It's amazing how easily Henry James' 19th century novel What Maisie Knewtranslates to contemporary society. Clearly, he knew what he was talking about in detailing the story of the true victim of divorce, the children caught in the middle of an ugly tug-of-war for custody. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel's adaptation is seen entirely through the perspective of an intuitive young girl, and it makes for one of the most heart-wrenching, powerful, and best movies of the year bar none.
It's always a risky prospect to put too much emotional burden on a child actor, expecting them to characterize emotions they can't possibly understand, but the performance by 7-year old Onata Aprile as Maisie is authentic through and through, naive and insightful in the way most children of that age tend to be. She's so good you may want to jump through the screen and give her a big hug during the most trying moments, as Maisie is stuck between two vastly irresponsible parents who don't seem to recognize the damage being done to the one person they claim to love the most.
Maisie has a lot of adults in her life, but her actual parents are too selfish to see beyond their own immediate concerns. Her mother Susanna (Julianne Moore) is an aging rocker with a self-destructive streak a mile long. It's not that she's completely uncaring; in fact it's just the opposite. But her rock 'n roll lifestyle still has a strong pull on her, and there's the sense that perhaps the maternal instinct was never really there. She's the sort that goes from zero to pissed off in no time flat, and there's the recognition in Maise that her mother may not be the most stable influence. When Susanna asks her easy, every day questions one would expect a mother to ask her daughter, you can see Maise's eagerness to forge some level of comfort, while at the same time tenuous the situation could change rapidly.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is the aloof and self-involved Beale (Steve Coogan), an art-dealer who loves the ladies, but adores nobody more than himself. While on the surface he appears to be the better of the two parents, his words cut like a dagger, ripping Susanna to shreds with the most casual of ease. Their fights are quick and brutal, cutting to the bone of what makes the other tick. They know one another too well. While she screams and yells, he smoothly tears her asunder. Meanwhile, poor Maisie is just a trophy to be won. As the inevitable separation occurs, we see her passed around from one to the other; with each parent filling the girl's ears with the other's many faults. As if it wasn't heartbreaking enough to watch, Maisie is often filmed in solitude, watching silently as her world crumbles.
These are awful people, with Moore and Coogan giving performances so thorough it colors our opinion of them, as well! Moore manages to find just that hint of heart in the quiet moments, when we see Susanna's desire to be a "normal" loving parent, but then the next moment we see her heart sink as she realizes it'll probably never happen. Coogan's performance is old hat for him, as he's played the arrogant "stuffed suit"-type plenty of times before. That's not to say he's bad; quite the contrary. He's great, whereas the fiery, showy nature of Moore's character offers her the chance to be extraordinary. Aprile is a revelation, the model of quiet maturity. Unlike many child actors, she never exaggerates or telegraphs what she's feeling, a tough task opposite powerhouses like Moore and Coogan.
To the filmmakers' credit, and certainly a credit to Aprile's performance, that it remains an affecting story even as new parental figures enter the picture. Basically as a ploy to wrest custody of Maise from Beale, Susanna shacks up with the loyal and unbelievably-average Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgard), a bartender who shows the girl some genuine fatherly affection for once. Beale leads on, marries, and then casually discards their college-aged nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham). The two are basically just tools to help shield the parents from any actual responsibility. They're essentially in the same boat as Maisie, caught up in the shrapnel of the birth parents' ongoing battle.
As Maisie is literally left behind, forgotten, and ignored time and time again, the threat of perhaps too much anguish being piled on begins to settle in. Yes, this is a film that will tug at your heartstrings and rip your heart in pieces, but too much and it becomes manipulative. Fortunately, it never reaches that level as Maisie does find some measure of happiness, love, and hope. To that end, it's probably wise that the film doesn't take us beyond her child-age years, as James' novel does. There's no doubt that such a sustained influence by her pathetic parents would lead Maisie down a troubled path as an adult, and seeing that happen to such a bright, loving child would be too much to endure.
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