Ira Sachs' films are New York stories of a distinct perspective on love and connection, whispering on the surface but intensely revealing underneath. They're evocative and complicated without ever announcing themselves as such; they’re immersive in the sense that they let you drift into their worlds, rather than pull you in by force. They never seem to garner the attention they deserve. And with Little Men, a poignant and astoundingly subtle new film about an unlikely childhood friendship, the director has provided an urgent reminder of that fact. At a brisk but whole eighty-five minutes, the film cements Sachs as one of the best American directors working today.
Sachs has been around since the mid-90s but found broader notoriety only recently, with his last two features, Keep the Lights On and Love Is Strange, netting back-to-back Best Picture nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards. They were very different New York narratives threaded by a common focus on gay love and on the City’s role in how it blossoms and fades, consumed by movement and time as well as that narrow gap between passion and heartache. Little Men expands on that emotional tapestry. The May-December affair of Keep the Lights On grew into the forty-year partnership of Love Is Strange; in continuation, Little Men shrinks back down in age – it’s about two thirteen year-old boys, after all – but grows immeasurably in wisdom.
Little Men centers on a much younger demographic, and while ostensibly a tale of friendship rather than romance, its heartbreak quotient is only amplified relative to Sachs’ recent efforts. The City’s magic, conveyed in staggering rollerblading and scootering interludes, is effervescently apparent. And in building on Love Is Strange particularly, Little Men evolves into a masterpiece of melancholy, a gently sad but deeply moving coming-of-age story that carries enormous weight.
In the film's opening act, we meet Jake (Theo Taplitz) as the awkward, artistic son of Brian (Greg Kinnear), a struggling theater actor, and Kathy (Jennifer Ehle), a practicing psychotherapist. He meets the brash and personable Tony (Michael Barbieri) at his grandfather’s funeral, and they immediately hit it off – through video game battles, naturally – as only kids can. But circumstances beyond their control are promptly introduced. Tony’s mother, Leonor (the terrific Paulina Garcia), runs an old-fashioned, underperforming clothing shop in the Brooklyn building that Brian has newly inherited from his father – and has moved his family into, upstairs – and she pays only the rent that she can afford (that is, far below market value). With Brian not making much money – he’s doing an off-Broadway production of The Seagull – and the new terms of the building’s lease needing to be set, a likely scenario presents itself: one family moves in, while another is booted out. “The neighborhood is changing,” as they say.
The conflict is relatively small, yet the stakes feel immense. This is Sachs’ gift, his masterstroke; he draws a childhood friendship that resonates with miraculous depth and accuracy, and the imperfect yet sympathetic adults who can’t help but stand in their way. Tony and Jake gradually connect on a deeper level, with the latter professing his love for acting, and the former in turn agreeing to apply alongside him to LaGuardia High School (for art and performing arts, respectively). They have each other’s backs at parties; they stay over at each other’s houses for dinner and sleeping. They’re inseparable, with differences in culture and class left to the adults. It’s hard not to recognize the sensations that Sachs and his two exceptional young actors provoke: instant comfort, dizzying consistency, curious ease – staples of the childhood “best friend.” It’s even more difficult not to feel your heart drop at the sight of the feuding parents, arguing and finagling – the established intimacy between the boys is so thorough that every successive hint at separation hits that much harder.
Little Men keeps the two boys at its core, but essential to its success is what happens around them. The backdrop of displacement, gentrification, whitewashing – whatever you choose to call it – speaks profoundly to Sachs’ interest in the connection between a city like New York and its lonely inhabitants. There’s something off about Leonor from the moment we meet her, as she projects a deliberate distance from Jake and his family; as the movie builds, her fears are agonizingly contextualized. The opening act closes on Brian, sobbing over the death of his father, but as we come to learn of the estrangement and disappointment that characterized their relationship, his initial and then pervasive sadness takes on penetrating new meanings. Indeed, the culture clash between the two families is illuminating not due to the differences in perspective – well-observed and measured as they are – but because of the nuanced, careful readings that Sachs provides for each individual character. He captures their wounded pride, their diminished hopes, their souls brimming with reluctant compassion – all sprinkled compactly across a landscape of social anonymity and economic transformation.
In that way, Little Men is surprisingly suggestive – for an indie so caked in realism, that Sachs permits space for such ambiguity speaks to his confidence and polish as a director. There are hints that Jake is not attracted to women, and is casually unaware or perhaps casually afraid of that fact – after Tony details what he likes about women, he asks Jake for his thoughts, adding empathetically, “you know you can tell me.” Taplitz and Barbieri are so effortless together – and so fantastic on their own – that, regardless of the friendship’s unique implications for Jake and Tony, its importance to both of them is incontestable. Similarly, as she pleads to have her rent controlled, Leonor may exaggerate her relationship to Brian’s father – she even gets nasty, at one point directly claiming that he loved her more than he did his own son – but her affection for the deceased man is palpable, no matter its size. Rather than spell it all out, Sachs envelops his audience in his characters, bravely allowing for inferences that enhance – perhaps affirm – the completeness and complexity of his vision.
Little Men is basic in structure, despite its many narrative strands. But it comes together seamlessly. Its tonal cohesion and collection of breathtaking scenes – highlights include Tony’s impressive performance of an acting exercise, and Jake’s shattering realization that his friend might soon move away – compound to richly layer the film, with the precise mechanics keeping everything in-tact. Watch as Sachs’ camera lushly tracks Tony and Jake exploring their neighborhood, blissfully ignorant of its rapid changes; listen as his script ebbs and flows with bracing perceptiveness, making for a collection of tender New York short stories that powerfully converge.
This is not a film that looks toward one consummate idea, or one dominant sensation, as its endgame – indeed, that quality is long what has kept Sachs unique among small-scale directors. Instead, he reaches wider, and looks beyond. His characters and his locations invoke smaller themes that turn unimaginably encompassing in a cumulative context. In that sense, Little Men might be Sachs' most remarkable accomplishment to date: a snapshot of a few specific people, in a specific place, at a specific time – but also of utter universality in emotion and experience. Rarely does filmmaking get life so quietly, humanely and devastatingly right.
Grade: A