What Maisie Knew (2013)

Rating: 3.5/5

What Maisie Knew is getting rave reviews, which praise it as a highly-charged emotional drama with deep understanding. It is certainly both of these things, but to a hugely depressing extent. It is painful to watch throughout, and the more I think about it, the more I begin to believe it falls into a similar category as 'Requiem For A Dream' and 'Gia': it should be watched because it is expertly crafted, but the skill involved makes it an absorbing, and therefore totally soul-crushing experience. The movie drops us right in the middle of little Maisie Beale's world. Her father (Steve Coogan, proving again he handles drama nicely) is some big-time businessman, who is always out of town or country on some trip, and her mother (Julianne Moore in easily one of her most powerful performances to date) is an unstable, nervous-wreck rock star, who is always out of town or country on some big tour. Through a shameful sequence of game-playing, negligence and forgetfulness, angelic little Maisie (Otana Aprile) is left in the lurch, time and time again.

At first glance you'd guess that Maisie has a very privileged life. Both her parents' houses are contemporary palaces, and she has all the toys and costumes she could want. At her mother's house, she has her lovely young nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who is Maisie's only real friend: the other parents are repulsed by her mother Suzanne's outrageous ways, and never let their children play. The father is absent throughout most of the film, and the majority of the abuse comes from the mother. Julianne Moore absolutely nails this role. Surprisingly, she makes a believable rock musician, but not so surprisingly, she creates the most tangible of characters; I am still unsure, as I write this, whether or not I like her. She is childish about her separation, and manipulative of Maisie within it: "Remember when your dad threw you on the couch?!" The child says no. "Of course you do," she replies, "it was your most earth-shattering moment!" She later remarks that the father won full custody because of the female judge. This adult's every reaction to anything is that of a teenager. "It's a goddamn witch hunt, that's what it is!"

The mother comes out with the most unbelievable things, right in front of her little child. It's honestly shocking, and very upsetting. She goes on paranoid rants, her bony fingers always wrapped around a cigarette. She demonstrates mental abuse. She vents to her daughter as if she were an adult. She tells her demeaning, damaging, disgraceful things, with absolute disregard for her child's psychological wellbeing. She repeatedly makes a scene in public; at her daughter's school and on the street. She starts to abandon her daughter. She doesn't turn up to collect her from school, just to get one over on the father. It is almost unreservedly the mother's behaviour that makes What Maisie Knew so depressing to watch.

It gets worse. Maisie starts getting physically abandoned. Her parents' respective lovers (the father's now being the nanny Margo), eventually become the girl's sole guardians, and one night Maisie gets left by her mother at the bar her lover works at. Except he's not at work that night, and she eventually sleeps in a storage room at the bar, while she cries, "I want to go home." The torment just seemed never ending; I started to wonder what the conclusion would be and when it would blessedly come. And when it did, I suppose it was supposed to be uplifting and tie up all loose ends. Except it doesn't.

Maisie is living happily on the beach with Margo and barman Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård) when her mother turns up one night in a tour bus, urging her to come and see all the presents she has brought. When the child refuses, she throws herself about and screams, "What, you're scared of me?!" We couldn't blame the child if this were true - the woman is a mess. Rejected, she goes, saying to her daughter, "You know who your mother is, right?" She does.

So, is that what the title means? Maisie knew who her mother was? Is that supposed to make everything alright? Because it really, really doesn't. Little Maisie - a wide eyed cherub with an adorable giggle - endures horrific manipulation and abandonment during our observation of her life, and I didn't leave the theatre feeling like her sufferings were at an end. So her mother's gone away...again. What happens the next time she turns up in the middle of the night with presents and promises of at least a whole night together? And when will her father finally make a reappearance? None of these questions are answered. I just left, still concerned for a domestic situation created so brilliantly that... well, that I worried about fictional characters.