Following the struggles of a young girl, Maisie that experiences the challenges of the divorce of her parents. She struggles against her custody facing the battle of her parents.
Some scenes are tinged with dark comedy; some are heartrending; and some fuse the two, as when Maisie comforts a tearful friend during a sleepover in Susanna's huge Manhattan townhouse, while the delinquent grown-ups indulge themselves downstairs.
It's a study of human nature, not at its worst, but at its most typically pathetic, and it goes to show that the more things don't change, the more they stay lousy.
Arts Fuse
September 16, 2013
The filmmakers, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, seem not at all intimidated by Henry James's formidable prose.
What Maisie Knew gives the audience a ground-eye view of its mesmerizing title character, a plucky, charismatic New Yorker who navigates downtown bars and building lobbies with the street savvy of a pro.
The result is a film that deeply engages us on multiple levels. Not only do we wonder what Maisie knows and how she knows it, we want to get this seedling to a place where she won't have to be transplanted every day.
Scott McGehee and David Siegel's adaptation commendably preserves the book's child perspective even if it doesn't quite match the characteristically dark shades of the author's moral fare.
