George Ratliff: Joshua, Fredi M. Murer: Vitus (2007)

[Chris Knipp]

George Ratliff's Joshua and Fredi M. Murer's Vitus (2007)

Varieties of Wunderkinder

Review by Chris Knipp

These two current movies both have boy protagonists (Joshua is eleven and a half and Vitus is ultimately twelve) who happen to be both intellectually brilliant and piano prodigies. Joshua, a psychological thriller with horror overtones, is scary and depressing. Vitus is an upbeat fairy tale children could watch, if they can read subtitles: dialogue is mostly in Swiss German and Hoch Deutsch (with a little English). Neither of these films is quite an unmitigated success, but both have interesting things to say about the plight of being super-smart and prematurely accomplished. Maybe Joshua just wants to be loved; Vitus says he just wants to be a normal boy; but fortunately, there's more to it than that in both cases. Together these are two poles of attitudes toward such young people.

Joshua's posh Upper West Side "haute bourgeoisie" or "über-yuppie" life takes a dive when a new baby enters the scene. His college-boy-jovial hedge-fund-trader dad Brad (Sam Rockwell) is videoing the infant, and when Joshua (Jacob Kogan) plays one of his virtuoso pieces, they just ask him to quiet down. Also present in that first scene are his born-again grandma (Celia Weston) and his gay musical show-biz uncle (Dallas Roberts). The uncle is the kindred spirit in the room.

It's funny: both Joshua and Vitus wear little suits and have tidy mops of hair and seem a bit undersize for their ages. But Joshua is a bad seed who spins out an aura of evil and fear off the screen as time goes on, while Vitus is geeky and a prig (for a while anyway) and has a lust for his baby sitter that's at best nutty, but he's otherwise ultimately sweet. Joshua brings down his family, and Vitus saves his. Vitus becomes a successful entrepreneur, and learns to dress casually.

Joshua is like an incubus. He just stands there, sometimes scaring Brad or his mom Abby (Vera Farmiga) by popping up behind them. His face and voice are without affect. Even when he says "Mommy? Daddy? I love you," it's creepy.

Vitus is distant too, initially anyway. He doesn't fit in at school and insults his teachers. But as a small child he has a down-to-earth babysitter, Isabel (played by Kristina Lykawa, later by Tamara Scarpellini), and they enjoy hanging out together. She gets fired and replaced by his English mother (Julike Jenkins), who has blossomed into a controlling stage mom. But where Joshua only occasionally sees his simpatico uncle, Vitus gets to spend a lot of time with his wonderfully relaxed and entertaining granddad (Bruno Ganz, anything but a Hitler this time), who makes things and goes on walks with the boy and talks about his dreams of being a pilot way back when.

Bad things start happening in Joshua's household almost from little sister's day one (the film takes us, rather harrowingly, through 70-plus). The baby is fine for less than a week when she begins to cry constantly, which brings Abby back to the shaky state she was in during Joshua's early stages--and then some. Perhaps if they'd found an older nanny for the kids, or just the baby, and paid more attention to Josh, the household would not have come apart. Joshua has some very suspenseful moments. You may think the boy will go for the baby, but that's a red herring. His methods are more devious than that and involve night vision film-making, Egyptian methods of mummification, and a performance of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" that is redesigned as if composed by Bartok. (Like the two boys who play Vitus, Fabrizio Borsani and Teo Gheorgiou, the boy who plays Joshua, Jacob Korgan, is a genuine piano prodigy).

Joshua has a good, ironic sense of its eastern urban white milieu, and though it may fizzle away a bit at the end, it does make you genuinely uncomfortable. This independent first film by Ratliff uses the conventional sound effects and disintegrating set devices of the horror film in fresh ways. But making Joshua into a monster limits where things can go. Rockwell, Farmiga, and Weston are good insofar as they avoid drifting into caricature. Ratliff previously made a documentary about fundamentalist Christians, and the grandma's attempt to "save" Joshua becomes a realistically creepy element. She gets her reward. This is an indictment of insensitive parents, but its picture of a wunderkind demonizes the type.

