I've paid little attention to my Netflix queue lately; we've been working our way through episodes of The Wire and of the great BBC crime series Prime Suspect, which have been at the top of the queue for some six months or so. We sent back the last of the Prime Suspect disks last week and a few days later the movie Little Children showed up in the mail. I don't remember why I placed it in my queue but it was certainly on someone's recommendation, or at least because I read something good about it from someone I respect. I wish I could remember who so I can make a point never to follow their advice again.
I am, when it comes to modern culture, completely out of it. I never, and I mean never, listen to modern popular music. I don't even know the names of the bands or singers who are popular these days. If you asked me to name a single song that has been a top-40 hit over the past decade I couldn't do it, so separated I am from that culture. For me, it simply doesn't exist.
My distance from modern movies is not so complete. I still hear about most new-release movies, and read about some of them. On occasion, I am actually intrigued by one of them and desire to see it. But the vast majority of them pass me by with barely a notice. Which is fine; I've seen enough of the dreck that modern Hollywood produces to know that I'm not missing much.
When Little Children arrived, my wife, who handles the mail, was intrigued by the blurb on the Netflix sleeve. This is a major event in itself; rarely does she look forward to watching movies but she usually enjoys the good ones, and we quite often have short conversations afterwards about what worked and what didn't. I enjoy this a lot. We come at things from different perspectives and she'll often point things out that I've missed because we notice different things. A wise and perceptive woman I am married to, and I've learned over the years never to dismiss her take on something, even if it differs completely from mine. She's more often correct than not.
So we watched it. Or, to be more accurate, we watched about thirty minutes of it. By the time one of the characters started to whack off to porn in his office at work, we'd both had enough. Little Children is supposed to be some deep statement about the state of modern marriage and suburban life; but it is puerile, tendentious, and false. The little children here are supposed to be the adults portrayed in the movie but the term could also describe the folks who made this movie and who hold such views about a world they clearly know little about. Besides that, it is a badly made movie. After virtually every scene, a narrator's voice enters to tell us what is was we just saw, what the characters are thinking, and what we're supposed to think about it; in other words, the things most movies convey without the use of narration - part of the art of movie-making. It's as if they're scared we'll miss the point, but there is really no chance of that; each point is driven home with a hammer, then the narrator comes in to drive the nail in a little deeper. Which is not surprising; the filmmakers who have such obvious contempt for the regular people portrayed on the screen seem to have a similar contempt for the audience. They throw subtlety aside, assuming we're too stupid to get the point.
And what are the points? Suburban life kills the soul. Modern marriage is a lie. We'd all be happier if we acted on our secret desires. We're all hypocrites. Sigh. Aren't we all tired of this by now? The cynical, hipster, ultra-cool attitudes held by pop-culture mavens? In the fake world of Little Children, who are the sympathetic characters? Why, the bad mother who has affairs and the man she is having the affair with, a stay-at-home dad who has failed the bar exam multiple times. The stay-at-home moms don't fare so well. They are portrayed as lifeless, soulless, Stepford moms, who have no life beyond their children. The out-of-work policeman is portrayed as a slight lunatic, obsessed with making life hell for a recently released flasher who lives in the neighborhood. You're supposed to feel for the flasher. The wanker in his office, the husband of the woman having the affair, I'm not sure what we were supposed to think of him because we turned it off at that moment - it's really not something I've ever desired to see on film. Right before this we learn that there are others in the neighborhood who also have secrets obsessions - one likes to dress up as a woman behind closed doors, the other is a closet homosexual who has anonymous sex in seedy men's restrooms. You see? It's when we act on our shocking desires that we come closest to being real. Even the robotic women who take their children to the park each day, they too have these desires - they all lust after the guy who can't pass the bar - but they are too repressed to act on them. Suburban bigotry and intolerance are keeping us down, folks.
I for one have had enough of this type of 'art.' Now, I never intended this blog to be a constant rant and I will try in the near future to think of things to write about that are light and happy. Still, after watching a movie like this, it becomes all the more clear to me that I am out of step with the opinion-setters of the world. Call me old-fogy. I checked the reviews of Little Children on Rotten Tomatoes this morning and was not surprised that it was well-received. The people who write the reviews accept the attitudes of the pop-culture that emanates from Hollywood. I don't. I'll have to look backwards, as is my wont, to find art - movies, music, books - that speak to me. And that's not a problem; I've been doing it for years. I'm not dropping out. I'll still seek out the good in what's new. I'll endeavor not to become one of those tiresome bores who insists everything was wonderful back in his day and the world has gone to hell-in-a-hand-basket. I am an optimist, who looks forward to the future. But it will be a future without movies like Little Children.
Finally, to prove that I am not some prudish bore who is threatened when presented with uncomfortable material, I'll make a recommendation. If you are truly interested in stories that deal with adultery, the stifling aspects of marriage, the secret lives of others, read Chekhov's short story Lady With a Lapdog. It is brilliant. The protagonist Gurov also believes "that every man had his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy and under the cover of night." There is more understanding of human nature in a single paragraph here than in the whole of Little Children. Chekhov was a master of course, and an adult, unlike the makers of Little Children. He tells a real truth here; not the whole truth, or even close it, but a universal truth that all of us - the adults in the audience anyway - can understand.
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