This movie is, I agree, good and commendable for all, but a subtler script and more satisfying conclusion would improve it. Times were when you knew before entering a theater whether you would see a comedy or a tragedy. While one may doubt that the abrupt, gratuitous unhappy ending here (not Deus but diablo ex machina) rises to the stature of proper tragedy, it certainly isn't proper comedy, either. I can add nothing to what others have already expressed along these lines.
But, unless I missed something, no critic here has yet mentioned interesting parallels to two other films, The Man Without a Face and Shadowlands.
Mr. McLeod, the title character of The Man Without a Face is, like Mr. Simonet, a devoted teacher bearing horrible burn scars on his face and chest, to whom Chuck Norstadt, a boy Trevor's age and, like him, fatherless, turns for particular mentoring and deliverance. In Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis is also a formidable teacher: a renowned Oxford don and author of books on many subjects. All three teachers are refreshingly old-fashioned in their academic values and methods. The sterling character of what they staunchly purvey helps make them inspiring pedagogues.
These three men all see themselves as confirmed bachelors with little or no experience with women. Life having given them little beyond their intelligence, they have learned to ask little from it. They don't even ask for happiness as most of us define it-- only for the absence of pain, or ataraxia, in the form of sequestration from the dangers of human intimacy. They have convinced themselves that the popular song is mistaken: people who need people are NOT the luckiest people in the world. Like good epicureans, each has quietly staked a claim to a tiny plot of figurative ground, carefully tended it into a beautiful garden, and walled it off from the rough-and-tumble environs. Their epicureanism is incomplete, however, as long as they dare not look for a friend, whether man, woman, or child, whom they can invite in to share it.
From the standpoint of their leading men, this quest, at first fortuitous and reluctant, then committed irretrievably, is the theme of each of these films. There are no tangible rewards, and they all doubt sometimes that the intangible benefits of any relationship, however much they long for it, are worth the risks. Lewis becomes haltingly involved with Joy whom, together with her son Douglas, an alcoholic husband has deserted. In Justin McLeod's case, the turbulent figure is a boy himself with the same family background.
For Simonet, it is both: abandoned mother and child are obviously a package deal. Womanhood is by far the less familiar territory for him. "I've never been here before" he confesses to her. When she shows up in his apartment, he protests that a regular daily routine is all that enables him to cope. Her mere presence unexpectedly in his space epitomizes the upheaval that he dreads, and we can see him falling to pieces on the spot. In that many mentally ill people require very "structured" lives, it occurred to me that he may still be in precarious condition after time in an institution.
Mr. Simonet also hesitates to care for Trevor beyond the contractual obligations of a salaried professional. Trevor knows this well and points it out: "you do what you get paid to do." Mr. Simonet, for his part, tells as much about himself as about Trevor by describing the boy as exigent.
But how exigent are Trevor, Chuck, or Douglas? Their various demands are circuitous expressions of a single torment: the absence of their fathers, or of anyone else to take their place. Whether they cling to memories and fantasies like Chuck and Douglas, or whether their life depends upon facing hideous reality, as for Trevor, the prospect of parental abandonment is one of a child's worst nightmares, and for all three it has come true.
An expedient heresy is afoot in our society that fathers are optional. Too few have discussed how eloquently Pay it Forward (as well as the other two films) testifies to the contrary. Trevor was not entirely altruistic in marking down Mr. Simonet as his second beneficiary, trying to arrange a date for him with Mom. Few children in broken homes can long put out of their minds the dream that their families might somehow be made whole again. One can't hold that scheme against Trevor, as he was only working, however slender the chances, for something he deeply deserved. Protecting himself with a jocular air, Chuck Norstadt, too, once floated the unlikely idea of Mr. McLeod's taking an interest in his mother.
To me, the scenes in which Haley as Trevor reflected the progress or failure of this plan are the most effective and moving in the entire film. These range from intense curiosity (during their first encounter under false pretenses of his own devising), to the exultation of his cry "It worked!" early one Sunday morning when he discovers Simonet in the house, and his ebullience as the three of them merely sit watching TV, to his desperate pleading with Simonet after complications ensue. To suggest that these scenes were exaggerated or sentimental is to insult the very real, however oft repressed, anguish of a fatherless boy.
After noting similarities among three films, we must conclude with a regrettable difference. C.S. Lewis was a devout Anglican churchman, as the film showed unabashedly (and some felt that it was too restrained at that). A chapter in Isabelle Holland's book also portrayed, in no uncertain terms, McLeod as a practicing Catholic (either Anglo- or Roman). Although, alas, no such scene found its place in the film, a crucifix hanging prominently in his house proclaims the fact.