Vitus is a softer world, but this boy is suffering too. In a way his burly dad Leo (Urs Jucker), who creates hearing aids and becomes CEO of a company, is another version of the squash-playing yuppie represented by Sam Rockwell, but he seems more present. The problem is Vitus doesn't fit in at school and then his mom takes him from his childhood piano teacher, who he says he loves, to a famous lady who declares "a rational mind and a warm heart, those are what make a great pianist." "That's why I want to be a vet," Vitus answers, refusing to play for her or become her student. Eventually he contrives to stage an accident after which he seems to have lost his special talent and his high IQ. He precedes to carry out some exploits with his granddad that lead to the film's conclusion. This could be rather fun for a young viewer, though some American critics have found this charming story "simplistic" or "sappy." It does perhaps leave you a little flat because its feel-good finale is too fanciful. Joshua is a film that's riveting and disturbing: its narrow horror focus makes for a concentrated effect. But it's much more fun to watch Vitus, which brings up the same issues--about how it's tough to be exceptional--without demonizing brilliance. Teo Gheorghiu may be a little bit nerdy, but he has a sensitive face and delivers his lines in ways that are sprightly and nuanced. Vitus could be a role model for exceptional kids; but Joshua could only inspire nightmares in parents.

[oscar jubis]

The best thing I can say about Joshua is that it is intriguing for about an hour, as a consequence of Ratliff's decision to keep the "bad deeds" offscreen. I also feel disinclined to criticize it too severely as long as I think of it strictly as a horror flick. If, on the other hand, its makers meant to create a "psychological thriller", even one "with horror overtones" (as described by Chris), then Joshua is a failure. In other words, I feel neutral towards the film when I entertain the possibility that there's a unspecified supernatural element causing Joshua to act like Damien's soul brother. If his behavior and unwavering blank expression (what a boring performance by the kid actor) are explained away as sibling jealousy, the film lacks any credibility. The film practically falls apart towards the end, when a psychologist makes a home visit (?!) and within minutes starts accusing Dad of child abuse based on a drawing.

*Chris, there's two factual errors in your review:
- Joshua is 9 years old, not eleven and a half. The video of him as a newborn is labeled "February 1997", which I thought would make him 10 (assuming the film is set on 2007). But later, dad very clearly calls him " a 9 year old".

-The baby girl begins to experience night-time crying on the 19th night not "less than a week". I know this because the title "19 days old" appears on-screen before the baby's first "bad night".

[Chris Knipp]

I have no huge desire to defend Joshua--I'm not in love with it, but the fact that it is a thoroughly unpleasant experience to watch it is by no means a reason to dismiss it. It has some ill advised script elements toward the end, including the psychologist, but it's still clever, well acted, full of good social and psychological detail, and quite compulsively watchable and disturbing all the way through, and not just "for about an hour." Certainly the psychologist home visit rush to judgment scene is inadvisable, whether it is a possible turn of event or not. Why did the critics give this a reasonable rating (Metacritic 69, vs. 62 for Vitus)?Above all because it is effective as a thriller, and has many nuances other Bad Seed films have lacked, such as the haute bourgeoisie details, the Christian mother-in-law, and the uncle, the dad's workplace, and many other well tuned elements. In looking for psychological validity you may have missed the keenness of some of the social observation. You're saying it's not credible in some details. Well, no doubt true, but I don't see that as a damning argument for this kind of thing. Is Hitchcock's Psycho credible?

I still think not only is Joshua gripping and clever, but it's interesting to watch it and Vitus together as odd and different treatments of the plight of being a child prodigy. One certainly doesn't like the little boy; Jacob Kragon succeeds in making him very loathsome. But I would not say it's a bad, monotonous performance, merely a highly controlled (and very successfully creepy) one. Boring, Oscar, is I believe a word you said one should never use. Kogan is a talented young actor and he worked very well and seriously with Rockwell and the others on the performance. His stiffness is quite intentional.

