British filmmaker Jeremy Thomas made his debut with this adaptation of Walker Hamilton's novel. A young Christian Bale, in his pre-Batman days, was cast as Bobby, who is mourning the death of his mother. Bobby narrates his story from the beginning, signaling that something life-changing occurred some time after her death.
Bobby lives with his coarse step-brother Dean and step-dad Bernard, who quickly changes from merely cruel to sadistic. They seem less than fond of his presence, though his step-brother seems less so than Bernard.
Bobby has been mildly retarded since he was hit by a car as a child, and Bernard sees his vurnerbility as a way to convince him to sign the family business over. Bobby, however, remembers that his mom told him that the company should not be given to her husband.
He refuses, even when threatened with a mental institution. So, in retaliation, his little pet mouse Peter is killed. After discovering the creature's fate Bobby makes a run for it and leaves his family's estate, planning to head somewhere Bernard can't find him.
The level of Bale' character's retardation is never made clear. His speech skills seem good, and amounts of time can pass where he almost seems normal. It is not as much his intellectual abilities, it seems, as it is his difficulties in treating difficult situations with the mind of an adult.
When he cannot handle his step-dad's torrents of abuse or something else, he simply throws himself on the floor and has a crying fit. He is more childlike than lacking in cerebral skills, and his immaturity effect his reactions to life.
After running away from home, a strange sequence of events leaves a fatal truck accident and Bobby quite arguably the cause. He is picked up by Mr. Summers (John Hurt,) an older man with a dispassionate look on the human race.
He has dedicated his life to picking the corpses of animals off the road a giving them proper burials. With the fervor of a manic-depressive PETA member, Mr. Summers lives as a hermit and has no purpose in his existence but treating deceased road kill with the respect he feels they deserve.
Mr. Summers does not feel the need for human connection, but after much begging on Bobby's part he is allowed to live in the old man's shack and help him with his work. But Bobby's new friend is not telling his whole story, and catastrophe strike when the two decide to settle the problems between Bernard and Bobby once and for all.
"All the Little Animals'" dark story is elevated by Bale's impressive performance, which is intense, emotional, and utterly real. While he and his step-dad's positions of 'good' and 'evil' are relatively defined, Hurt's character, Mr. Summers, is harder to read. He veers in the eyes of the viewer between eccentric and simply insane. Even as the answer to this becomes clearer, we still, to some extent, understand Bobby's trust in him.
The whole film's story is very interesting, and the switch in atmosphere from the dark rooms of Bobby's family's home to the shack in the middle of the woods, with walls covered in ocean shells and pebbles, is pleasingly defined.
The films is so adept in it's beginning half, in fact, that I continued to admire it as the minimalist plot turned to a violent revenge melodrama. The end result is not as plausible, but hardly impossible, and though I agree with the Netflix reviewer who said 'things got weird' I don't think this is nearly enough to destroy what it had created. At the end, I was puzzled by some aspects but wanting a copy of the Walker Hamilton novel to discover the details behind the story.
Sure, "All the Little Animals" is manipulative, but it's a well-done kind of manipulative, genuinely original and well-acted as well as being often overtly melodramatic. It will leave people who are somewhat tolerant of the 'emotional' factor more moved than cheated. Although hardly anybody's heard of it, they probably should (Rated R.)
Movie Recommendation- For another example of animal rights gone amok, watch writer/actor Mike White's directorial debut, Year of the Dog.
For another sensitive portrayal of a young man with mild mental retardation, watch Dominick and Eugene.
Trailer Not Available
No comments:
Post a Comment