The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right is a modern look at the nuclear family, complete with its warts, foibles and general grind that goes along with it. That the parents are a lesbian couple is never made into a big deal, it just is. To see two people presented as just ‘being’ twenty years into a marriage is nice. We so often see the blissful-but-awkward first year, the medically-impaired twilight, but never really the midsection. These are two people trying to just make it through, raise their kids and be happy. But anyone who’s made it through more than one year living and being with the same person knows that it’s a hard task, and that it only gets harder as time marches on. Did I mention that is was filled with laughter, warmth, brains and tears along the journey? Well, such is life.

Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) have been together for twenty years and have had two kids through an anonymous sperm donor, Paul (Mark Ruffalo). When their oldest child, Joni (Mia Wasikowska), is getting ready to go off to college her brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson), asks her to help them meet their biological father. She initially refuses, declaring that she doesn’t want to hurt Moms feelings. Like any parental unit they are described as a singular entity. Eventually she relents and they secretly meet Ruffalo. From there the Moms intervene and hilarity, awkwardness and honest-to-God adult emotions emerge.

Some movies can be described as an actor’s piece; they offer great lines to act out but don’t deliver the goods in the story department. They’re just pretty ornaments for the actors to hang with their craft. I would be tempted, greatly I might add, to call this an actor’s piece, but the script is too wonderful, the story to perfectly told to disservice it in that way. And yet it does offer a chance for some great actors to do some great work. It is both a tightly written piece and an actor’s piece. A rarity nowadays and we should treasure movies like it all the more. Consider the scene where Nic and Jules have a huge argument about Paul, their kids, their marriage at dinner with friends. The simple back and forth pains you. No flowery or prosaic dialogue is given; it is unadorned and sounds painfully real. Moore and Bening do great work throughout, but a scene like this allows for them to do small and subtle touches which add credence to their characters backstory and lives. It makes it all feel more real. The way that Moore delivers a line like “Do you still think I’m pretty?” is enough to break your heart. Or the way that Bening reacts to her daughter’s growing desire for independence. She is used to her daughter being the good one, the one that always does as she is told. But children grow up and want to be adults someday; Joni is just trying to ask her mother to be treated this way. But she does it in the same bullish way that we’ve all done it. The face that Bening makes, nothing huge or grand, just a small twitch of the muscles to express hurt, confusion, anger and possibly understanding go a long way. This is a real family, this is a real couple.

I have expounded greatly on our two lead actresses, but they don’t act in a vacuum. Hutcherson delivers solid work as Laser, the fifteen-year-old son seeking a masculine connection, male-bonding and patriarchal sympathy in a house run by women. It is understandable why he feels this way, and he’s also got some of his mother’s both-feet-first way of doing things. Wasikowska, fresh off a solid performance in Alice in Wonderland, proves that she’s a young actress to watch. If she’s already hoping around genres and seeking out complicated and diverse characters like this, she could easily prove herself to be an actress of great strength and caliber. She also bares a more than striking resemblance to Joni Mitchell, whom her character is named for. Should Mitchell ever get a biopic, I know what actress could portray her. And Mark Ruffalo, always a solid supporting actor, turns in his greatest one yet. What he has to do to get some recognition from Hollywood is anyone’s guess. His scruffy but plain good looks fit Paul like a glove. But he’s also capable of delivering the stuttering, commitment-phobic, slightly neurotic New Age oddness of the character. It is a finely and fully realized portrait, just like the rest. Truly, this is a gifted ensemble. It’s a shame the Academy doesn’t pull a SAG award and create a “Best Ensemble” category.

Notice that I haven’t talked about the infidelity. I’ve noticed that some (re)viewers are mistaking Jules and Paul’s affair as being something resembling love. Love has nothing to do with it. She tells him flat out that she’s a lesbian. So why is she having sex with a man? It’s very simple. Nic is no longer noticing Jules in many ways. When Jules tells Paul that she mistakes silence for criticism that is coming from a dark and deep place within her, which is an emotional black eye has been dealing with throughout her marriage. Paul notices her, he tells her kind words, he values her input, he thinks of her sexually. She is being seen by someone for the first time in a long while. That is why she sleeps with him. She doesn’t love him; he just makes her feel appreciated and noticed for the first time in a long time. He’s fulfilling the emotional void she’s having in her marriage. And he doesn’t love her, he’s jealous of their comfortable middle-class domesticity. They have his children; they have a marriage and a nice life. He is in his forties and runs from relationships. She is an image to him in many ways. His feelings are based on that.

And then there is the ending. Many feel that he is shut out completely and blamed as an interloper. I can see that, but I disagree. If everyone in the family hated him, why would Joni take the hat he gave her with her to college? She can clearly be seen placing it with her things in the car towards the end. There is a possibility, a very small and subtle one in a film filled with small and subtle things, that he can be forgiven and welcomed back in. But the home needs to be fixed first. That was my reading, anyway.

The Kids Are All Right is a film that I appreciate, love and cannot recommend highly enough. I saw it shortly after it came out, and wish that I had written this sooner. Luckily, it’s still playing (at my art house theater anyway) and is coming out to DVD in early November. Go to the theater, rent it, I don’t care how you see it, just do it.