Saying a movie is for children shouldn’t be an insult
IF you read multiple reviews of “A Wrinkle In Time” in late February, it would have been hard to miss a theme that popped up in many of them: that, for good or ill, this was a children’s movie. That’s not a surprising conclusion to draw. Ava DuVernay’s movie is an adaptation of a dearly beloved work of young people’s literature by Madeleine L’Engle. More interesting is the subtext lingering behind these disclaimers. What do we mean when we say a movie is for children? Are we underestimating what kids are capable of handling, and what art aimed at children should strive to be?
“The best way to appreciate what (director Ava DuVernay) has done is in the company of a curious and eager 10-year- old (as I was fortunate enough to do). Or, if you’re really lucky, to locate that innocent, skeptical, openhearted version of yourself,” film critic A.O. Scott recommended in the New York Times.
My friend Chris Orr, the film critic for the Atlantic, advised, “See it with a child or - as DuVernay recommends - with a child’s wonder. Otherwise, probably don’t bother seeing it at all.” More enthusiastically, April Wolfe testified in the Village Voice that she was “transported by DuVernay’s adaptation to the mind- set of my girlhood - embarrassing insecurities and all. This is not a cynic’s film. It is, instead, unabashedly emotional.”
Though none of these critics comes out and says so directly, they each imply that watching a movie from a child’s perspective is to be freed from something that descends on us as adults. Maybe, remembering what it means to be a kid means setting aside concerns about politics and the state of the world - or, more positively, approaching those problems with self- confidence. Perhaps the implication is that we should just embrace the giddy images DuVernay put on screen without worrying too much about how they compare to all the spectacles we’ve seen before. Or it could be that we’re supposed to do what plenty of adult fans have urged sceptical critics of their favourite shows and movies to do over the years: “stop overthinking” the work in question.
Whatever the implication, it was hard not to read reviews of “A Wrinkle In Time” and feel that some less-than- enthusiastic critics were invoking the childlike perspective as a subtle way to suggest the movie wasn’t very good using a supposedly separate set of standards for grown-up art. But that supposes children are simpler and less discerning than adults - which seems awfully unfair.
In fact, the art that most effectively summons what it’s like to be a child explores the moments we discover that the world is more complicated than we once knew.
Pixar has thrived on this revelation: The “Toy Story” movies are about the prospect of abandonment or outliving your use; “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory” examine what it’s like to be exposed to the world without adult protection; “Inside Out” is a moving portrait of falling out of emotional equilibrium. Children’s classics - including Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series, and Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” - endure in part because they recognise that children are not protected from disease, death, hunger, marital st ri fe, violence and racism. The movies aimed at adults that most successfully invoke the feeling of childhood are those that don’t shy away from difficulty. The rage Suzy ( Kara Hayward) feels in Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” and the resentment that Mason ( Ellar Coltrane) feels towards his strict, and then increasingly abusive, stepfather in Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” are electric, deeply felt and decidedly not cute or safe. This is true of the best moments in “A Wrinkle In Time,” as well. The script’s constant flow of affirmations - of Meg Murry’s (Storm Reid) hair, her fortitude, her presence on the roster of “Warriors of the Light” - have dominated the conversation. But the more interesting scenes reveal how weak and unreliable adults can be. Whether it’s Meg’s brother, Charles Wallace ( Deric McCabe) overhearing cruel gossip from the teachers at his school, or Meg rescuing her father (Chris Pine) only to realise he doesn’t know how long he’s been gone, much less how to save the universe, “A Wrinkle In Time” captures childhood most powerfully not in its candy- coloured flights of fantasy, but in its deeply human reckonings. — WPBloomberg