You don't seem to give Joshua the film credit for its cleverness, but cleverness is there. The most valid criticism of it is that the ending somehow doesn't fit with the rest. There is fine work here by all the principals--Kogan, Farmiga, Rockwell, Celia Weston, and Dallas Roberts, particularly Rockwell, but Kogan unquestionably nails the role.

As Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com observes, the fact that some viewers hate this film is evidence of its effectiveness. I think that's very true. In a sense I hated it. But I found it very effecivve. A big hit at Sundance, it was given a prize for its cinematography.

I indeed seem to have been confused about the age and time scheme for the crying, though as you yourself note there are discrepancies on his age. Several reviews say he's eleven, so I'm not alone in my confusion, though many plainly say he's nine. That's a stretch for a supernaturally mature ten-to-eleven-year-old (Kagon's turned from ten to eleven during the shooting, so in physical observation I was quite correct). I could have sworn the baby started to cry all the time (not just at night) after only five days, but those day-datelines on-screen obviously just confused me, though they have the reasonable function of underlying the intensity of the turmoil and suggesting a climax to come soon. I cannot find any statement in print of how many days have passed when the baby begins to cry. New York Magazine: "The most interesting question posed by Joshua—as well as by the charmingly improbable Swiss comedy Vitus—is whether the average affluent, ambitious parent (in Switzerland or on the Upper East Side) is more disturbed by the prospect of a gifted but deeply screwed-up child or a happy but average one. The answer in many cases might give even Joshua the willies." Another issue mentioned by many reviewers and explicit in the movie is that parents just may not like their children but be unwilling or unable to admit it. Certainly in a sense Joshua demonizes a gifted child, as I said in my review, and I did not think you, Oscar, would like it. Maybe you can see Vitus soon to compare, and I hope you like that one, which is basically sweet, much better. Neither is a great movie, but they are more interesting than summer blockbuster fare, and together provide some sociological and psychological insight into attitudes toward gifted children.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
I have no huge desire to defend Joshua--I'm not in love with it, but the fact that it is a thoroughly unpleasant experience to watch it is by no means a reason to dismiss it.

That would be a first for me, dismissing a film because it is unpleasant. My objection boils down to the titular character, as written and performed, not being credible. The "haute bourgeois details" or the upper-class milieu is competently rendered but Ratliff has little of consequence to say about it. Farmiga's performance as a woman whose mental illness is reignited by the baby's nighttime cries lacks any nuance. Ratcliff handles the narrative conventions of the mystery/horror genre reasonably well, but creating compelling, credible, well-rounded characters is not a strength based on this evidence. I was glad to find out the theatrical run here lasted only a week.

[Chris Knipp]

I get that you didn't like Joshua, and there are many reasons for not liking it, though you give lacks rather than criticisms of what it has. " The upper-class milieu is competently rendered but Ratliff has little of consequence to say about it." The consequence of what was said is in the rendering, which is more than competent. The characters are more rounded and credible than you give them credit for, and many have said that Rockwell is realistic and plays it straight this time; but besides horror and suspense, this is satire. Your meanness toward the movie ("I was glad to find out the theatrical run here lasted only a week") is inexplicable and pointless and undermines your critical opinion.

[oscar jubis]

I attended a distributor's conference in Sarasota and learned that the theatrical success of small-budget/indie/foreign-language films comes at a price. The number of screens showing these films is limited. When one film has a long run, it keeps other such "small" films from being released. When a film like The Lives of Others occupies a screen for four months (as it is the case here) other "alternative/art house" films scheduled to show in that screen get taken off the release schedule. I was glad to see Joshua gone after a week because I don't think it's good and I want its screen space occupied by something worthy.

[Chris Knipp]

That is true. If you had said that, it would have not sounded merely spiteful, as it did. But Joshua is actually worthy enough to have more than a week, you just can't see it. I hope to hear that what replaces it is more worthy. What you need is more screens, not shorter runs for the films you don't care for.