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Kid movies not for kids
Nov. 22nd, 2008 11:33 pmI saw Let the Right One In tonight. I'm still a bit stunned. It's a Swedish vampire movie, and it's as delicate and lucid and sharp and cold as an icicle. It's about a bullied, fragile, almost translucently pale 12-year-old boy and the 12-year-old girl who moves in next door. Against a frozen winter backdrop, it slips from feral brutality to awkward charm in the space of an indrawn breath. The kids are amazing, the story is subtle and darkly warm. It's really, really beautiful. And horrifying.
Terry Gilliam's Tideland, another kid movie that is most earnestly not for kids, was last Saturday's movie. It's very hard to watch, but it, too, is remarkably good. The little girl protagonist is living through upsetting, dark, morally squeamish situations — but we see everything through her eyes, and her sunny innocence (or desperate resilience) transmutes the blackest horror into wonder, into elements of a fairytale. That tension between the fabulous (which Gilliam is so good at showing us) and the bleak left me twitching.
I wouldn't recommend Tideland unless you know what you're in for (and/or want to leave fingernail furrows in your couch); it's a bit like Requiem for a Dream, but less blatant. Let the Right One In, on the other hand, is wonderful, and I'd recommend it unreservedly. Look for it at the Oscars. (N.B.: It has both gore and subtitles, if either is a dealbreaker for anyone.)
Terry Gilliam's Tideland, another kid movie that is most earnestly not for kids, was last Saturday's movie. It's very hard to watch, but it, too, is remarkably good. The little girl protagonist is living through upsetting, dark, morally squeamish situations — but we see everything through her eyes, and her sunny innocence (or desperate resilience) transmutes the blackest horror into wonder, into elements of a fairytale. That tension between the fabulous (which Gilliam is so good at showing us) and the bleak left me twitching.
I wouldn't recommend Tideland unless you know what you're in for (and/or want to leave fingernail furrows in your couch); it's a bit like Requiem for a Dream, but less blatant. Let the Right One In, on the other hand, is wonderful, and I'd recommend it unreservedly. Look for it at the Oscars. (N.B.: It has both gore and subtitles, if either is a dealbreaker for anyone.)
