The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2014):

This is the new film from the French Terry Gilliam, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. You may best know him as the director of Amelie, City of the Lost Children and Micmacs. This time, we have a sweeter and simpler affair: a young prodigy in Montana, the titular Spivet, has invented a 'perpetual motion machine' thereby solving an enigma that has baffled scientist. The discovery is so hot that it even attracts the attention of the Smithsonian institute, who wish to present the boy with an award, unaware of his real age. So, leaving home and his oddball family behind, T.S embarks on a journey across America to receive his prize.

The Short answer: It's really, really good! The Long? Well, where to start? Well given Jeunet pedigree, the visuals are up first, in all their vibrant, almost Technicolor-esque splendour. What's more, this is quite possibly the best use of 3D I have ever seen in a film. The depth of field is phenomenal, and really adds to the storybook feeling of the whole movie. It's sort of like a giant pop up book, which is fitting as that's how we transition between the different parts of the story. Whether it be out on the Montana ranch, looking out of a train or even in the Smithsonian itself, there is always something coming to the fore or floating out, and it's great fun.

Of course, there are other areas. The cast is top notch, with a pretty solid youngster as our lead. He captures the quirks and brainpower of our inventive young lead, alternately able to sell inspiration, determination and even fear a few times, reminding us T.S, for all his brilliance, is still a child. In supporting roles we have the likes of Helena Bonham Carter as his bug-studying mother, Callum Keith Rennie as his cowboy pop, and even Jeunet regular Dominique Pinon as a lively hobo T.S meets on his travels. This is just a shortlist of the people here, but every one does well and their own vibrance and sort of exuberance contrasts nicely with T.S's very straight forward, matter of fact behaviour and logic.

However, all this is but dressing without a decent script here, and well, we have a fine one. It's undeniably Euro-quirk, despite being a Canadian co-production, with a lot of visual gags and little sprinkles of off-quilter and slightly dark scenarios that are played with a slightly humorous bend (not many movies can make people shooting themselves, a cowboy with a lick fetish and even mourning trauma somewhat amusing, last I checked). However, amidst the silliness, there is a good deal of heart. For all his ingenuity, the film very much still presents T.S as a kid; he makes mistakes, he gets scared he misses his family as he goes on his adventure. The film wisely doesn't make him invulnerably just because he's our lead. What's more, there is a strong element here about dealing with death and letting go concerning a tragedy in the Spivet family, and while at first is somewhat there for amusement, the film does take it more seriously as it progresses, and once again, shows how people would react under that circumstance: some bottle it in, some cry and some regret and take blame. For a film with such a bright colour palette, it can get very dark and touchy a handful of times, and it's all the better for it.

Naturally, how much oddball quirk you can take will affect your enjoyment, and there are a few times where the pacing does slow down a little more than needed. Regardless, if you're burnt out by X Men and Edge of Tomorrow, and need something smaller and more out there, give this a shot. It may even leave you a little teary eyed at points, but regardless, if you can get to it, check this film out. It's inventive, touching and refreshingly with a few surprises. Can't ask for more than that.

One might want to call this inevitable: that Jean-Pierre Jeunet, film's high priest of wild imagination, king of the bizarre and quirky, cinema's greatest child would end up making a film with a child protagonist. Jeunet found that protagonist in T.S. Spivet, the title character of Reif Larsen's best-selling novel about a boy burning with a passion for science, a keen observer of life with a strong will to leave his mark on the world and a dark secret. And even more so, he found him in Kyle Catlett, a small, frail blonde with piercing blue eyes, hesitant enthusiasm, an awake yet guarded mind, an infectious smile that is never sure of itself. For Catlett, Jeunet made the role younger, turning the book's twelve-year-old genius into an even more unlikely ten-year old through whose eyes he makes us see the world for those miraculous, mesmerizing, blissful 105 minutes.

And what a set of eyes they are: warm and loving, yet at the same time distant and objective, T.S. deconstructs the world in order to return it to order. As so often with Jeunet, he makes us look at the ordinary in an entirely new way. His hero's scientific glance transforms the everyday into miracles, makes the normal appear bizarre and vice versa. It is a look Jeunet had perfected in his masterpiece Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, better known shortly as Amélie. It is a world inhabited by quirky yet mostly lovable people: T.S.'s harassed mother (Helena Bonham Carter) who is obsessed with classifying insects, his quiet cowboy father Callum Keith Rennie, his entertainment addicted sister Gracie (Niamh Wilson). Jeunet paints them close to the caricaturesque, often adding an absurdist touch, a little too much color to make them appear brighter and clearer than life, only enhancing their humanity by turning the screw a little further.

