Nutcrackers
Nutcrackers
Nutcrackers: No doubt, the Janson brothers – Homer, Ulysses, Atlas and Arlo – are cute, well-behaved children in real life. (After all, only a director with no respect for common sense would cast them in the first place.) The same cannot be said of the unruly orphans that the four boys portray in ‘Nutcrackers’ – one of the film’s competition entries about orphans directed by David Gordon Green, who opened the festival held in Toronto: a pack reminiscent of wild animals, swarming around their uptight uncle, Michael Maxwell (Ben Stiller), in hopes that they do not have to live in an orphanage after their parents perish in an auto crash.
Michael is not your ordinary, shabby sort of a man the sort of city-slicker who wears fancy shoes. He walks straight into a cowpat after arriving at his deceased sister’s farm in his bright-yellow Porsche car. A few days are left until Christmas, and Michael Lee has to take care of some family matters — in particular, his plans to escort the Kicklighter siblings to a new adoptive home in Nutcrackers. Then it’s two weeks at the end of the vacation in Chicago for business as a crucial real estate deal is binding on the last day of the absence.
“When I wake up tomorrow, are you still gonna be here?’ asks Homer Janson, 12, who seems primed to debut in acting. Other than his unkempt brothers Junior, Ulysses Janson, Samuel Atlas and Simon Arlo Janson, who both look like the long-haired barbarians they have been transformed to, Homer is endowed with expressive brown eyes, thick dark lashes and the eternally appealing lost puppy look. The kid looks a lot like Jacob Elordi’s younger brother. However, When he is on screen with his real brothers who are raised with one of Green’s old friends, their antics become far more believable. ”
“I don’t know whether to believe what Mom has said about you but, I guess it must be true,” Justice says to his uncle directly in Nutcrackers. “She did say that you can’t love.” If you think otherwise, or are eagerly waiting for Stiller’s character to disprove Justice, then “Nutcrackers” would be a good treat for the holiday season. More skeptical viewers will probably see the family entertainer as something quite different – a rather self indulgent ‘one for me’ type of venture from Green that is a welcome relief from his destruction of epic horror icons like Halloween and The Exorcist to pay tribute to films of his childhood – what Green fondly calls ‘lost jewels’ like Six Pack and Kidco.
What happened to those films where wild teens went wild and swore and did all sorts of things without caring about authorities? For one, Steven Spielberg happened. Amblin productions such as “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Goonies” provided adventures for kids but simultaneously taught discipline. Well enough, such depictions had long superseded the rebellious characters from Paper Moon and The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane.
Green is unmistakable about the use of 35mm film for shoots – he wants to go back to the era when kids in movies used to go wild. But the end product is more closer to sappy Cameron Crowe’s We bought a Zoo than The Bad News Bears. After the first night of Michael at Kicklighter’s house, he wakes up to the sight of the brothers mud-dogging in his porsche.
How does such a man, who appertains more to a car than to his sister’s kids, ever grow up fast enough to find a solution? Green, along with screenwriter Leland Douglas, further the role played by Michael by letting Linda Cardellini pose as a family services worker looking for a foster family for the boy.
“For some people, having children is not a problem. Their bodies don’t allow them to,” she says to Michael, making the point that other people would love to have the same trouble. While staying at his sister’s place, Michael actively seeks to offload the kids to anyone. There is Local Aloysius Wilmington (Toby Huss), a rich local who has everything… but children, and Rose (Edi Patterson) a woman who has come up with a plan that earns her $800 a month for each of her fosters from the government. She wouldn’t mind getting four more boys to add to her collection.
Still, one does not feel convinced by these proposed solutions although “Nutcracker” in no case provides that Michael throughout will be a better option. This man is not only egocentric but completely unskilled both in being a father and life on a farm — and it is hinted that whoever foster parents take the Kicklighter kids they will also be responsible for their all’ animals. Two pigs are included, one guinea pig, some goats, dogs (or several), and a range of birds, including edible chickens that Michael does not at all feel comfortable catching and cooking for supper.
Michael’s slapstick gags such as getting mud on his clothes or falling into the pond are equally expected and do not elicit laughter from anyone. Although the boys are doing homeschooling, on the rare occasion when he has to be the teacher, it is always in his usual role, as a father, which has always been marked by intense awkwardness, and sex-ed. In the event that Michael ends up adopting the boys, he will have to put them to school, sort out the farm, get a totally new job, and teach them manners — not that impossible but could be far more exciting than waiting for his heart to thaw towards them like Scrooge in a matter of a few days.
Are you still unsure what the film’s disparaging title is about? This would be the Christmas show that the boys had been preparing with their mother, who is a popular local dance teacher. Not that he is distracted by other things, Michael decides to witness the Kicklighters’ advanced version of ‘The Nutcracker’ which Green considers his final. In fact, what the film requires is not a shaggy Christmas decoration but a kind of release that one would expect in a story when four out of the five characters have lost a mother and the other one should be grieving for his sister.
From where we stand now, with hindsight and looking back at some of Green’s best films, for instance his early indies, ‘George Washington’ and ‘All the Real Girls’, it is evident that loss is something he knows very well. In this case, however, ambition was to highlight the family’s gratitude of what they receive as a result of unification.
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- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Country: United States
- Director: David Gordon Green
- Cast: Linda Cardellini, Ben Stiller, Toby Huss
