Damn! I adored In the Bedroom when it first came out (haven't seen it since), and the excellent preview did have me looking forward to this. Of course, opinions differ, but with both you and Nick ragging on it so far, my hopes have indeed diminished. Still, if it's this bad, I'll want to see it for entirely different reasons anyway.

Son of a bitch. I, too, am disheartened, having liked the trailer and enjoyed In The Bedroom (and Spacek) very much. When I first read Nick's Little Children review, I was hoping that you may have had a different take on the film. I guess that's a no go. But like Rob, I still plan on boarding what could be a sinking ship. I've been warned.

I quite enjoy that metaphor. At least with such in movies, one doesn't necassarily drown (or freeze) when the vessel finally goes under. Plus, with the really bad ones, you could profess your survival skills after the fact (imagine, T-shirts reading "I Survived Bad Boys II" or "Cannibal Holocaust").

Conclusive proof of Todd Field's condescension was revealed during the conference following the film's NYFF press screening. A man in the audience asked the director to explain a vague sequence in which Kate Winslet's character walks into the house and incurs the disdain of the friend who was taking care of her child while she was away with Patrick Wilson (unbeknownst to the other woman). Rather than answer the question for the man, Field asked him to replay the scene in his head and figure it out himself. "Think about what happened during the scene," Field encouraged, as if he were talking to a pre-schooler. But the funny thing is that one of the reasons Field gave to explain the older woman's reaction was the fact that Winslet's character didn't walk through the welcome-home sign in the other room that the woman and Winslet's daughter made for her. But for the woman to have known that, she would have needed to have x-ray vision. This is emblematic of what's wrong with this film: The scenes that don't beat you over the head with their meaning don't make a lick of sense.

I was at that press conference, and you got it wrong Ed. What Field said was that Winslet's character offered her friend money, and that the woman was offended and left the room unhappy. The bit about Winslet not walking through the door with the welcome-home sign was his lead in to the answer. I didn't think he was condescending to the guy at all. It seemed to me that he was just trying to have a conversation with the man about his question. I don't know how I really feel about this film, but your review is troubling in its own codescension.

Mark, I got that the friend was offended because Winslet's character offered her money, but figured that couldn't be the only reason for her rage. After all, people offer friends money all the time for their services and they don't get so uppity about the gesture as this woman did. This is to say that there had to be more to explain her rage, which is why Field's bringing up of the banner non-walkthrough struck me as more than just a lead-in—a reaching but honest attempt on his part to explain the complexity of the woman's reaction. I'm not dogging Field for shedding light on the scene, but the way he went about it—which others at the screening I saw the film with were also taken aback by. More importantly, I wonder how my review has condescended to anyone.

Your review uses language full of vitriol, and seventh-grade sarcasm passing for clever. You say, "Someone needs to promise me that they'll edit a mash-up of this movie and scenes of Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons screaming, "Will someone please think of the children!" Maybe then the dead seriousness of this shitstorm will become apparent to everyone." Earlier you write, "Expertly groomed for Oscar, this laughable concoction barely passes for satire—it is, nothing more nothing less, than the most pretentious film ever made about the problems festering in our suburban neighborhoods." That's quite a statement. I think you were onto somthing when you went down the road of "prentenious." However, it seems clear to me that the aim of the film is too illustrate just how judgemental, foolish, and pretenious we can all be at times. Again, I don't know that I like this film all that much—it was uncomfortable viewing—but the accusations you level against the film and this filmmaker feel off-the-mark.

