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Ask director Todd Field (above) for his thoughts on the Oscar buzz surrounding his latest film "Little Children" and he has little to say.
But query him on his actors, like breakout star Jackie Earle Haley (below), who is nominated for Best Supporting Actor at this month's Academy Awards, and he seems much more enthusiastic.
"Little Children", a superb drama about the unhappy lives of suburban dwellers — chief among them characters played by Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson — opened in cinemas yesterday. The film has also been nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Winslet is also in the running for Best Actress.
Haley has a pivotal role as the paedophile Ronnie, whose move back to town after a jail term causes an uproar.
But as much as Ronnie is loathsome, the way some of the self-righteous inhabitants of the town attempt to crucify him reveals more about their own flawed characters than Ronnie's failings.
"You know, I don't know how Jackie got his hands on the script, which was actually a very early version of the film that had been floating around. Then he made a tape of himself playing Ronnie, which I eventually received," Field told TODAY over the phone from Maine.
"To me, for an actor to just put himself out there like that, it just says a lot about who he is and what he is about."
"Little Children" impresses most because of its acute understanding of the fact that when it comes to human morality, it's not a simple matter of black and white.
Ronnie fits in perfectly with this notion, being someone who is as pitiful as he is repulsive: He understands his impulses are wrong but can't seem to control them.
The sympathetic treatment of the Ronnie character may be controversial, but Field noted that far from dividing audiences, he's been viewed more often than not through similarly sympathetic eyes.
"During one of the film festivals where 'Little Children' was screened, an old British couple came up to me. They looked like the most conservative people around — they reminded me of my parents — but in the end, they only had good things to say about Ronnie.
"So I suppose you can never tell when it comes to people." - TODAY/so
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