The Childhood of a Leader (2015)

USA / Canada / UK / France / Hungary / Belgium, 115 minutes

Director: Brady Corbet

Writers: Mona Fastvold, Jean-Paul Sartre, Brady Corbet

Photography: Lol Crawley

Music: Scott Walker

Editor: David Jancso

Cast: Tom Sweet, Berenice Bejo, Liam Cunningham, Robert Pattinson, Stacy Martin, Yolande Moreau, Rebecca Dayan, Jacques Boudet

The first time I caught up with The Childhood of a Leader, last summer, I was so impressed with the opening montage (or "Overture") that I was grateful to find it on YouTube in its entirety. I have been playing it ever since. It strikes me as a nearly perfect way to start a movie, a certain clinic even, expertly setting mood and sketching the details of its setting with swift sure strokes: historical antiquated footage from Europe during the negotiations that concluded World War I, accompanied by a surging orchestral score by Scott Walker that is practically the star of this show. The five-minute clip worked on me not like a music video really, let alone a typical favored movie sequence, but more like a song I can't stop playing over and over because everything that is surprising and great about it just keeps giving me irresistible thrills. Walker's score is notably excellent and The Childhood of a Leader has an interesting premise that is well executed.

Director and cowriter Brady Corbet makes it a version of The White Ribbon, examining the European generation born at the turn of the 20th century who became ardent fascists in enough numbers to take over countries and cause a lot of trouble. It's as if he is looking for patterns to figure out why (the original story is by Jean-Paul Sartre, and Hannah Arendt is formally acknowledged as a source of inspiration) when really what he wants to do is make a horror picture. It sets up as one specifically in the evil spawn vein—comparable to, say, The Omen in the same way that The White Ribbon echoes the 1960 picture Village of the Damned. Tweener Prescott (Tom Sweet) is the brutally willful evil kid. His father (Liam Cunningham) is a ranking American diplomat working on the Treaty of Versailles, League of Nations, and such. His mother (Berenice Bejo) is much younger than his father, a cosmopolitan German national who suffered agonies giving birth. It's plain things here will not end any better than the Treaty of Versailles. 

For those keeping score at home, the movie was produced before Donald Trump's rise to power and the Spanish flu pandemic is mentioned once, in a glancing throwaway line. More fun trivia: Juliette Binoche was originally committed to playing the mother but left the project because she thought it was too dark. Dark it is, and not just figuratively. It is filled with voids, dead black patches cast across many scenes, which play out at night and in dimly lit wood-paneled rooms. Note the ominous black horse in the montage. The picture is set up in three parts, based on tantrums Prescott throws within the space of a few months. The first involves his refusal to apologize for throwing rocks at church parishioners one night after rehearsing the Christmas pageant. He's a recognizable handful. He wants to wear his hair long and spitefully corrects anyone who confuses him for a girl. He has a creepy relationship with the attractive young tutor and single mother (Stacy Martin) who is teaching him French. He boldly cops a feel from her and it's not cute but somehow deeply demeaning.

The picture exudes anxiety in small and large ways. You can't quite make out some of the images. Everyone is worried about the treaty negotiations. The father is probably having an affair with the tutor. The mother is probably having an affair with a friend of the family (Robert Pattinson). When a mild-mannered housemaid (Yolande Moreau) is fired—unfairly, it must be said—she quietly murmurs that she will spend the rest of her life trying to destroy the family. Prescott keeps getting worse, devious and manipulative, without conscience or scruples, a busy beaver already gnawing at the foundations of civilization. He is never better than hateful. In the last section, a kind of coda that is pro forma and brief, he is grown up and looks natural as a strutting fascist. The trappings are specific to neither Germany or Italy, but have the Nazi color scheme of red, black, and white, with a somewhat comical asterisk instead of a swastika.

Director and cowriter Corbet is a careful and methodical filmmaker and he already has an interesting resume. Born in 1988, he has worked as an actor with Michael Haneke (on the pointless 2007 remake of Funny Games), Lars von Trier (Melancholia, 2011), and Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria, 2014). He was in the original Force Majeure, episodes of The King of Queens and Law & Order, and a fair chunk of the fifth season of 24. The Childhood of a Leader is his feature debut as a director and it's remarkably self-assured and promising. The follow-up from 2018, Vox Lux, a more by-the-numbers study of narcissism and celebrity with a plum role for Natalie Portman, may be less effective but it's nearly as ambitious. I'm looking forward to all next projects.