Movie review: The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet - bite-sized genius

The heartwarming tale of a little boy as he is confronted by his own potential

There’s a brief moment in French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s latest film, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, in which we see two signposts, one pointing towards the ‘Mountain of Lies’ and the other to the ‘Prairie of Truth’. This beautiful shot encapsulates cinema as a whole, highlighting both its deceptive qualities as well as its possible realities. As viewers, we aren’t always able to choose between the two, less so in Jeunet’s films, who always operates with a distinctive hyper-realist visual style. The alternate worlds he creates underline the aforementioned cinematic query: what is real and what isn’t?

Of course Jeunet’s cinema lives for special effects and with The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet, the director has ample opportunities to let his imagination run wild. It’s not his first English film (space-set Alien Resurrection holds that honour), but technically it’s his first film set in America. The film tells the story of titular hero T. S. Spivet (Kyle Catlett), who lives on a ranch in Montana with his scientist mother (the great Helena Bonham Carter), cowboy father (Callum Rennie), and beauty pageant-hopeful sister (Niamh Wilson). His twin brother Layton (Jakob Davies) has died in an accident and it’s not entirely clear whether Spivet’s carelessness or Layton’s foolishness is to blame for the latter’s tragic demise.

Spivet is a young genius, who has a passion for inventing obscure objects and solving problems scientifically. His father is cold towards him, but his mother, who is obsessed with bugs, might be the reason behind his early inspiration with the subject. One day, the young genius receives a call from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC — where he had sent his ground-breaking invention, the ‘Perpetuum mobile’ — announcing him as the winner for a prestigious prize. Thus, begins the protagonist’s road trip across the States to receive his prize and give a speech at the Smithsonian.

Along the way, Jeunet treats us to some magical moments. The panoramic landscapes of some scenes are spellbinding and the film’s 3D maximises the depth of field ideally. It helps that the 3D isn’t headache-inducing, but rather pleasing to the eye. In one scene, when Spivet is on his journey and hides inside a van, he comes across cardboard cut-outs of a family and other plastic objects, such as breakfast items, inside the van (presumably it’s a brand-new vehicle, being transported to a showroom). When a man comes looking for Spivet, he simply blends in and ‘becomes’ one of the plastic items, expertly camouflaging himself. The entire sequence is the essence of Jeunet’s cinema — he takes ordinary things, be it household items or entire cities, and makes them extraordinary.

Towards the end, Jeunet resorts to a bit of melodrama, but by then the film has already won us over. Above all, it features a fantastic central performance by Kyle Catlett, who holds the film together, much like Ellar Coltrane did in Richard Linklater’s masterpiece, Boyhood. It is a return to form for Jeunet too, who perhaps even outdoes Amélie, the film he is best remembered for internationally. Overall, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet is a heartfelt gem, proving that summer blockbusters can cleverly utilise computer-generated imagery, without having to resort to exploding robots.

Rating: 3.5/5

Schayan Riaz is a writer based in Germany. He tweets @schayanriaz

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, August 24^th,  2014.