Directed by: Scott McGehee & David Siegel.
Written by: Nancy Doyne & Carroll Cartwright based on the novel by Henry James.
Starring: Julianne Moore (Susanna), Steve Coogan (Beale), Alexander Skarsgård (Lincoln), Joanna Vanderham (Margo), Onata Aprile (Maisie).
What
Maisie Knew is one of those rare movies about childhood that is made for
adults. The entirety of the movie is told from the point of view of Maisie
(Onata Aprile) who watches her rock star mom Susanna (Julianne Moore) and art
dealer dad Beale (Steve Coogan) constantly argue – and eventually decide to get
a divorce. They both fight for custody of Maisie – but not because either
actually wants her, but so the other one doesn’t get her. They will both
quickly remarry – Beale to Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who was Maisie’s nanny,
and Susanna to Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgard), a bartender – and essentially for
the same reason – so that when they have custody of Maisie, they can pass her
off on someone else to do the actual work. Surprisingly, the movie is based on
a novel by Henry James – who wrote it in 1897 because he thought upper class
parents in Britain were becoming callous and unfeeling towards their children.
Unlike most parents, they don’t sacrifice anything for their kids – they see
them as accessories that they try to fit into their schedules. The book is now
over 100 years old – but still relevant. The parents here may be in Manhattan
and not England in the early years of this century, and not the waning days of
the 1800s, but they are still basically the same.
But
Maisie does not understand everything. She’s still a child – and although she
is a perceptive one – one who remembers all the broken promises made to her,
she doesn’t quite understand why her parents are behaving the way they do. The
good news for Maisie is that both Margo and Lincoln love her – and take better
care of her than her real parents do. They are essentially in the same boat –
people who hastily married someone they thought they loved, only to realize
that they have been used and are essentially a babysitter that doesn’t get
paid. But they do love Maisie – and they start to see each other in a different
light.
The
movie is thankfully free of too much sentimentality. Directors Scott McGehee
and David Siegel – making their best film since The Deep End (2001) –
understand that they don’t need to ramp up the emotions too high here – they
don’t need to lay things on too thickly, because Maisie’s story is
heartbreaking enough as it is. Perhaps they cross the line into sentimentality
at the end of the movie – which struck me as unrealistic – but we forgive them
that trespass, because while it’s not an ending we can quite believe, it is the
ending we want.
The
performances in the movie are quite good – starting with Aprile’s as Maisie,
who is not cloying or cutesy – but a realistic child performance. She plays a
child used to being ignored and disappointed, who wants to make others around
her happy, and doesn’t hold grudges. Kids are like that – it’s only when they
grow up and realize how shitty their parents were, that they resent them.
Coogan is excellent as a blithely careless Beale. He doesn’t realize what an
asshole he’s being – which of course makes him an even bigger asshole. Moore is
terrific as the self-involved Susanna. Strangely, while she is more volatile
than Beale, she is also the better parent – at least she wants Maisie to be
happy, and eventually realizes that she won’t be happy with her. Skarsgard and
Vanderham have rather thankless roles – they are perhaps a little too perfect –
but they do the best they can with the roles.
There
have been a lot of films made about divorce in the years since Robert Benton’s
Kramer vs. Kramer – but What Maisie Knew is both one of the most low-key, and
effective, ones I have seen. It looks at the children of divorce from their
point-of-view, and dispels the myth that divorce does no harm on the children
involved. It is quite a great film – it is a little too simplistic at the end
for that – but it’s a quietly moving one.
