Controlling the Kids: The Kids are Alright - A Review

Control.

Control of one's life, one's environment, one's decisions are all considered the hallmarks of adulthood, that one is no longer a kid.

Nietzsche preaches in various essays that control is the true and proper objective of both a moral and physical life, that one should rise above conventional (his word is slave) morality and control all. 

So, why does an attempt to control by gaining knowledge, in this case of a secret identity, drive a wedge between members of an unconventional family?

In the film, The Kids are Alright, every character seeks to control the others by using various social devices, from cursory displays of affection, to feigned ignorance, to acts of rebellion. 

Rather than raise consciousness, each controlling act does the opposite. Whether each egomaniacal effort was intended, it nevertheless damages the souls of all concerned, and especially the heart of a family's already-troubled unity. 

It becomes clear right off there is a dis-ease in this family. The daughter of two lesbians, conceived through artificial insemination, has just turned 18. Added to this rite of passage, and there are many similar symbols offered in the film, is the daughter’s pending move away from home to college, out of the ultimate controlling environment, the family, to one of near anarchy.

The daugther Mia, played by Mia Wasikowska, wants to know a fundamental fact from her past: Who is my father? Revealing his identity also reveals the dis-ease beginning to control the family's destiny: the push-pull between control and complacency. 

Father, daughter, and, as it turns out, a similarly-conceived son Laser (one mother bore the daughter, one mother bore the son, and all from the same sperm donor) meet. Laser is played by Josh Hutcherson.

Mia hits it off with dad Paul, played with a nonchalant coyness by Mark Ruffalo, while Laser is more cautious, warning his sister the man seems ego-centered.

Eventually, their mothers learn of the meeting. 

Nic, one mother played to turgid perfection by Annette Bening, goes through the ceiling. An OBGYN and the more controlling of the two parents, she forbids her adult daughter from seeing the man again. Of course, her daughter ignores the order.

At the same time, the other mother, Jules, played with a gentle innocence by Julianne Moore, learns she is barely satisfying Nic, what with her whimsical, unfocused lifestyle and sudden inability to hit the G spot in bed.

Jules ultimately meets Paul,  and... well, I dare go no further and risk spoiling the rest.

What I take away from this film, written by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, and directed by Cholodenko, is nobody in this unconventional family is terribly grown up at the start. They’re all still a bunch of controlling kids, with Jules the least controlling of all. The one who acts most mature, Nic, turns out to be the least so of all among the adults, including her teenage daughter.

It becomes no surprise when Jules grows up the most, beginning a new business as a landscape architect and contractor, an adultish role that looks destined to take root and flourish despite all else. In the end, she is the only one able to weed out her emotions and explain the bigger picture at stake in a marriage, how ultimately difficult a marriage is to tend. She is the only one able to fully, genuinely apologize without prompting for her secret, really the family's weed-infested dis-ease, now revealed. Yet, she too has much farther to go.

This is a good film. Based on those I’ve seen nominated for the Best Picture Oscar®, it is the best so far. It is provocative, probing, honest, and makes quite clear that the Kids, meaning every character in the film, are NOT Alright. Perhaps the daughter, newly delivered to college and separated from her family, will become the most evolved of all. Maybe she will flourish in the university's fertile soil. Only time will tell.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.