Most annoying kid ever
Seriously, my god.
shareIt says a lot about who you are as a person, it was one of the best written kids in a movie, also superb acted, you are supposed to hate him because of your own personal demons, which I do not which to explore, is up to your therapist, if you do not have one, I urge you to find one!
shareIt says a lot about who you are as a person, it was one of the best written kids in a movie, also superb acted, you are supposed to hate him because of your own personal demons, which I do not which to explore, is up to your therapist, if you do not have one, I urge you to find one!
why? bc the little boy almost drove his mother insane? get real! what an asinine comment..even his own aunt hated him.
Moderators are Nazi's.... share
You have the cart before the horse. The child wasn't responsible for almost driving his mother insane; the whole point of the story is that his mother caused her own, and his, suffering. He didn't become annoying -- i.e., he didn't act out, desperate for attention, for intimacy -- just out of the blue. The quality isn't innate in him. He didn't live in a vacuum. It's a natural response to the consistent, increasingly cold and even spiteful treatment he'd endured from his mother since the day he was born.
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson
You have the cart before the horse. The child wasn't responsible for almost driving his mother insane; the whole point of the story is that his mother caused her own, and his, suffering. He didn't become annoying -- i.e., he didn't act out, desperate for attention, for intimacy -- just out of the blue. The quality isn't innate in him. He didn't live in a vacuum. It's a natural response to the consistent, increasingly cold and even spiteful treatment he'd endured from his mother since the day he was born.
This.
"I'm the ultimate badass,you do NOT wanna f-ck wit me!"Hudson,Aliens😬 share
You have the cart before the horse. The child wasn't responsible for almost driving his mother insane; the whole point of the story is that his mother caused her own, and his, suffering. He didn't become annoying -- i.e., he didn't act out, desperate for attention, for intimacy -- just out of the blue. The quality isn't innate in him. He didn't live in a vacuum. It's a natural response to the consistent, increasingly cold and even spiteful treatment he'd endured from his mother since the day he was born.
This.
"I'm the ultimate badass,you do NOT wanna f-ck wit me!"Hudson,Aliens😬 share
"[... T]he whole point of the story is that his mother caused her own, and his, suffering. He didn't become annoying -- i.e., he didn't act out, desperate for attention, for intimacy -- just out of the blue. The quality isn't innate in him. He didn't live in a vacuum. It's a natural response to the consistent, increasingly cold and even spiteful treatment he'd endured from his mother since the day he was born."
This seems like a reasonable, although unproven, assumption. But do we KNOW that the child's condition was caused by his mother?
Or was his ADHD/schizophrenia/whatever the result of brain trauma incurred during the car crash that killed his father?
Clearly, his mother did not display good parenting skills within this film. But did that poor parenting result in his bad behavior, or only exacerbate it?
If the car crash did indeed cause lasting brain trauma, then perhaps it was the father's deficient driving skills which caused this? Or the deficient driving skills of a drunk driver who wrecked into the family's car?
Methinks the film doesn't wish to explore causation or assign blame, so much as wallow in the suffering and tension that results.
Occam's Razor. There's no need for this understanding to be "proven" beyond the evident fact that the story's concern is undeniably emotional damage, not physical, and naturally that is its emphasis. The filmmaker directly links the mother's unresolved emotional trauma to her child's ongoing emotional condition, and implies that this is the source that has determined the nature of their relationship.
The idea of traumatic physical injury influencing the child's behaviour lends no more weight and impact to the story, and actually diminishes the profundity of the mother's emotional condition as responsible for the damage - to the child, to the relationship, and to the mother herself.
The child's emotional condition is evidently improved at the end, and that improvement is unambiguously linked to his mother's improved emotional condition. This would not occur if physical, brain trauma was influential.
Introducing the idea of physical trauma leads to irrelevant distractions such as the idea the father was maybe a bad driver, or maybe they were hit by a drunk driver. That illuminates nothing, and serves to dilute the story's focus and meaning.
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson
I am only asking what the film actually tells us.
You are changing the subject to what you think the filmmaker is telling us through the film. That's two levels of abstraction, as well as assumption.
I totally agree that reducing the child's condition to physical trauma does not add more impact--totally concur.
But it is not my obligation to lend more weight to the story. So that does not phase me one bit at all.
Again, I am only asking what the film actually tells us.
It does NOT tell us that the child's condition resulted solely from her angst and poor parenting. And indeed, in this modern age, with children suffering maladies even with two good parents, it would be a foolish assumption to jump to that conclusion.
It DOES tell us that the father suffered a horrific accident in the car. And with the pregnant, belabored mother riding shotgun, it's highly likely that she and the baby probably did too. (I don't recall seeing her wearing a seatbelt, shoulder restraint, or even using a headrest in the flashback scene.)
If we allow the notion that there was no actual supernatural element in this film, and it was all in the two main characters' heads, then why not allow that the child's erratic behavior might also be linked to that terrible car wreck that we were outright shown?
I also think that you overstate the child's improvement at the end. He is still an impulsive, interrupting, filter-less, boundary-violating twirp. And the mother still lets him get away with it. (She even still lets him play with his dart crossbow, as she smiles on approvingly.)
Perhaps she has no effective control over his behavior? Perhaps he is permanently stuck that way?
Perhaps it is only she who has really improved in the end?
While I readily admit that I am reading between the lines just like you, I will also point out that I am doing so by way of asking questions--not making declarative statements as if I already had the answers.
There are an unlimited number of things the film doesn't tell us. It doesn't show us beyond the merest doubt, to the nth degree of certainty, an unlimited number of things. On the other hand, it's explicit about certain things.
I've noted those explicit, concrete lines the film tells us, adding nothing in-between. The filmmaker herself is declarative: she emphasizes the mother's condition, and shows that it causes her to withhold intimacy from her child, and worse, to treat him with contempt. We are given to understand that this has gone on since the day of his birth, and only gotten worse. It isn't reading between any lines to appreciate that there is no way any child could escape psychic damage from such a history, day in, day out, his entire life. We see what he lacks, and we see him acting out to get it.
The filmmaker doesn't make any of this ambiguous. The dynamic is presented in a direct and uncomplicated manner. There is no need for, or any value in, introducing the idea that the child is the way he is owing to a physical brain injury. By the same reasoning one could equally well suppose that Amelia also suffered a physical brain injury, so that the story is then about two brain injured characters. It would be about the terrible consequences of brain injury - how the mother's brain injury makes her mean to her child, and how her child's brain injury makes him unmanageable - and not about the terrible consequences for both characters of suppressed grief and resentment that's festered for seven years. Such a story would offer zero relevance to viewers' lives since the persistent symptoms of physical injury are accidental, unrelated to flaws of character.
"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson