that Little Children understands so well. We can come to see joy as a periodic byproduct that may or may not come in the midst of our journey, but certainly can’t be expected in the midst of life’s disappointments.

I think the Christian story describes a different kind of reality. It takes the desperate searching that the film describes, but points it to the Source of joy itself. C.S Lewis tells us that the basic problem of the human condition is that we are often too easily satisfied, settling for lesser pleasures than that which we are meant to know. Little Children understands some of the reasons for that, because for some the mediocrity of living makes real joy just seem to hard to actually experience.

If we are to engage in the kind of pursuit that both Lewis and Little Children consider, it may take the kind of dissatisfaction that the movie explores. If we are satisfied with a new convertible, a decent IRA, relatively conflict-free marriages and obedient children, what is there in us that will crave the passion of delighting in God above all things? Little Children understands what it takes many of us years of heartache to learn, namely, that these things will not satisfy. Resisting the temptation to settle for the mediocre as the best we can find, our call is to fight for joy, and to keep fighting until we find the real thing.