The narration in “Little Children,” which I finally saw on Thursday after months of strong coercion from friends with respectable opinions, was immediate and jarring. We don’t get narrators in dramas much any more — and certainly not third-person narrators. Whereas in 1944’s “Double Indemnity” it was a fine device for Walter Neff to narrate his own downfall, now he’d have to shut up and leave us to our own judgments. So why this switch? Moreover, why was the narration voiced by Will Lyman, probably best known as the firm ironic voice behind the PBS documentary series “Frontline”?

During the first few scenes I couldn’t help rewriting the film — sans narration. The narrator tells us that Sarah Pierce marks time every day until she’s relieved of child care; why do I need the narrator to tell me that when I can see it? In another scene, Sarah shakes hands with the new friend she wishes she could touch — and the narrator tells us she wishes she could touch him. Imagine listening to someone read you a story and while you’re listening to the story you’re crossing out whole paragraphs at a time. That was the impact my hyperactive editorial mind was making on this moviegoing experience.

Until suddenly I understood: This is a documentary we’re watching. It’s a fake documentary (not a mockumentary, which parodies for comedy), but a documentary nonetheless, of the stunted lives of a certain subclass of suburbanites, as depicted here by this representative (fictional) sample. The “little children” are the childlike adults who act heedlessly and (almost) suffer consequences. And in the end, they are transformed into grownups: One stays with his mate, while the other grabs up her child and apologizes.

Except….

It would seem that each remains in what has been presented as an unbearable situation. Sarah is seen back at home clutching the child she hadn’t loved, in the home of the husband she disdains; her lover is being tended by the wife who insists upon a future in the legal profession that doesn’t interest him. So our choice would seem to be: act like children and be happy but careless and irresponsible; or sacrifice happiness and live as an indentured servant to adulthood. This is a barren decision tree.

It’s odd to sit through two-and-a-half hours of a film, love every moment of it, marvel at its wit and grace, and come away having really no idea what sort of statement it is trying to make. “Little Children” is a literary film, finally inferior to the director’s previous film, “In the Bedroom” (which also investigated moral ambiguities with regard to parental response), and as such is a treat in a calendar generally full of explosions and Tom Cruise. Literature as practiced in the past 100 years asks more questions than it answers, and this film is of a piece with that new tradition. But in a way it cheats: By offering only one (bad) answer, it refutes the breadth of experience the rest of the film endorses.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 11:52 pm and is filed under On seeing, Thoughts, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.