I’ve been
aware of this Jean-Pierre Jeunet film for quite a while, but it’s only recently
that I’ve had an opportunity to see it.
While I wouldn’t put it on par with Jeunet’s French films, it’s still a
rather lovely little curiosity that I enjoyed a lot (premise spoilers.)
10-year-old
T.S. Spivet is a would-be Leonardo Da Vinci living on a farm in Montana. A year ago, he took up the challenge of
perpetual motion, and with his blueprints for an invention called the magnetic
wheel, he’s achieved perhaps the closest mankind can currently come to such a
machine. When his invention earns him
the prestigious Baird Award, T.S. leaves home and sets off on a cross-country
trip to the Smithsonian (where, by the way, the unsuspecting academics don’t
realize their big breakthrough was invented by a child,) riding the rails to
collect his prize.
Like A Very Long Engagement, this film is
based on a novel. As such, it doesn’t
always feel like a Jeunet film, although the director’s hand is very present in
the whimsical production design and arresting cinematography (let loose in
North America, Jeunet’s filmmaking offers up some stunning big-sky landscape
porn.) I’d say the story feels a bit
more “directed” than Jeunet’s original pieces, which often revel in
seemingly-haphazard events falling surprisingly into place at the last
second. This film is more
straightforward, T.S.’s journey propelling us through the action and the family
secrets in his past informing his character.
I really
enjoy the character of T.S. Although
young Kyle Catlett doesn’t seem quite equal to the task of the brainy dialogue,
he’s still a lot of fun, wonderfully eccentric and rootable. I enjoy his machines, quirks, and analyses,
and I like the ways in which he’s very clearly both a genius polymath and a 10-year-old boy. I haven’t read the book the film is based,
but I’m guessing that many of Jeunet’s idiosyncratic touches come through here;
some of T.S.’s ruminations and obsessions seem very much up his alley.
My
favorite part, though, is the story of T.S.’s unlikely parents. Like T.S., I’m fascinated by what drew his
entymologist mother and rancher father together (both played excellently by
Helena Boham Carter and Battlestar
Galactica’s Callum Keith Rennie.) I
love the section that features T.S. pondering this very question, giving us my
favorite moment of the film: T.S. noting
how, despite the entirely different worlds they seem to inhabit, they brush
hands as though they’re exchanging secret messages when they pass each other in
the doorway. Almost as interesting as
their relationship with each other is the separate relationship each has with
T.S. His mother shares his scientific
mind but doesn’t seem able to show him the warmth he needs as well. Meanwhile, even though his father doesn’t
express disapproval in him, T.S. can’t help but feel that he’ll never connect
with his dad the way his rough ‘n’ tumble brother did (T.S. may be a genius,
but it feels right that he only considers that he doesn’t measure up to his dad’s expectations, not that his
salt-of-the-earth father might feel he doesn’t have enough to offer his
brilliant son.)
Warnings
Thematic
elements, some scary moments, and a lot of “don’t try this at home.”
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