Pay it Forward, however, betrays no suggestion that Sunday morning means anything more to its characters than an opportunity to sleep late. It would have stolen their thunder to introduce any reminder that paying it forward has been going on for centuries. It is called the Church. Naturally, only someone ignorant of this tradition (literally, handing on) would see a need to invent it.
But, unless I missed something, no critic here has yet mentioned interesting parallels to two other films, The Man Without a Face and Shadowlands.
Mr. McLeod, the title character of The Man Without a Face is, like Mr. Simonet, a devoted teacher bearing horrible burn scars on his face and chest, to whom Chuck Norstadt, a boy Trevor's age and, like him, fatherless, turns for particular mentoring and deliverance. In Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis is also a formidable teacher: a renowned Oxford don and author of books on many subjects. All three teachers are refreshingly old-fashioned in their academic values and methods. The sterling character of what they staunchly purvey helps make them inspiring pedagogues.
These three men all see themselves as confirmed bachelors with little or no experience with women. Life having given them little beyond their intelligence, they have learned to ask little from it. They don't even ask for happiness as most of us define it-- only for the absence of pain, or ataraxia, in the form of sequestration from the dangers of human intimacy. They have convinced themselves that the popular song is mistaken: people who need people are NOT the luckiest people in the world. Like good epicureans, each has quietly staked a claim to a tiny plot of figurative ground, carefully tended it into a beautiful garden, and walled it off from the rough-and-tumble environs. Their epicureanism is incomplete, however, as long as they dare not look for a friend, whether man, woman, or child, whom they can invite in to share it.
From the standpoint of their leading men, this quest, at first fortuitous and reluctant, then committed irretrievably, is the theme of each of these films. There are no tangible rewards, and they all doubt sometimes that the intangible benefits of any relationship, however much they long for it, are worth the risks. Lewis becomes haltingly involved with Joy whom, together with her son Douglas, an alcoholic husband has deserted. In Justin McLeod's case, the turbulent figure is a boy himself with the same family background.
For Simonet, it is both: abandoned mother and child are obviously a package deal. Womanhood is by far the less familiar territory for him. "I've never been here before" he confesses to her. When she shows up in his apartment, he protests that a regular daily routine is all that enables him to cope. Her mere presence unexpectedly in his space epitomizes the upheaval that he dreads, and we can see him falling to pieces on the spot. In that many mentally ill people require very "structured" lives, it occurred to me that he may still be in precarious condition after time in an institution.
Mr. Simonet also hesitates to care for Trevor beyond the contractual obligations of a salaried professional. Trevor knows this well and points it out: "you do what you get paid to do." Mr. Simonet, for his part, tells as much about himself as about Trevor by describing the boy as exigent.
But how exigent are Trevor, Chuck, or Douglas? Their various demands are circuitous expressions of a single torment: the absence of their fathers, or of anyone else to take their place. Whether they cling to memories and fantasies like Chuck and Douglas, or whether their life depends upon facing hideous reality, as for Trevor, the prospect of parental abandonment is one of a child's worst nightmares, and for all three it has come true.
An expedient heresy is afoot in our society that fathers are optional. Too few have discussed how eloquently Pay it Forward (as well as the other two films) testifies to the contrary. Trevor was not entirely altruistic in marking down Mr. Simonet as his second beneficiary, trying to arrange a date for him with Mom. Few children in broken homes can long put out of their minds the dream that their families might somehow be made whole again. One can't hold that scheme against Trevor, as he was only working, however slender the chances, for something he deeply deserved. Protecting himself with a jocular air, Chuck Norstadt, too, once floated the unlikely idea of Mr. McLeod's taking an interest in his mother.
To me, the scenes in which Haley as Trevor reflected the progress or failure of this plan are the most effective and moving in the entire film. These range from intense curiosity (during their first encounter under false pretenses of his own devising), to the exultation of his cry "It worked!" early one Sunday morning when he discovers Simonet in the house, and his ebullience as the three of them merely sit watching TV, to his desperate pleading with Simonet after complications ensue. To suggest that these scenes were exaggerated or sentimental is to insult the very real, however oft repressed, anguish of a fatherless boy.
After noting similarities among three films, we must conclude with a regrettable difference. C.S. Lewis was a devout Anglican churchman, as the film showed unabashedly (and some felt that it was too restrained at that). A chapter in Isabelle Holland's book also portrayed, in no uncertain terms, McLeod as a practicing Catholic (either Anglo- or Roman). Although, alas, no such scene found its place in the film, a crucifix hanging prominently in his house proclaims the fact.
Pay it Forward, however, betrays no suggestion that Sunday morning means anything more to its characters than an opportunity to sleep late. It would have stolen their thunder to introduce any reminder that paying it forward has been going on for centuries. It is called the Church. Naturally, only someone ignorant of this tradition (literally, handing on) would see a need to invent it.