I wound
up enjoying this film quite a bit. Great
cast, intriguing premise, and a pretty well-executed story. It’s not without its issues, but overall, I’m
in favor.
Frank has
been raising his niece Mary since she was a baby, and as she prepares to enter
first grade, he gets concerned. It’s
plain that Mary has inherited her late mother’s prodigy-level head for
mathematics, but Frank is painfully aware of how troubled his sister was and
the effect that being aggressively pushed toward intellectual greatness had on
her, and he’s determined that Mary not be forced down the same path. Unfortunately, her can’t-turn-it-off
brilliance is hard to hide from her new teacher and classmates, and before
long, her future is being argued in court via a custody battle between Frank
and Mary’s grandmother Evelyn.
While I
can’t say I have much experience with child prodigies, Mary’s portrayal feels
very real to me. Lots of little details
seem to ring true: she figures without
being a human computer, she thinks her intelligence gives her greater license
to do what she likes, her boredom makes her snap at others in class, her social
skills and emotional intelligence are greatly lacking but she doesn’t think
they are, Frank sometimes has declare “no more math today” to get her outside,
and so on. She’s fully a math genius and
fully a little little girl, making up goofy songs about her one-eyed cat and
playing with Legos in between solving differential equations.
I also
love Mary’s relationship with Frank. He
doesn’t talk down to her in the least, patiently answering every question she
asks him to the best of his abilities – the scene of the two of them on the
beach, with her climbing all over him as she asks if God exists, is perfect –
and he works hard to strike a balance between nurturing her interests and
making sure she has as much of a “normal life” as possible. His concern over people discovering her
abilities is understandable, given what kind of life his genius sister had, and
I like his focus on helping her to be a more well-rounded person, pushing her to
interact more and try to understand how others are feeling. At the same time, I like that he’s plagued by
near-constant doubt over whether he’s doing right by Mary and raising her as
his sister would have wanted. Once the
grandma enters the picture, the film gets into the question of the proper way
to address a situation like this. What
is the responsibility of the caregiver?
Is Frank doing Mary a disservice by not placing her somewhere that
continually furthers her intellectual growth?
Is it irresponsible, is it selfish, to deny the world a mind like Mary’s and the ideas she could have given proper
tutelage? While I don’t think the
custody-battle stuff is as good as the core of the basic set-up and Frank and
Mary’s relationship, these are interesting questions to look at because the
answer isn’t cut and dry.
Chris
Evans does terrific work as Frank:
smart, self-deprecating, flawed, caring, dedicated, and unsure. McKenna Grace, who’s lately been young Emma
on Once Upon a Time, is equally good
as Mary – like I said, her character feels like a genuine person rather than a
stilted idea of what a child genius is like.
Rounding out the cast are Lindsay Duncan as Mary’s grandma, Octavia
Spencer as Frank and Mary’s neighbor, and a rather excellent Jenny Slate as
Mary’s teacher.
Warnings
No comments:
Post a Comment