Jeunet lets his hero narrate the story: how he, after his twin brother's fatal accident, sets out to improve the world through science, how he sets out to make his way to Washington, DC in order to pick up a prestigious science award. T.S.'s off voice provides distance, context, irony, humor – but above all imagination. Visually, Jeunet indulges in small imaginative transgressions of realism, giving the film a playful, exploratory feel that perfectly matches his protagonist. The borders between the real and the imagined are fluent, their realms overlapping rather than separated. The wideness of rural Montana is too beautiful to be true, it may be more a country of the mind, but for Jeunet this doesn't make it less real. For him, imagination is the true life force, what one can dream of must be true. So one might wonder that T.S. keeps encountering good and friendly and helpful people, meets little conflict and arrives safely and almost smoothly in Washington as if he was dreaming it. And maybe he is, maybe we are.

Just like every dream this one has to end. And so it does and the film fizzles out in a mixture of flashy media satire, crude anti-modernism and sentimental celebration of family values. The simple, somewhat quirky yet honest and lovable people on the one side, the falseness of the polished capitalist façade on the other. T.S., of course, returns into the loving arms of his family and escapes the cruel materialism of a world governed by fame, power and money. No doubt the end weakens the overall effect of the film – but cannot break it. For the power of human imagination it celebrates and visualizes, the playful anarchism it embodies, the shameless naïve optimism it upholds survive the crudeness and the one-dimensional caricature it ends up embracing. As the voice of T.S. Spivet prevails so does his spirit that calls on us to learn a new way of looking at world. Through observing eyes which believe that anything is possible as long as we can dream it. Imagine that.

This film is very unusual for Jean-Pierre Jeunet because it's in English and is set in the United States. While he previously directed "Alien: Resurrection", his films are usually in his native language. However, like most of his movies, it is very strange and has a wonderfully unique sense of style that is pure Jeunet. It's hard to exactly describe this style—you just have to see it to believe and appreciate it. This oddness is actually what makes most of his films so wonderful.

As far as the film being set in America, I was not totally surprised by this—especially since a lot of the film is set in the American West. When I have visited France on several occasions, I was very surprised to see that many folks there were very fascinated with the old west and cowboys. The biggest shock was inside the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland Paris, as inside this mansion are, believe it or not, cowboys!

The film is about a very small and unique 10 year-old, T.S. Spivet (Kyle Catlett). T.S. is a strange child who is a lot like Dexter from "Dexter's Lab" or "Jimmy Neutron"—a boy genius with an intellect far, far in advance of his years. You learn just how smart he is when the boy receives a call from the Smithsonian Institution. It seems that the kid has received the very prestigious Baird Award for ingenuity and inventiveness. However, the folks have no idea T.S. is a child and naturally think he's an adult. After all, he's invented an amazing machine to demonstrate perpetual motion. When they invite T.S. to come to Washington to receive the award, he does something very strange—he accepts and never tells his parents. Instead, he treks from Montana to Washington! What's to become of this little prodigy? In addition to this main plot, there are subplots involving T.S.'s dead brother (who, oddly, appears to T.S. periodically throughout the film and has conversations with T.S.!) and his very quirky family.

This film has a somewhat slow and meandering pace that reminded me a bit of the recent Oscar-nominee, "Nebraska". Some may be put off my this or the strangeness of the characters, but to me this is what make this a wonderful and entertaining film. I appreciated the nice, low-key performance by Catlett and it's a nice testament to Jeunet that he was able to coax this out of the boy. Additionally, I really, really appreciated the uniqueness of the plot and way it was handled. Too often films seem awfully familiar, but this is certainly not the case with this nice film. Well worth seeing for audiences of all ages. This Jeunet film is much more normal than many of his films, but the style is definitely his. Additionally, like in so many of his films there is an appearance by Dominique Pinon—an actor that always seems to show up in Jeunet's movies. I appreciate this, as I have loved Pinon in many films —ranging from "Diva" to "Delicatessen".

8.5 of 10. Genius kid invents a perpetual motion machine, goes on adventure. Simple but without a well-developed plot and quirky characters like the one Helena Bonham Carter plays (and continues to set her characters apart from every other actor on the planet), this would be heavily dependent on 3D to be worth viewing in theaters.

What starts out as seemingly just a nerd on the ranch family comedy, develops into a more complex tale. Then when it seems to have reduced to a road-trip, self-discovery story, it once again expands and delivers more.

The other key character in this is played by Judy Davis. There are, however, an ongoing stream of brilliant characters to provide fun and suspense in what really shouldn't be promoted as just 3D kid action.

What a surprise to me- I was expecting another European artsy movie that does not go anywhere. I am European and generally sick of this kind of movies especially from France that bore me to tears. Instead I saw an entertaining movie, full of wonderful filmmaking, touching story and interesting characters. The story is told with an incredible focus on details and beautiful imagery. This is definitely an emotional story carried by kid actors that could have gone terribly wrong. For my taste Mr. Jeunet found a very tasteful way to direct the cast through the potential pitfalls of the story. The story is out there in a fantasy world combined with National Geographic Imagery- great combination. I am sure not for everyone but it worked for me. Chapeau monsieur Jeunet.