|
A
cautionary tale if ever there was one—and
no, we’re not talking adultery. Something
far more soul-wrenching: life in the
suburbs. Todd Field’s adaptation of Tom
Perrotta’s novel posits the suburbs as a
breeding ground for intolerance,
isolationism, narrowmindedness,
Puritanism—as well as any number of other
social ills.
After seeing Little Children, a city
dweller’s smugness is almost guaranteed: the
film is a veritable cinematic validation of
an urbanite’s desire to remain living in a
tiny closet-sized apartment, so long as it’s
in the city. Because otherwise who could
bear the stultifying suburban boredom which
causes Kate Winslet’s character to finally
break down and buy a—gasp—red bathing suit,
in order to bed Patrick Wilson’s character
atop the basement washing machine? Then
again, who can blame her, given that her
husband is hopelessly addicted to internet
porn? And the women in her neighborhood are
the progeny of Stepford wives and Salem
witch-hunters (who, in this film, are
hellbent on destroying the neighborhood
pedophile).
Using Madame Bovary as a template, Little
Children reveals the increasingly
thoughtless choices made when
overly-privileged people remain trapped in
states of arrested development. Hardly
anyone in the film seems to be fully mature,
or capable of adult decisions, or aware of
such a concept as personal
responsibility—and in that, Little Children
seems a perfect painful metaphor for the
current state of the nation. Now if only we
could get some of our irresponsible leaders
and nefarious CEOs to self-castrate.
|
