What Maisie Knew was a movie that I accidentally watched twice. I couldn’t remember if I had seen it and was not entirely convinced until I was about 30 minutes in. But since I had already made it that far and I couldn’t remember anything that happened in the movie, I decided to stick it out. Now I remember why I had forgotten it all. It was worth forgetting. It’s not that it’s a bad movie. On the contrary, I would consider it to be a slightly above-average movie. The main problem with it is that it had much more potential than it lived up to, and the story that was trying to be told at the beginning of the movie was very different than the movie that was shown at the end.
The star of the film was six-year-old Masie (Onata Aprile). The story was told through the young actress’s eyes, and she held her own with three Hollywood heavyweights (Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, and Alexander Skarsgard). Aprile, who I believe is in every scene, stole that show as the innocent little girl who is used as a pawn during her parent’s custody battle. Unfortunately, this movie showed promise in several ways that veered clear off the road because of one simple yet major flaw in the script (which I will discuss). Still, it was ultimately held together by the performances of Aprile, Skarsgard, and Joanna Vanderham.
The movie starts with a bitter breakup between Maisie’s mother, Susanna (Moore – The Kids Are All Right, Don Jon), and father, Beale (Coogan – Philomena, In The Loop). Both her hellbent on “winning” the custody battle. Susanna wants full custody, while Beale is hoping for joint custody. Maisie currently lives with her mother and has gone so far as to change the locks to keep Beale away. The fights at the beginning of this movie are brutal. Susanna and Beale scream, yell and shout vulgar and cruel words at one other. Sometimes Maisie is listening, and they don’t know about it. Sometimes she is listening, and they do know about it. Both parents seem less worried about the impression that they are leaving on their daughter than they do about winning the argument at hand. And, maybe it goes without saying, when Beale is away, Susanna talks poorly about him in front of Maisie and vice versa. In a way, this seems perfectly normal. With Aprile doing an excellent job as Maisie without even having to say a word playing opposite the underrated Coogan (who is nearly unrecognizable in this role) and Moore, who has four Academy Award nominations to her name, you’d think this movie had the potential of Kramer Vs. Kramer of the 21st century. You would be wrong.
This movie has an 87% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I have yet to read a review that has slammed it. Roger Ebert praised the film in one of his final movie reviews ever. I don’t think I like it as much as these famous critics, but the movie brings to the forefront an important topic. And that topic is innocence and what we do with it. I could talk about the merits of the film more in-depth if the time lapse for this movie were a few years instead of a few short months. Maisie is six years old at the beginning. She is six years old at the end. She’s changed, but I don’t think we see very many of these changes. We see the changes in the four adult characters around them. But a few short months isn’t long enough to showcase these changes and make them believable.
***Spoiler Alert***
As much as Susanna and Beale fight over Maisie at the movie’s start, they quickly want to forget about her or at least have the responsibility of raising her. Susanna is far more interested in recording and touring with her rock band than being with her daughter, and Beale is involved with business affairs that take him to places such as Italy, England, and France. We are led to believe that, almost overnight, the two go from caring immensely about their daughter’s well-being to only wanting her to be around when it is convenient for them. Beale’s motives seem more straightforward. It’s almost as if he was trying to get custody of Maisie just because it was what Susanna didn’t want. With Susanna, it’s almost like her music career becomes her drug and everything else becomes ill-relevant. Again, this is something I’d be more likely to understand over time. But this has all happened, and the six-year-old heroine of the movie looks exactly as she did in the first scene. On top of that, they both get re-married while she is still six years old! All of these things are happening in a few months? No, no, and no. The movie is adapted from Henry James’ 1897 novel; obviously, they didn’t have electric guitars and cell phones back then. There were no airplanes to fly overseas or buses to cross-country on, so we can assume that the parents were never as physically far away as they are in the movie.
But, to make sure you understand the point I made above, Susanna and Beale are dating other people right after they separate; they are already married again! Both of them! Both of them to much younger, more attractive people. The self-righteous Beale has married Maisie’s nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham). What are Beale’s intentions? Who knows. But he does marry a much younger, beautiful woman who knows he will be there to watch after his daughter while he runs worldwide. Yet he refuses to do such things as put his wife’s name on the lease for the apartment? And Susanna has no time to raise her daughter because she is busy with her rock and roll band (I don’t even know if we know that she plays music in the first 25-30 minutes of the movie). Still, she has time to romance and then marry a bartender named Lincoln, who is 20 years her junior (Skarsgard Melancholia, Straw Dogs). Again, no, no, and no.
But both of these events occur, rather than being a nasty custody battle and watching through a young girl’s eyes how her parents duke it out and play her off on one another. Instead, it becomes a story of Margo and Lincoln trying to figure out what to do with this daughter they have seemed to inherit because of the irresponsibility of the girl’s parents. Maisie is not oblivious to this either. These new people are thrown into her life. She is tentative and reluctant at first but soon realizes that they, especially Lincoln, have her best interests at heart, even though they have no idea how to raise this girl.
***End of Spoiler***
I do like the idea of seeing a mother and father’s bitter breakup unfold through a young person’s eyes. This is far more common nowadays than we would like it to be. I also like the idea of a story around parent neglect, how this can go unnoticed for an extended period, and the implications that this would have on a young person, both in the immediate and long-term future. I wouldn’t say I like the idea of both occurring in the span of three months of a movie. And while we want to push our responsibilities onto others when it is inconvenient for us, it’s hard for me to imagine two parents doing this at the same time as easily as Susanna and Beale did. To me, the flaw in the directing and storytelling of this movie overshadow the performances of Coogan, Skarsgard, and, particularly, Aprile. For these reasons, I cannot recommend this movie to anyone, despite its average score.
Plot 10/10
Character Development 7/10 (The two adult leads disappear…literally almost…but the development of the other three characters makes up for it to an extent)
Character Chemistry 7.5/10
Acting 8.5/10
Screenplay 7/10 (I blame the flaws in the movie because of the screenplay and the directing. However, the directing at times makes up for the one significant error, in my opinion)
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 7/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
78%
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- Revolutionary Road
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