Gift­ed

Projects star­ring cred­i­bil­i­ty-seek­ing actors do not tra­di­tion­al­ly inspire trust from audi­ences. Nei­ther do movies about pre­co­cious genius­es. Gift­ed takes on these nefar­i­ous con­ven­tions to bet­ter chal­lenge them, and makes doing so look easy.

The key to the film’s suc­cess is its down-to-earth approach to a top­ic usu­al­ly addressed for its larg­er scale impli­ca­tions. The idea that young prodi­gy Mary (Mcken­na Grace) could use her abil­i­ties to advance sci­ence at large – let alone that it would be her duty to do so – does not enter the film until long after we are first made aware of her spe­cial tal­ents. Raised by her uncle Frank (Chris Evans) in a pic­turesque coastal town in Flori­da, Mary leads the nor­mal life of a sev­en year old. Only her pre­co­cious wit and sar­casm hint at the bore­dom felt by an indi­vid­ual sig­nif­i­cant­ly more knowl­edge­able than those around her.

When Frank puts Mary in ele­men­tary school, she soon stands out from peers and teacher Bon­nie (Jen­ny Slate) sug­gests she attend a spe­cial school. Despite Bonnie’s unam­bigu­ous­ly good inten­tions, Frank cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly rejects the idea. This bumpy first encounter is grounds for an irre­sistible rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that even­tu­al­ly evolves into a sweet­ly awk­ward par­ent-teacher romance. Yet thank­ful­ly, and in con­trast to tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can indies, this rela­tion­ship is grace­ful­ly allowed to sim­ply exist in the back­ground, nev­er steal­ing the lime­light from Mary’s sto­ry. Such real­ism in char­ac­ter behav­iour makes even kind land­la­dy Rober­ta (Octavia Spencer) tran­scend cliché́. The hum­ble, no-frills cin­e­matog­ra­phy under­lines the easy­go­ing charm of these human char­ac­ters, while the mys­tery of Frank’s reluc­tance to place Mary in a spe­cial school holds the atten­tion even longer.

All becomes clear when Frank’s estranged moth­er Eve­lyn (Lind­say Dun­can) final­ly shows up, argu­ing that Mary must ful­fil her poten­tial. Frank is con­vinced this woman’s obses­sion is what led his gift­ed sis­ter – Mary’s moth­er – to sui­cide, and his brood­ing hunk appear­ance in the form of Chris Evans thus turns out to be more than a gra­tu­itous, sexy char­ac­ter trait. We learn that after his sister’s death, Frank aban­doned all intel­lec­tu­al pur­suits of his own, took a job as a handy­man – hence the mus­cles – and became wary of spe­cial schools for life.

Eve­lyn ruth­less­ly builds a case against her own son for the cus­tody of her grand­daugh­ter. Behind the laud­able excuse of giv­ing Mary the life that a genius deserves, Eve­lyn actu­al­ly rel­e­gates the inde­pen­dent-mind­ed girl to the sta­tus of pow­er­less child. This devel­op­ment bru­tal­ly rais­es the stakes of the film, seam­less­ly turn­ing what was an already strong, low-key melo­dra­ma into a breath­less, high-stakes court­room piece.

The idea that child­hood is not to be sup­pressed for sup­pos­ed­ly ​‘greater’ pur­pos­es is at the heart of the film. A gen­er­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tion of youth – excep­tion­al in an Amer­i­can cin­e­ma that either patro­n­is­es chil­dren or por­trays them as lit­tle adults – which deliv­ers in the form of Mcken­na Grace’s Mary one of the most like­able child char­ac­ters of recent times. Behind its super­fi­cial appear­ance as a bland, for­get­table indie, Gift­ed proves unex­pect­ed­ly real­is­tic, mov­ing and unpre­dictable until the very end.