SFF NOTES: The Childhood of a Leader (2015, Dir. Brady Corbet)

The second Scott Walker's clamourous overture kicks in over the title cards of Brady Corbet's debut feature, The Childhood of a Leader, it is clear that he is a filmmaker ready to flex his stylistic muscle. It is an immense introduction that immediately throws the film into '70s phycho-thriller territory and it is not too long before comparisons to the likes of The Omen are firmly cemented.

Corbet's Sartre inspired demonspawn isn't the product of any dark lord, though he does arrive draped in religious iconography. Instead, he's the petulant product of the austerity imposed on Germany following the close of WWI. Little Prescott (Tom Sweet) presents as a fledgling tyrant asserting himself under the constraints of his parents (Bérénice Bejo and Liam Cunningham). In truth, he probably has more in common with The Tin Drum's Oskar than young Damien, and carries himself with the same defiant bearing (absence of drum notwithstanding).

Sweet's precocious intensity adds immeasurably to the dark tone of Corbet's already sombre film. The faded, claustrophobic glory of the endless chambers and anterooms that form the film's curtain-draped, furniture-crammed sets, is Old World oppressive. The locked-off, self-congratulating adults, too, bring patronising menace to the table. Even the slow pacing reinforces a severe and sticky malevolence. In amongst this, the microcosm power play between Prescott, his mother and his father (in absentia) carry surprising weight. Paternalistic superiority and the childish disregard of consequence mount in an ever escalating battle of egos. Collateral damage is power rendered by the household’s bit players, French tutor (Stacy Martin) and maid (Yolande Moreau), who both do much with their small roles (arguably more than Robert Pattinson, who plays harbinger journalist, Charles, though he still gets to deliver the film’s king hit).

Unfortunately, in and around the laudable styling, Corbet's screenplay, written in collaboration with Mona Fastvold, doesn't make the most of its contemporary commentary. The line drawn through the Treaty of Versailles to the flowering of European fascism is now well accepted and presenting this concept in conjunction with alternate history oversteps, or at least works to diminish, its relevance in today’s political landscape. This doesn't hamper the power of Corbet's chilling finale or the bravado of its astonishing presentation (again shouts go out to Walker's score) but it does contain the film it in such a way as to be able more easily set it aside as an historical chamber piece.

In truth, the issues raised here should be given far more oxygen.

★★★☆

Trailer:

The Childhood of a Leader screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.