ALL THE LITTLE ANIMALS (director: Jeremy Thomas; screenwriters: from a book by Walker Hamilton/Eski Thomas; cinematographer: Mike Molloy; editor: John Victor Smith; cast: John Hurt (Mr. Summers), Christian Bale (Bobby), Daniel Benzali (De Winter, "The Fat"), James Faulkner (Mr. Stuart Whiteside), Amy Robbins (Bobby's Mother), John O'Toole (Lorry Driver); Runtime: 111; 1998-UK)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A strangely intriguing, darkly made psychological allegory based on the late Walker Hamilton's only novel. It is the directorial debut film of Jeremy Thomas, the producer of Bertolucci, Roeg, and Cronenberg films, and the husband of the screenwriter Eski Thomas. This is a difficult film to categorize or to fully explain its meaning, except it has clearly been influenced by "The Night of the Hunter," though not up to that film's quality, nevertheless it shares with that film the frightened way a child looks at the world when an evil stepfather comes into his world and the child is helpless to stop him from ruining his life.
Bobby (Bale) is a 24-year-old, who is simple-minded because of an early childhood car accident. The repercussions are that he is over-sensitive, completely innocent, and very fearful, hardly ever venturing outside, and never attending a regular school. His kindly mother, whom he loved, has just died because his ogre-like stepfather De Winter (Benzali), who is mockingly called by him "The Fat", has treated her cruelly. He now threatens to place Bobby in a mental institution unless he signs over control of his mother's large department store to him. To further threaten the frightened youngster, who has been told by his mother to never sign over anything to his stepfather, he kills the young man's pet mouse, which he secretly kept in the bathroom.
The next day Bobby walks outside of London's city limits going further from home than he has ever gone before and hitches a ride with a friendly hippy couple that takes him to the Cornish countryside, where he decides to go to Cornwall. He gets a ride from a lorry driver whose face lights up with joy when he sees a fox on the road and tries to run it over, as Bobby tries to steer the lorry the other way, the lorry goes over the side of the road, killing the driver. But Bobby comes out of the accident without a scratch. An eccentric recluse, living in a cottage in the woods nearby, Mr. Summers (Hurt), suddenly appears holding a dead rabbit in his arms, saying the driver missed the fox but hit the rabbit, and that he will bury the rabbit. He says that his mission in life is to bury the little animals killed by humans who don't care, further proclaiming that no one should kill anyone, and railing against the automobile for all the roadkills.
Bobby and Mr. Summers hit it off, sort of like birds of the same feather, as they spend the summer together in Mr. Summers' hidden cottage, burying a badger, feeding mice inside their cottage and, in an outstanding scene, Bobby breaks the light bulb with a rock that a lepidopterist uses in his net to trap moths for his collection, while he sits on the porch and drinks wine and listens to classical music. Mr. Summers is not a sexual predator, and in many ways appears to be as naive as the boy he is mentoring, but is earnest about caring for the animals and is articulate, as he walks in the woods with a spade by his side, burying all the animals he can, because they are helpless to bury each other, while humans are not his concern, since he reasons that they can bury their own.
When hiking through the woods, Mr. Summers who seems to have plenty of money, offers to buy Bobby an ice cream, but the place is a crowded summer tourist stop, which frightens Mr. Summers away. When Bobby goes to the ice cream stand, he is recognized by one of the managers in the department store (Faulkner), who tries to keep him there while his wife calls De Winter. But Bobby escapes his grasp and finds his way back to Mr. Summers' retreat.
Bobby proceeds to tell him about his fear of De Winter and his life story. After absorbing the full impact of his story, Mr. Summers takes a walk and returns to tell Bobby his tragic life secret, about how he worked in a bank and was able to obtain a lot of money and about his horrible secret, and how he has buried in the cottage enough money for both of them to never worry about money for the rest of their lives. He reasons with Bobby that they return together to see De Winter and sign over the store to him, and thereby he will be free from him.
When they meet De Winter in the store, things don't go as they expected, as he turns out to be a villain without any scruples, in fact, there is no way to explain him but as a person who is evil through and through, while Bobby is the essence of goodness. The film works its way to a suspenseful but tacky and implausible revenge conclusion, as all its energy seems to have been spent on its fairy tale setup and the relationship between the two kindred spirits. But, nevertheless, this film, if you allowed it to be seen as a proficiently lyrical work, one that is heartfelt and never false, then you can feel the sincerity of it and you can see in the grand shots of Bobby's escape to the wilderness, away from civilization, as he earnestly narrates his tale of woe offscreen, how poetical the film is and how it is a modern fairy tale for adults and fans of the cinema that still believe that movies can make them see things again as they did when they were children.
REVIEWED ON 8/28/2000 GRADE: A-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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