Thanks for the memories!

Memorable, crazy movie

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

The plot is that an eminent American diplomat is located in rural France with wife and son. He is there to help frame the notorious Treaty of Versailles – which most agree sowed the seeds of the Second World War whilst trying to write the obituary of the First. The son - Prescott – played impressively by Tom Sweet, is brought up by his servants with minimal input from either parent and he is the sort of child prone to tantrums.The film follows his increasingly nasty and self centred behaviour as a way of exploring the nurturing effect of what happens to a 'leader' of far right leanings. The acting is all thoroughly impressive and the music is 'striking' being penned by Scott Walker. It is beautifully shot too with tons of period detail and a sense of dour restraint on most occasions that seems entirely appropriate.The issues, though, come in many forms. The music is often over bearing and displays far more passion that the screen can muster. It is also very loud and some critics have said it makes the dialogue hard to hear. A lot of the latter is in French too (my disc did have sub titles that you had to activate). The raison d'être of the child being made into a monster seems a bit one sided too, like that is all there is to it. It is as if anyone brought up under similar circumstances would also be a fascist – well maybe so but still many have questioned such overt singularity in vision. Also comparisons to 'The Omen' and 'The Others' are thoroughly misleading, that is unless I drifted off and missed the interesting bit.Then there is the 'entertainment value' and here it scores weakly; it just loses your interest; some have said scenes go on too long or even the whole film should have been shorter but either way this is a struggle to get through and impossible to actually 'like' and it proves that a film has to be the sum of its parts and this is just that; in that there is some good but with equal amounts of really not so good – a shame.

First time director Brady Corbet's "The Childhood of a Leader" is a horror movie, (and not a very good one at that), dressed up in the regalia of 'a serious picture'. You know you are watching a horror film the moment Scott Walker's ominous score blasts out at you, despite the newsreel footage of Europe and America in the immediate aftermath of the Great War that opens the film. You can tart this psychodrama up any way you want but this could be just the next installment in the "Omen" saga, (and the Omen pictures were a lot more fun), as our long-haired, (he's often mistaken for a girl), little monster throws not one, not two, but three tantrums, (that's what the chapter headings call them), each one worse than the one before, causing no end of consternation to his American diplomat father, (Liam Cunningham, dreadful), and French mother, (Berenice Bejo).Who is he? Since the film takes as its backdrop the signing of the Treaty of Versailles we can, at least, put it into some kind of historical context so by the time he grows up to be a shaven-headed Robert Pattinson, leading what is obviously a fascist army, it's easy to put two and two together and get...well, you tell me. Are we meant to surmise that all dictators and fascist leaders are nothing more than demonic little brats who are nasty to their parents? Of course, it's all rubbish and dull rubbish at that. On the plus side, Walker's score does conjure up the requisite air of menace in a sub-Wagnerian kind of way while young Tom Sweet is very good as the horrid little tyke. There's also a nice supporting turn from the excellent Yolande Moreau as the family maid. Otherwise it's much ado about nothing.

You're led to expect something really powerful and frightening by the opening shots of World War I and a nerve-jangling, portentous score. And, indeed, your expectations are well rewarded when the child of the title...wets his bed! plays an angel in the church Christmas play!It's hardly a bold or singular premise that a disturbed childhood will create a damaged, perhaps dangerous adult. But the movie's portrayal of cause and effect is so simplified as to be ridiculous. Plenty of neglected children--the condition is hardly the rarity the filmmakers seem to think, especially among wealthy people 100 years ago--grow up to be normal adults. Some become nasty ones. Some, in reaction, become humanitarians. If the cause and effect are so cut and dried, why don't we have 50 million fascist dictators? Could it be because a great many emotional and intellectual attributes, a great many factors of class and opportunity and geography and history are necessary for someone to become a fascist dictator? An unhappy childhood is hardly the only qualification!The script and director also ignore the most basic rules of portraying an unhappy childhood, rules that have been followed by every writer and director of merit. First: If you cry, they won't. Kipling, Graham Greene, Henry James, Dickens--everyone who has done this well has shown the mistreated child suffering in silence or near-silence, so that the reader or film-goer supplies the emotions of sadness and anger and indignation. In this film, however, the child is constantly outraged, insolent, aggressive, at times violent, so he pre-empts all our emotions. It is hard not to regard him as simply a nuisance and a bore. Second, feeling sorry for a character is not enough to make us like him or even be interested in him. The boy is front and center in almost the entire film. But he never does or says anything interesting, charming, sweet, selfless, funny, quirky. All he does is throw tantrums. Kids like this are one of the things I go to the movies to get away from!

In 1939 Jean Paul Sartre wrote a short story named "Childhood of a Leader", that deals with identity, sexuality and its relation to fascism.Corbet's "loose adaptation" of "Childhood of a Leader" is indeed very loose. All the Freudian and identity elements that formed the core of Sartre's short piece were discarded, and whatever was left ( not much ) was then watered down into a full feature film.You can feel it throughout.Photography and acting are really good. Had this been turned into short film instead, I'm sure my review would've been much different.