I coincidentally watched these within a day of each other as the latter was on another streaming service and I've taken to just rewatching stuff I already have on DVD on these services out of laziness. All it's done is make me realise my DVDs are sometimes the worst quality and badly formatted (overstretched widescreen, grainy resolution) but I settled for this substandard shit because I was like, well I have it on DVD, so I don't care. Now I actually do when I can see the remarkable improvement in HD. I won't go 4K for any reason (no device and no incentive) I don't believe in excessive resolution, just a marked quality of picture and relatively decent sound. I don't intend on installing surround sound in any house, I need to hear it clearly and the playback has to be crisp. That's it. Netflix can't even deliver on sound quality as the vocal tracks always sound diminished, apparently due to compression issues.
So, I saw Little Man Tate and decided to watch it as we're all still kinda going through COVID to varying degrees and this is a comfy blanket movie for me. I love the aesthetics and performances, I even picked up on a little running gag where I hadn't seen it previously. It's a sweet movie, it doesn't suffer too much from late 90s lack of PC terms, for Jodie Foster's directorial debut it's such a simple but effective movie and she really delivered on something that possibly had traces of her own child star experiences. Who knows. It's just a well-rounded, well-developed film.
But I'd watched the Kindergarten Teacher the day before and saw so many juxtapositions with Little Man Tate - the unlikely child prodigy from less than favourable background, the fixated teacher who sees the potential going squandered and the eventual fight for ownership of the child's future and current circumstances, down to the emotional manipulation on the teacher's part. Dianne Wiest's level of sinister behaviour isn't note for note but there's definitely the sense of justification in her actions, all she needs to do is elevate the child above his terrible life and bring him into the light for the world to admire, regardless of whether it's the best thing for him. Maggie Gyllenhaal's Lisa may already have a family, unlike Wiest's character, and she's far more dissatisfied with the state of the cultural landscape, especially in terms of her alliterate children, one of whom wants to be a marine, against her better judgement. She shows compassion to all her students but expects better from the poet Jimmy because of his perceived advancement, one this child is less aware of as he's not being propped up or recognised at home for his genius, he's simply a weirdo. Neither Fred or Jimmy are strictly diagnosed as autistic, Fred is simply gifted, a term we don't bandy about as much now. Fred's mother still admires his intelligence and perspicacity, whereas Jimmy's father fears his son will have nothing of a life in any academic capacity, the uncle being a failed writer of sorts who edits for a newspaper. While Lisa and Jane show immense fear of their respective student's possible mediocre existence without their unique guidance, Lisa crosses more boundaries than Jane, who negotiates with Fred's mother, Didi, perhaps more out of fear for her own physical safety. I appreciate we don't see mayhem when both Fred and Jimmy go missing, there's no frantic montages involving police reports or pleas to the public. We don't see any police in Jimmy's case until the very end, where he has the understanding he's landed in danger despite his trust of Lisa. And we still ultimately pity Jimmy for taking the path away from her at the expense of his possible greatness, him being ignored and infantalised proves Lisa's accusations right away, he doesn't have to wait to suffer her perceived consequences. Meanwhile Fred gets the normal existence of an average kid while still being nurtured as a genius, where he finds happiness and accepts he's not extraordinary or immeasurably unique. Fred does yearn for what Didi can't provide but can't appreciate what she gives until it's removed.
I had misconceptions from both trailers for this movie. I remember the part in the trailer where you see Fred hit the floor from leaning in his chair and thought the kid suffered seizures. The Kindergarten Teacher trailer uses that weird plucky violin music similar to the Mother! trailer where you really feel like something way more sinister will happen in the film. It's actually expertly handled by Gyllenhaal, there's nothing pedophilic about her approach, she's overly affectionate, probably unacceptably by today's standards, but I thought in the trailer there was an implication of her being attracted to whatever adult traits Jimmy possessed in his mind. But she wishes to nurture him, and seems to be grooming everyone around him into trusting Jimmy in her hands. Of course that's what actual child molesters do, I don't doubt that. But I don't see her sexualising Jimmy. She wants to abandon her average family and be Jimmy's mentor and mother. You assume her intentions are far more malignant by way of plagiarism but I was sure she was tricking the students and teacher of her poetry class by testing Jimmy's words on an ignorant audience, that wasn't a twist to me. She has to accept her own mediocrity as a creator, she is derivative and unremarkable, but is happy to be Jimmy's ambassador, her daughter ironically planting this seed with a throwaway angry comment. Jane believes she's more parental when Fred is in her care but we only discover she has no ability and admits to this internally at least once she loses Fred. We get more of a sense of her childhood abandonment that Fred so eloquently recognises, but doesn't fully appreciate ultimately. As such, Jane treats Fred as her parents treated her, as a small adult who doesn't require physical or emotional comforting.
The Kindergarten teacher is also expertly designed in its simplicity. You see the best being made of small budgets in both films, where the acting has to take precedence as it's so crucial to the delivery of the narrative. Both are beautifully presented stylistically, both narratives play out satisfactorily, I think the Kindergarten teacher leans more on building dramatic tension because of its lack of comedic aspects compared to Little Man Tate. And I would watch both again quite happily.
