Borrowing techniques that would have been familiar to a theater patron in 19th-Century America, Elizabethan England, or Classical-Age Athens, Childhood's End is a very dramatic movie, and I mean that in the worst possible way. It uses static, fixed-camera shots to depict totally unbelievable characters enacting a hodgepodge of contrived scenarios. Its actors often seem to be wearing tragic masks as they stand or sit in place and recite lines that could only be emanating from a script. They declaim in soliloquies and dramatic monologues that offer endless exposition but rarely propel any action. When two characters actually trade dialog with one another in a conversation, they never seem to really engage each other. Instead, all roads lead to the dead end of political correctness, the worst thing to happen to Western Art since Homer kicked it off 3000 years ago
For example, at the center of the story is the Chute family. Greg, the teenage son is a photographic prodigy who is taking early graduation from high school so he can accept a job as the art director for a prestigious magazine. His older sister, Chloe, is a competitive skater who is just breaking into the world of modeling. Mom and Dad are open-minded, non-judgmental and completely supportive of their children and of each other's needs. Dad is also a policeman. We know that because he wears a gun and we hear his wife say so. Mom suggests that Chloe should add some nude shots to her portfolio, so Chloe of course asks brother Greg to shoot them. Greg is the logical choice because, as we are told by multiple female characters, he has a strong feminine side and is very sensitive to women's emotional needs.
During the nude photo shoot, Greg demonstrates his feminine empathy by knowing exactly how to elicit the proper mood from Chloe. He describes in unending detail how he wants her to imagine that she is studying her naked body in a mirror and noticing all of her flaws and blemishes, several of which he points out (that always gets 'em in the mood when I do it). Chloe responds with mirthful compliance. Then we see that Chloe is even happier with the results of the shoot than she was while doing it as she and Greg and Mom and Dad sit together at the kitchen table and study the full-frontal shots that dutiful Greg has produced of his sister. And so the story goes on with one ridiculously unrealistic scene after another.
Greg, whom every girl in town desires, only has eyes for Evelyn, the middle-aged best friend of his mother. Greg's ultra-sensitive approach has Evelyn our of her pants in about two minutes and moving in with him in his first apartment away from home only a few days later. Since almost every character in the movie has some sort of unconventional relationship or attitude, various threads begin to conflict with one another, some even with themselves.
For example, Evelyn's daughter Denice feels neglected by her mother and is incensed when Evelyn takes up with Greg. Daughter Denice is a lesbian, and we learn during another interminable dramatic monologue how Denice discovered her sexual preference. She narrates the story of her first coed party at 15, where she witnessed a single heterosexual act that revealed to her that men express their universal hatred of women through sex. She goes on to explain that she has nothing against men but that she never intends to give one a chance to hate her for no reason. Fortunately for men, very few women fear that a surefire way to instantly earn a man's hatred is to have sex with him.
In case we might have trouble believing what these characters say and do, the movie shows us in fairly graphic detail. In fact, about the only real action in the movie occurs in its many scenes of full-frontal nudity. We see 40-something Evelyn and supposed-teenager Greg nude several times, sister Chloe posing nude for Greg as well as the naked pictures from the session, and the nude Denice and her new lover, a neurotic wallflower who blossoms under Denice's sensitive lesbian hands, but that's another story. In the end, all the characters who were driven apart by the needs and unconventional decisions of other characters come back together and accept one another because that's what happens in amateurish, politically-correct indie movies. If that's your idea of art, then this one's for you.
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