In The Innocents, a group of children face something extraordinary about themselves. Something that in another film would be used for spectacle and wonder, and a more commercial agenda. In another film, those kids would be superheroes facing a vile monster threatening to exterminate us as a species.
But The Innocents takes place in a Norwegian building complex that reeks of the mundane and limits associated with low-class families. The kids play in a sandy park that’s full of rust. Ida, a young girl, is sick of having to help her autistic sister Anna. Anna doesn’t speak. When Ida pinches her, she doesn’t cry for help. Ida simply watches as she experiments with a moral code.
When Ida becomes friends with Ben, she gets rid of her obligations. Being social is reason enough to get out of the house. She becomes friends, and observes in fascination as Ben does cool magic tricks. When Ida discovers she can do similar stuff, The Innocents takes a turn for something other than a dark coming of age story. Aisha enters the picture and becomes friends with Anna, even if they can’t communicate. They too have a secret.
Eskil Vogt writes and directs the slow burn, but impressively effective The Innocents. In it the director asks the unexpected but relevant questions anyone would be afraid to ask in a setting of such nature. The film is about power in a set of hands that can’t organically recognize good from bad. Bear in mind there’s a difference between bad and evil.
In this very wide territory, The Innocents resolves its plot. One that could be accused of being too simple considering the subject. The film is about children discovering something very important about themselves and how they use this is what separates them from being a horrific product of today’s society or an acceptable risk.
Vogt uses this very generic stage to make the audience uncomfortable when analyzing Ida at first. Violence in the hands of a child isn’t violence all the time, but Ida knows and understands harm as a trigger for reaction. What does she expect when using razor blades in her sister’s shoes? Doesn’t the blood make her sympathetic and cause her to beg for forgiveness? One would say so and instantly accuse her of being an evil character, but dynamics are different in Vogt’s scenarios.
Grown-ups are mere paintings on a wall, and this group of children understand kindness and malice in a very dark setting. Again, Vogt starts a conversation that feels unsettling, and nevermind the use of a fictional setting. The Innocents is realistic when it needs to be and where it hurts the most.
G-S-T RULING:
There isnt’ a film like The Innocents out there. Hollywood isn’t bold enough and if you think these stories have been told before in “grounded” superhero films such as Chronicle, think again. Ida, Anna, Ben and Aisha are inherently curious and they use their powers for something much more human. And human doesn’t mean good. In The Innocents, innocence awakes something dark, and much more interesting.
