Playing a precocious child on screen, especially one this
young, is a rather tricky prospect. It involves someone far too young to be
expressing such ideas being able to successfully express them, while also
making them seem wholly natural to be spoken by that person in the first place.
Words cannot express how many child characters I’ve seen in fiction that both
look and feel like they were written by adults with an adult’s view of the
world; it’s not a good fit, to say the least. Mckenna Grace, in no uncertain
terms, pulls off that gambit with surprising ease. Not only is every word out
of her mouth not that difficult to take seriously, when she’s called on to
emote, she is heartbreaking.
Evans as
her primary caregiver works really well at balancing out his working-class
sensibilities with an understanding of what Mary would want in her formative
life, making the scenes between him and her incredibly warm and inviting. Jenny
Slate as Mary’s initial teacher is probably the most natural with her dialogue,
presenting her character as someone who has more going for her than just
teaching.
Octavia Spencer as Frank’s neighbour is a very welcome
addition, helped by how this is a film far more worthy of her talents than
something like The Shit Shack, and Glenn Plummer as Frank’s lawyer takes a
break from talking about how everybody got AIDS and shit to fit nicely into the
main dynamic during the courtroom scenes. And then there’s Lindsay Duncan…
yikes. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with her performance, as she does
remarkably well at balancing out her own conflicting views; it’s just the
character herself is insanely loathsome, which I’ll explain further in a bit,
and the fact that she doesn’t ever reach the point of “Could someone please take this woman off-screen so I
can enjoy this?” is frankly astounding.
As good as the actors all are on their own terms, it’s the
relationships and chemistry between them where Tom Flynn’s writing really
starts to shine through. One of the bigger conceits of the film is how all
people, even those of extraordinary abilities, should be regarded as people
first, and credit to Flynn in that he makes every character here feel exactly
that. Yes, even Evelyn, a woman who describes her own daughter who committed
suicide as “weak”, feels like a real person and not just a composite of all
things heinous. The film as a whole is very emotionally-driven, emphasising EQ
rather than IQ in character conversations, and between the mostly-warm dialogue
(pretty sure Duncan learnt how to breathe frozen water vapour instead of human
air for this role) and the aptitude of the cast saying it, the emotional side
of things rings very true. It taps into catharsis, for both positive and
negative emotions, without delving too deep into melodrama that would hinder
the story behind the words.
And speaking of the story behind the words, let’s get a
rather obvious comparison out of the way: This film’s premise is indeed very
similar to X+Y (A Beautiful Young Mind), which I covered last year. However,
where that film kept its focus around the genius in question, this film delves
further into the possible outcomes concerning pushing said genius to fulfill
their potential. We see how the death of Mary’s mother, along with the circumstances
that led to it, affected the family but we also see how they in turn reacted to
it. Frank focuses on making Mary comfortable in life, allowing her a “normal”
life that isn’t strictly defined by mathematics. Evelyn, by contrast, pushed
her daughter to seemingly volatile extremes to fulfill her own potential, and
appears to have a real disdain for intellect that isn’t utilized.
Now, as
someone who has covered more than a few products of idiocy on this blog, there
is an argument to be made about how even-handed this is… maybe. Such an
argument won’t be made by me because this film takes an inordinate amount of
effort into painting Evelyn as the absolute antagonist of this story. Aside
from the aforementioned glib perspective on her daughter’s death, which is of a
brand that is guaranteed to piss me off, it’s clear that her actions ended up
having a far more negative effect than she is willing to admit. But does that
make her wrong?
I mentioned in my review for X+Y that my own school experiences
involved being put into an advanced English largely against my wishes due to
high test scores. I should also mention that, despite being consistently told
throughout my life by adults that I had real potential, I stuck to mainstream
schools for my entire life up to this point. And I couldn’t be happier for that
choice.
What some people tend to under-realise when it comes to those with
higher intelligence is that human beings are not computers. No matter how
intelligent a person is, no one person exists solely to perform calculations,
create chemical formulas, or anything else attached to higher learning.
Intellectual needs are a factor, but so are emotional and psychological needs.
While the more formative years are where our brains are most active and
receptive to learning, which is why it is far harder to learn a new language as
an adult rather than as a child or teenager, it is also where people’s outlook
on the world begins to take shape.
Between Frank and Evelyn duking it out with words and custody
claims, the film shows that there needs
to be a balance between allowing a person’s mind to expand where it can reach
and letting them have their own life separate from that. I was given the chance
to live life as any other kid, and because of that chance to let things grow
more naturally, it led me to where I am today. I’ve seen and even experienced
what academic pressure to succeed can do to a person… and quite frankly, I
don’t see the potential rewards being worth the risks, especially as they are shown
here in how they affected Mary’s mother and could go on to affect her. What
makes this film’s understanding of human emotion work as well as it does is
that, along with being utilised by capable actors and capable filmmakers, it
feels real as someone who was in a similar circumstance once upon a time.
All in all, this is a very stirring and resonant story about
the struggle between being a kid and being a genius, with all the rather
unsettling outcomes that can result from that. The acting is fantastic, with
Mckenna Grace absolutely knocking it out of the park, the dialogue may reach
serious unpleasantries but is never not engaging, and the story itself
highlights aspects of child development that are worth keeping in mind. Knowing how
neurologically atypical people are still being given the hard shoulder nowadays
for a number of reasons, I’m quite thankful that this film exists, both in
concept and in its extremely deft execution.
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