'Little Men' Has Big Ideas

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Jake becomes close friends with Leonor's son Tony (Michael Barbieri), but soon a rift grows between Leonor and Jake's parents, Brian and Kathy (Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle). Because Brian and Kathy are struggling financially, they need Leonor to pay market value rent, and she can't afford it.

In an era of high-concept movies, the conflict here is a pretty mellow one. But like lots of seemingly simple real-life problems, it's of monumental importance to all involved. For each side, the outcome will bring life-changing consequences. In finely realized, understated vignettes of hushed conversations and tearful encounters, Sachs delineates the stakes. The rules of film narrative keep urging us to identify the problem party, but in the end there is none.

Through it all, Jake and Tony seem to strengthen their bond. Jake is a budding artist, and Tony wants to be an actor. They hang out, reviewing drawings, reading scenes from plays, exploring the streets of Brooklyn. Their big plan is to attend the same high school for the arts together.

In "Little Men," Jake (Theo Taplitz) and Tony (Michael Barbieri) hang out and explore the streets of Brooklyn, despite the growing rift between their parents.

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Alas, the parental conflict eventually boils over into the boys' lives. The kids' instinct is to put up a united front against their parents, but one of the cruelest lessons of childhood is that of ultimate powerlessness. As the storm waters rise, the currents of their parents' dispute push them apart — a development that denotes a sort of kinship between Little Men and writer-director Sachs' previous film, Love Is Strange, in which a married gay couple is forced by economic circumstances to live apart.

The film's most dramatic moment is one of its quietest: Dad sits down with Jake in the boy's bedroom and tries to help him sort through the swirling debris of his emotions. The father is not a successful man — he muddles through life as a third-tier actor who is haunted by twin desires for artistic fulfillment and providing for his family. So there he sits, vulnerable and authoritative, apologizing not so much for his handling of the situation as for the cruel complexities of life itself. It is a spectacularly subdued moment from Kinnear, again proving himself one of his generation's finest screen actors.

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Not everyone will be satisfied by the final moments of Little Men. There is a certain incompleteness in them, a sense that there is more story to be told. Perhaps that uneasiness is born out of an uncomfortable memory or two of our own — a recollection of that childhood friend, the one with whom we swore eternal allegiance, who now lives only in the shadows of near-forgotten memory.

Bill Newcott is a writer, editor and movie critic for AARP Media.