小大人

Checking out of the genderqueer bracket, American indie urban aesthete Ira Sachs’ LITTLE MEN continues with his concern of Brooklyn’s gentrification, in LOVE IS STRANGE (2014), a senior gay couple cannot afford their apartment and has to live separately, a temporary arrangement eventually plunges into a precipitate farewell, here, it centers around a nuclear family, Brian Jardine (Kinnear), a seasoned thespian struggling to pay the bills, his wife Kathy (Ehle), a full-time psychotherapist, and their 13-year-old son Jake (Taplitz), move into Brian’s father’s two-story building, inherited after the latter’s death. They have a tenant, the Chilean immigrant Leonor Calvelli (García), a single mother who operates an artisanal dress shop in the ground floor, by dint of a very low monthly rent arranged between her and Brian’s father for many years.

Brian and his sister Audrey (Balsam), both need money to support their families, revises a new lease demanding a treble amount of fee (still, considerably cheaper than the ballooning market price), which builds a tension between the two families, and what is also at cost is the newfound friendship between Jake and his coeval Tony (Barbieri), Leonor’s son, when their quotidian proximity is discontinued.

More than anything, the two kid actors are phenomenal, both first-time actors, Theo Taplitz remarkably imbues an adorable appearance of sensitivity and androgyny to accentuate Jake’s painter’s disposition, not to mention his heart-rending plea in the climax. Whereas Michael Barbieri is totally on the opposite of the spectrum, with his convivial, animated verve and a naturalistic elocution that betrays his age, which is fit as glove as Tony’s aspiring actor identity. Their friendship seems very organic, albeit their polarized make-ups, mercifully and perspicaciously Sachs doesn’t make a heavy weather of Jake’s budding affection towards Tony, which is tacitly suggested but as in reality, like as not, those little torch-carrying secret is mostly saved for its originator to savor and wallow, bless Sachs for not sensationalize a young boy’s vulnerable, inchoate sexual awakening.

Grownups are also a cracking cluster, almost 20 years after his Oscar-nominated breakthrough in AS GOOD AS IT GETS (1997), Greg Kinnear matures with an understated complexity that is given a full range here, he is a grieving son, a frustrating breadwinner, a glowing actor on stage, a devoted, grateful husband and a caring father, who is saddled with a daunting task to negotiate an unpleasant business deal with a tough-nut in the form of a magnificent Paulina García, nothing is above her Leonor to get what she intends, emotional manipulation, outright humiliation, tactical evasion, even if a child’s innocent, heartfelt plea can do the trick, she has no qualms about leveraging it. García has so many strings to her bow, and each one adds a tangible layer to her character’s humanity, warts and all, which is such an exceptional achievement that defiantly flouts the atrocious typecast of a downtrodden immigrant woman struggling in the land of freedom, here, she fervently digs in her heels and brazens it out in fighting a losing battle.

Sending out a well-meaning message of “letting go the past”, Sachs’ LITTLE MEN is the whole package, a school of hard knocks for an adolescent, a critical looking into the miasma of gentrification and a hyperreal examination of ordinary beings’ interrelations.

referential entries: Sachs’ LOVE IS STRANGE (2014, 7.8/10), KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (2012, 6.8/10).

This part beginning from a dark movements, From the back view, a group of students entered the painting, and the protagonist followed the paintings of everyone. The director's handling of this picture deliberately makes the backlight of the scene brighter than the foreground, so that the audience can shift their attention away from the students who have passed the foreground.Then the lens is very slight, and it is very imperceptible to push to the Jake.

Other students have a good exchange and itobviouslyseems that he is lonely and quiet. From Jake's back shot to Tony in the middle of others and withclassmates for a lively communication, andwith just previous shot thatJake just walked quietly in stark contrast.

