Susanna responds in kind by marrying Lincoln (Alexander Skarsg å rd), a young directionless bartender, in a sham union made to match Beale’s reformed family and stay in contention as Maisie’s caregiver. Seen as equally fit (or unfit) to care for Maisie, a judge awards the parents shared custody, ensuring a highly dysfunctional power struggle between them.Īs time goes by, Beale marries Maisie’s nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham), seemingly in an attempt to wrest his child away from Susanna, while taking joy in her anger and bewilderment. The parents have little in common save for a shared grudge against each other-Susanna is an aged musician swiftly moving past her prime and Beale is a businessman glued to his cellphone and constantly away on trips. Maisie’s mother, Susanna (Julianne Moore), and father, Beale (Steve Coogan), hurl vile insults at each other within earshot of their child, failing to notice the girl even as she approaches to ask for money to pay for a pizza delivery. The film follows Maisie through episodic memories, seen in abbreviated form and accentuated with dissolves to black, as her parents come to the end of a bitter custody battle. The mother and father are different people with different names, their respective rebound spouses are changed as well, and parental neglect takes on new forms appropriate to the times. In the film’s world, the only the name that remains unchanged is the protagonist Maisie (Onata Aprile), a 6-year-old girl whose fixed gaze dictates the way viewers engage with the material. And so, we find Scott McGehee and David Seigel’s feature film of the same name take the barest bones of James’ story and transform it into a modern telling. Therein, the need of a child to be nurtured into adulthood, and the tragic consequences that follow acrimony between separated spouses, can be seen as a perennial theme. At times, the novel dates itself with antiquated bursts of formal language, but the soul of the story endures. Much has changed since Henry James first wrote What Maisie Knew, now over a century ago. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been so in the thick of the fight.” “ It was to be the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than, at first, she understood, but also, even at first, to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever understood before.
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