Looking Through Child’S Eyes Creates Memorable Movies

While “The Sixth Sense” doesn’t offer exclusively a child’s version of the world, it does explore the horrors that many of us believed we were experiencing at one time or another while growing up.

Fueled by the amazing performance of Haley Joel Osment, who was barely 10 when the movie was filmed, “The Sixth Sense” (which comes out on video this week, see capsule review below), does a good job of capturing a child’s point of view in trying circumstances.

Who among us hasn’t been convinced, utterly and completely, that a monster is lurking in our closet or under our bed? And that we’ll survive only if we can remain absolutely still, oblivious even to the demands of our bladder?

Childhood and the often-troubled perceptions that haunt those who survive it have provided the material for thousands of the world’s most memorable films. From animal stories to more familiar studies of family dysfunction, filmmakers have documented the best, along with the worst, of humankind through a child’s eyes.

Following are just a few of my favorite films boasting child protagonists:

“National Velvet” (1944) — Even at 12, in her first film, Elizabeth Taylor projected the kind of screen presence that would fuel one of the great movie careers. As the girl who trains and then races a horse in the Grand National, she is thoroughly enchanting. And Mickey Rooney is pretty good, too.

“The White Balloon” (1995) — A film that works on the surface as well as it does in metaphor, “The White Balloon” is both a simple tale of a 7-year-old Tehran girl’s quest for a new goldfish and a cool appraisal of Iranian street life. It’s devoid of hyperbole, of political grandstanding or of anything other than simple human interaction. Some would say it is minimalist filmmaking. I say it’s a minor masterpiece.

“Kolya” (1996) — An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, “Kolya” actually focuses on a middle-aged man, a self-absorbed Czech musician who sees marriage to a Russian woman as an easy way to turn a profit. Trouble ensues when the woman dumps her 5-year-old son on him. The movie is mostly about the adult, but every time the camera trains itself on the boy, magic results. The moment he takes the older man’s hand as they prepare to cross a busy street is heartbreaking.

“My Life as a Dog” (1985) — As the Oscar-nominated director of “The Cider House Rules,” Lasse Hallstrom now has Hollywood clout. Back in the mid-‘80s, he was just another Swedish filmmaker with a talent for getting good performances out of children. He certainly did in this little look at a displaced young boy’s struggle to get by in a confusing world. The beach-side fire sequence is a study in the difference between innocent intent and disastrous results.

The week’s major releases on video:

Last Night

*** 1/2

If I told you that “Last Night” was about what happens to a group of people during the final six hours of life on Earth, you’d immediately relegate this little Canadian film to sci-fi status. And you’d likely dismiss it.

While I won’t try to make “Last Night” more than it is, I don’t want to see it get lost in misunderstanding: Written and directed by Don McKellar (co-star and screenwriter of “The Red Violin”), “Last Night” is not about people struggling to survive. It’s about people deciding how to spend what little time they have left.

Some break the law, some keep to their regular routine, some look for love and some — including our protagonist, played by Toronto native McKellar — drift about until a greater meaning reveals itself. Or doesn’t.

This is a thinking person’s disaster film, asking all the big questions in small, revealingly intimate ways. Some of the answers are even satisfying. Rated R

The Sixth Sense

***

Child actors come and go, boasting a range of quality from the horrid (Justin Pierre Edmund in “The Preacher’s Wife”) to the superb (Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense”). Setting his film up as a kind of haunting thriller, director N. Night Shyamalan gives us instead an old-fashioned ghost story.

At its heart is Osment as a young boy who sees dead people and Bruce Willis as the child psychologist who hopes to help him. Osment is heartbreakingly true to his character as a boy at a crossroads: If he can understand, and accept, his place in the scheme of life, he has a chance. If he can’t… . Willis is his standard solid self, and Toni Collette makes an impression as Osment’s understandably confused mother. But it is Osment whom you can’t stop watching.

In terms of the overall picture, consider yourself warned: “Sixth Sense” offers a twist or two up until the very end. So pay attention. Rated PG-13

The Omega Code

**

When a boyish, Tony Robbins-like motivational speaker (Casper Van Dien) goes to work for a charismatic financier (Michael York), world peace seems to be possible in our time. But then the devil steps in and things go you know where in a handbasket.

Sponsored by Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Christian cable-TV commodity, “Omega Code” tries to be both suspense story and harbinger of Armageddon. But it’s too obscure in plot twists for non-Bible students, yet too simple in format for anyone wanting more than a warning tract. The worst part, though, is Van Dien, who performs as if he’s been cast in a middle-school production of “Godspell.” Rated PG-13