Mark, what about my so-called "vitriol" makes it a form of "seventh-grade sarcasm" as oppossed to, say, 12th-grade sarcasm? (I mean, I do have a high-school degree for chrissake, so I would like to know how I can improve my writing.) I'm not trying to make anything pass for clever: The comparison to The Simpsons is relevant because Fields is trying to illuminate the root of the same paranoia that propels characters like Helen Lovejoy, except the tragedy of this film is that it wants to scan as satire, when it takes itself dead seriously. It would appear that you would have preferred me to have reviewed the film as politely as possible. That's boring, and the only thing worse than terrible but insanely watchable films like Little Children are polite but boring ones like The Go Master. The point of Little Children may have had to do with passing judgment, but the context had nothing to do with reviewing movies. (That's Todd Solondz's agenda.) I haven't accused Fields of anything other than being condescending to his characters—simplifying their problems and not caring about them enough. That's not a wild accusation. When you direct your characters as if they were animals in a zoo (meaning something less than human), that's exactly what you're being. He literally dehumanizes them. And when you explain everything in your story via discussions of Great Books and a sardonically summarizing narration, Fields talks down to his audience, which includes you and I. Really, you should tell us what you think of the film—no-holds-barred—when you know, and don't spare us the blood and guts.

All right ed, fair is fair. After walking around with this film for nearly a week now two things strike me. The first, is that I can't shake it. It makes me angry. The second, is that I believe this was the intent. The film provokes you in an almost underhanded way, in that it keeps you off balance. Is it humorous, is it dead-on serious? Throughout the film the characters display ugly, foolish, charming, and even tender behavior. Yes, bully and judge. But they also genuinely love one another. I did not feel led into any particular bent by the film. I found myself full of a lot of confused feelings that derailed me for days. Isn't that what film is suppossed to do? The literary references, specifically the Madame Bovary bit, I find interseting in that Kate Winslet's character does a 180 on her opinion about the book. Her interpretation of the novel to rationalize her foray into adultry are conveinient, and misguided. For me this is not trivial given the behavior of this character. It is a moment of pretense, and I believe that Perrotta, and Field knew exactly what they were doing with this contradiction. After seeing Field's first film I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't believe that he is judging the characters, or as you say, condesceding to them. He is trying to provoke, and for me anyway, that is a good thing.

Mark, why does the film make you angry? I know it makes me angry, but that's because I think it's lousy. I don't doubt that the characters love each other, but this seems to have very little to do with the film's value. You explain accurately what the Madame Bovary scene is all about, but given how everything is so neatly laid out for the audience, there's really no way of getting any of it wrong. I get that Kate Winslet's character sympathizes with Madame Bovary because she finds herself living the character's life, but where's the profundity in this? I resent the way the film sets up a crisis only to incorporate a Cliffs Notes number into the story to neatly parse what has just passed. This is what I mean when Field condescends to his audience: He doesn't trust our intelligence to interpret the themes of the story on our own.

I caught Little Children in the city last night before coming home (I would have seen Inland Empire, I swear, but it would have obstructed plans I had with an ex--only for her to then blow them off when the time came, dammit). Rarely have I seen material so majestically fucked up by the director. What bothered me most was how suffocatingly blocked off every word and action felt (does motivation exist in this universe?), but talk about not making a lick of sense: what was with Jennifer Conolly's lingering gaze at Kate Winslet's toes under the table? Did I miss some kind of color symbolism earlier that would have been reflected by her choice in nail polish, or does one of my favorite actresses have a latent foot fetish Fields felt necassary to indulge?