The director gave Jake a reaction lens that placed him at one-third of the picture. At the edge of the picture, he formed a protagonist with a sense of inner crisis, and the state of the protagonist looked up, which added to the expression of the protagonist'semotion.After the camera washorizontalshaken to the left, after Tony and the others walk out of tjepicture, Jack returned to the center of the screen.Using painting as a transition, it seems that the character's emotions are cut off here, making the emotions extremely restrained and the lens expressionseemsmore objective.

With the beginning of background music,director added a close-up of Jake's classmates with four different scenes and different positions. Finally, it is a close-up of the main character. It is very interesting to convey that the people around Jake have changed, just like the people around everyone in the real world are constantly changing, sometimes spreading outand getting together.

The background music is only repeated for a whilein the same way, and it can clearly hear its editing points, as if it implies that everything is actually circulating.

I am very appreciatethat the director described the emotions of the characters with an extremely cool lens movement.Most of them are fixed lens.Using a fixed lens can make the audience move away from emotions and turn into thinking.The friendship of Jake and Tony in "Little Men" carries that kind of bittersweet weight. Jake and Tony hold hands over the growing abyss between their parents. They're only 13 years old. Do they know that relationships are fragile and need protection? Do they understand how precious their friendship is, how much they need to hold onto it, how much they will miss it if it ends? These questions carry intense reverberation long after the film ends.

In the class,wealsoreadthis part of the script. In the front part of the script, the screenwriter used the enthusiasm of the guest to describe the alienation of their relationship, echoing the scene of their mother's first meeting.From the lens or the script are deliberately creating a distance between them.But after the script, it was too straightforward. The director simply used the movements and the lens to sublimate the whole movie.Using gestures to describe mental activity is the most difficult task in terms of scriptwriting.I thinkfilmsmainly needs to use the lens language to show the theme and emotions. I think this is the place where fabulous in <Little Men>.The director knows how to do appropriate subtraction in the film.Its smallness makes it grand and moving. These are the things, these little moments, decisions and consequences that most human lives are made of, after all.

This film is very different from the general run of ingratiating middlebrow indies that pop up on screen periodically, drenched with implausibility, sentimentality and lame bet-hedging humour.It is composed with scrupulous observational intelligence and Care. It is really engaging.

我只是觉得最受不了的地方是，为什么大人的矛盾要牵扯到孩子，关于商业的部分为什么要牵扯到人情，之前一直以为我穷我有理是一些地方才会出现的，原来是世界性的。

说点别的吧，小杰在东尼帮他拿东西的时候，东尼主动分担了很大一部分，有男生在照顾女生的感觉，有种暖暖的不是兄弟的感情在流动，我很喜欢导演笔触的细腻，两个人一起去做对方喜欢的事情，陪伴在一起，细细的感情在滋生。

最开始的时候，我以为导演是要揭露出不一样的感情，比如东尼妈妈和小杰爷爷有过一段感情这样，要不然很难解释，东尼妈妈在面对房租问题的时候为什么会频打感情牌，直到律师过去，东尼妈妈哭起来的时候，才知道是真的付不了那么多的房租。

最后那个凝视，真的很触动，久别的人，看见一个相似的背影，都会凝视很久，导游留了白，不知道两个人最后有没有相遇，有没有抱在一起欢呼，只是看见扎着小辫子的小杰，在凝视那个背影的时候，没有太多的动作，却传达出了一种害怕一眨眼对方又会不见，却没有勇气去确定是不是对方的感情。

突然的就想起了小时候，早早的离家，和要好的朋友分开，真的是太小了，那时候还没有QQ，手机也没有普及，没有任何联系方式，试过写信，却没有寄出去，因为没有办法寄信，最后只能选择默默的想念。直到有一年，回老家时，在菜市场，一个抱着小孩儿的女生在买东西，第一眼看着是她，再看好像又不是，有压不住的喜悦，却因为突然想不起来名字而不知道该怎么去打招呼，该怎么去确定是不是她。直到两年后，经过辗转加了微信，聊天时，她说两年前，在菜市场看见一个女生很像你，可是又觉得不像就没有去说，我说，我和你有一个一样的经历......