The Childhood of a Leader (2015)

Wow. That was amazing.

The story revolves around a wealthy American (or citizens of the world, as The Mother calls them) family at the end of WW1 in France. The movie centers on the kid, Prescott. He's not a "normal" kid, I guess. He's been acting up ever since they moved to another town. He takes French lessons from the teacher, Ada (played excellently by Stacy Martin), which The Father disapproves of, because he can't speak the language himself and he feels The Father works for the American government, right under President Jimmy Carter, so he goes on a lost of work trips, and he doesn't really care about getting to know the people of the town as much as The Mother does.

At the beginning of the film the kid got caught throwing rocks at the church members ("A Sign of Thing to Come) and the movie just goes from there. The film is divided in chapter in a really cool way (First Tantrum, Second Tantrum etc.). The whole film is stylized really old school, e.g there's an overture at the beginning and etc. That brings me to the score, oh my god. The score is amazing, it's very unsettling. Quite possibly the best score I've heard this year, Knight of Cups is the only competition.

All of the performances are fantastic, especially Tom Sweet as Prescott, Bèrènice Bejo as The Mother and Stacy Martin as Ada, or The Teacher. Robert Pattinson is great too as a friend of the family and widower Charles, in the few scenes he shows up in.

I can't believe this is Brady Corbet's directorial debut, because the film is directed so well. I knew he's a great actor (Funny Games U.S.), I had no idea he could direct. I cannot wait for his next project because this is one of the better directed films I've seen in a while. Everything felt unsettlingly natural and real, the cinematography was fantastic and all the actors were great, even the kid. Or especially the kid.

Oh yeah, by the way, this is not a horror movie, it has some horror-ish and surreal (although it never goes full Eraserhead or Enemy) elements and it's very unsettling but it's not a horror movie. I think the horror-ish stuff lies in the things we don't see, or the things to come.

Oh, and no spoiler but the ending was so amazing, holy crap.

This is the third, possibly second, best movie I've seen so far this year and I'm hoping for Oscar buzz for this film at the end of the year, but it's not likely that will happen though.

9/10. It's excellent.

Fmovies: Greetings again from the darkness. Brady Corbet has established a pretty nice career as an actor (Melancholia, Funny Games), and along comes his feature film debut as a writer/director (co-written with Mona Fastvold). In this day of remakes and reboots, this one is anything but. The "Overture" sets the mood with video clips of the WWI aftermath and the explosive score from Scott Walker quickly establishes itself as a character unto itself.

Subsequent title cards are broken into three "Tantrums", as we witness the ever-escalating inappropriate behavior from young Prescott (Tom Sweet). In what on the surface could be classified as a nature vs nurture expose', the film leaves little doubt that Prescott is rebelling against the monotony of his environment and the disengaged parents to which he is tethered. However, it also seems evident that young Prescott is inherently "off". He seems to be cold and emotionally removed as he engages in battles of will with his parents Â… his father (Liam Cunningham) a US diplomat knee-deep in negotiations that will lead to the Treaty of Versailles, and his mother (Berenice Bejo), a self-described "citizen of the world".

Two obvious film comparisons would be The Omen (1976) and We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011). The ominous music and settings leave little doubt that we are headed somewhere very dark here, though it's not in the religious sense of The Omen and it's more global than the intimacy of 'Kevin'. Thinking of this as evil in the making would be a just description, though a different title might have held the ending a bit longer.

Support work is provided by Stacy Martin as the French teacher and Yolanda Moreau as the housekeeper who has moments of connection with the challenging Prescott, but Robert Pattison fans will be surprised at how little screen time he has – especially for dual roles.

Young Tom Sweet is fascinating to watch in a very tough role for a child actor, and director Corbet proves he is a filmmaker we should follow closely. His visual acumen is something special, and offsets a script that could have used a bit of polishing. The movie will probably prove divisive – either you will find it mesmerizing and creepy, or you simply won't connect at all. That's often the case with a creative and bold project.

I was intrigued by the context and concept of the story, particularly being very familiar with this era of history and the labyrinths of complexity of that time.

But try as I might to become engaged in this production, it just dragged on as a cardboard, lifeless attempt at rendering what could have been a spectacular creation of historically relevant drama and intrigue.

Not sure I can put my finger directly on the most obvious failure point, but it just didn't come to life for me.

Technically, the camera work was well done, the sets, stagecraft and all that was comparable to any decent BBC type of historical production, but the audio engineering here seems to have been a bit clumsy at best. But even that technical detail can be forgiven if the quality of the acting and the story itself can carry the production . . . which sadly, it doesn't.

The acting is stiff, monodimensional, reminded me of college theater plays. No, wait . . . actually, that isn't fair to some of the college theater productions I've seen in past years.

The supposedly important tension scenes just dragged on as useless time consuming segments sprinkled in between sections of potentially relevant (but equally flat and uninspiring) dialogue.

What an unfortunate waste of what could have been a great production.

Clearly the director (Brady Corbet) just didn't "get it". My best guess is that he was intently focused on delivering the obvious political message embedded in this character study into the culturally relevant psychodynamics of the time . . . but completely missed the target of actually creating a compelling delivery of the story.

Which is unfortunate, as I really wanted to like this.

Perhaps another attempt, with a different director and style of delivery . . .

The Childhood of a Leader fmovies. 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.

I had to read the other 16 reviews here before posting my own to see how my view of the film - which I just finished watching - compare to the others and ... Here are my thoughts

The child actor with a long blond hair that is reminiscent of Renoir's Coco portraits is brilliant. great acting for a 8,9 year old - or whatever his age is.

All other actors are really good too and they do convey the feeling it is 1918. I don't know where is this big old house - but somehow it does not fit into France. I would more think about the Balkans. But it is just a thought.

Were they really people with black hoods and capes and all at funerals at that time? It is a rather strange and completely unnecessary scene in the film, though kinda effective.

I really liked the mood of the film and I can appreciate the art vision of it. However, the film is too long and most of the time boring. I love French and I was forcing myself to make that as a plus point, but...

The best thing about this film is music!

But somehow its dramatic score and almost banging at the window tone is totally opposite to the calm and slow narative. That music would be better for horror films.

All in all, I would not really recommend this film to anyone as I think it is too boring. And plus the ending totally makes no sense to me.

This movie might have been decent if I was able to actually decipher some of the dialogue. The French was not subtitled and it was spoken through at least half the movie. The English was whispered behind music that was entirely too loud. But what bothered me most is there was not enough "story". Why did he have mental health issues? His mother seemed to love him, he was cared for by people close to him. He was not poor or abused, give me something! There is not even enough for me to provide a decent speculation. I think it could have been so much better, as much as I wanted to like it, I did not. The music tried to make it more suspend up than it actually was. The people that say this was "art" are just lame and use that as an excuse to give it better reviews. This movie had no substance and no matter how you try and describe it, the fact of the matter is that it doesn't!