Yes, Nick and Ed both ragged on Little Children, but what I find fascinating is that they both spout the same exact, exaggerated criticisms.  Which would be fine--critics often agree about a given film's flaws--but considering that both critics provide juvenile, knee-jerk, and literal readings, and then fault the filmmakers rather than their own reductive arguments, I'm beginning to think, now more than ever before, that the writers of Slant are sharing a brain.  (And Ed, I'd take prentension over a person who uses the word "shitstorm" any day of the week.)Go ahead, continue to reinforce the wrong-headed belief that the narration spells everything out for the audience.  This is the traditional stance on VO that screenwriting 101 professors bludgeon into their too-trusting students.  Yet, this criticism is being lobbed by Ed, who, like myself thought Dogville was a masterpiece.  Ever think that, like Hurt's Dogville narration, the narratiion of Little Children is being quite subversive and ironic at times?  To take it at a literal level, to not question the narration, is a failure of the audience, not the screenwriters.  If anything, the narration works to make scenes even more complex and multi-valent, resisting the pat readings that Nick and yourself are so quick to make.Scenes to consider:Brad tells Sarah that too much is made of beauty.  The narrator tells us that this comment is intended as a compliment.  Really?  Or, is this simply how Brad reads it?  Or was this how he wanted Sarah to read his comment, but it was really a veiled slight for asking him repeatedly about his wife during sex.  Sarah's hurt in the middle of the night was probably intended--she crossed the line with the wife questions--but the narrator and Brad want the audience to believe another reading.  Or the end narration, the esposual of hope for the future.  This after a Larry has essentially caused Ronnie to castrate himself so this defamed cop can then come in and save his life.  The scapegoat of the pedophile is serving many functions for the characters, but the narrator informs the audience that this is a sign of hope for this community!  Something else is going on; this IS NOT superfluous narration.And Ed, you claim to be listening to Mark's correct reading of the Bovary scene, and then you contradict Mark in your response.  The point is not that Sarah now identifies with Bovay (that would be ho-hum), but that her so-called "intelligent," grad-level perspective allows Sarah to rationalize her adultery.  Whereas Brad may seem a base pig, at least he does not try to justify his actions.  He tells her--during sex no less--that he feels guilt.  Sarah would never feel guilt over the adultery for she has wrongfully (once again, the film is being ironic!) positioned herself as victimized feminist woman.  Field wants the audience to grab on to this explanation, a way of making the audience sympathetic to the Sarah character, to make the audience complicit in the skewed moral relativism that all the characters are engaged in.  Or then again, maybe I'm wrong, and this film was just a shitstorm.  (Ha, Irony!)

Scott, you prefer "pretension" because I used the word "shitstorm" in a blog entry? Does this mean you prefer Rex Reed to Michael Atkinson? Not only do you fail to clarify what about our gripes is "juvenile," "knee-jerk," and "literal," but you presume that Slant's writers must share a brain because two of us happen to share the same opinion of a movie. Have you willfully ignored the fact that the last two "reviews" I've written on this blog were in direct opposition to the reviews filed on the site proper? Come on, you can do better than this! It also seems like a willful form of ignorance that you would think my problems with the film's narration reveal a vendetta against narration in general. I think it's abundantly clear that my issues with the film's "complex" narration has everything to do with its snide, obvious agenda and nothing to do with the received wisdom about voiceovers from Screenwriting 101 classes. Your engagement of Dogville also seems unfair: That film's ironic narration fits the equally ironic narrative like a glove—such is not the case with Little Children, which uses narration as a desperate counterpoint. (Is this a good time to say that Jeremiah Kipp, Keith Uhlich, Paul Schrodt, and Nick Schager are just a handful of the site's regular contributors who thoroughly dislike Dogville?) I realize "irony" and "subversion" is the goal of this film's narration, but what exactly is it subverting? Okay, to be fair to you, once you get past the insult of your first two paragraphs, you set out to provide support for your assertions that the film's narration is a master stroke. It's obvious that you have thought this out, but your one comment ("…but the narrator and Brad want the audience to believe another reading") demands further elucidation (what is this other reading you speak of?)—either that or it confirms my suspicions that the narrative exists only to deviously and reachingly add dimensions to a story of very limited complexity. "Something else is going on" you say? You may disagree, but I fear the answer is nothing. Also, it's not irony for you to entertain my belief that the film may be a shitstorm. That's placating.

If I recall, Paul said that watching Dogville felt like being cavity searched by a Nazi. To which I replied: it hurts so good.

You are so wrong.  This is the best film of the year.

Did you actually see the movie or is this a review of American Beauty and the trailer for Little Children?  Boy, you really missed the boat here.  You are factually wrong about many aspects of the movie, particularly the narration.  Readers should know that the narration DOES NOT explicate things that we don't know.  Where did you get that idea?As for the suburban satire, there's little if any of that.  It's about the suburbanites and how they think of themselves.  The film does not ridicule them for being normal or anything of the kind.  It is in fact, what American Beauty would have been if it wasn't so bitter.  (But without the closeted homo-cidal-sexual next door).Little Children is nothing less than a critique of the meta-narrative.  Wrap your mind around that one!