Quick- and sharp-witted children live among mentally disturbed adults in an imperialist country:

"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events"

"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (http://www.unfortunateeventsmovie.com/) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0339291/)
Directed by Brad Silberling
Paramount Pictures
PG / Australia:PG
2004

Reviewed by a contributor December 21, 2004

"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" is based on the first few books of Lemony Snicket a.k.a. Daniel Handler's ongoing fiction "Series of Unfortunate Events," which deals with the adventures of the three Baudelaire orphans. "A Series of Unfortunate Events" has been compared to J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series in terms of popularity with children, but has received much less press. A large number of movie viewers may become new Lemony Snicket fans after seeing the movie, which has a bearing on the movie's impact.

Although this review is not particularly interested in how "Unfortunate Events" compares with the books artistically, the movie is supposedly similar to the books. Someone mysteriously burned down the Baudelaires' lavish mansion and killed their wealthy parents. The orphans' distant relative Count Olaf doggedly pursues the children, trying to take their inheritance. It seems that he was somehow involved in the arson. Each of the children is "gifted," or "talented." Violet is good at inventing gadgets; she's like MacGyver. Klaus is good at absorbing information from books. Sunny excels at biting things, and in the movie, she can speak "baby" fluently, or think complex thoughts. (The movie captions Sunny's (Kara Hoffman and Shelby Hoffman) baby talk with witty subtitles, which is supposed to be funny.)

"Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" is definitely not the first comical or satirical movie in which a child character resists a dislikable adult who is ignorant, irrational or given to ridiculous antics. For example, looking way back, there is Jean Vigo's " Zéro de conduite " (1933). Of course, there is the whole "Home Alone" series (1990, 1992, 1997, 2002). Other recent movies of this kind include "Max Keeble's Big Move" (2001). However, few movies are as thorough as "Unfortunate Events" in portraying adults as being dim-witted compared with children.

Even Lemony Snicket's (Jude Law) antics are ridiculous compared with Klaus (Liam Aiken) and Violet's (Emily Browning) seriousness and sober-mindedness. He pretends to be writing down a true story, but he is way too excited. The movie pauses its bringing-to-life of Lemony Snicket's story to show Lemony Snicket himself; while doing this, it distracts from the seriousness of the deadly, distressing situations in which Klaus, Sunny and Violet find themselves as a result of Lemony Snicket's typing. For that matter, the character Lemony Snicket's imagination is almost sadistic in the way that it incessantly torments the Baudelaire orphans with situations that they do not find funny despite the movie audience's laughter. Funny things are going on around them, but Klaus and Violet look antagonized and tired of it all. Gruff, pudgy banker Mr. Poe (Timothy Spall) is too quick to leave the orphans in dangerous situations; if he were a social worker, he would be considered incompetent. High-strung Aunt Josephine (Meryl Streep), who is afraid of realtors, irritates Klaus and Violet with all her warnings about unlikely accidents (for example, her large kitchen refrigerator falling over and squashing a persyn). Count Olaf (Jim Carrey) and his acting troupe are flamboyant, foolish and goofy, but stereotypically greedy and uncaring.

Not all adults seem to bother the Baudelaire orphans. In particular and unsurprisingly, Klaus and Violet have fond memories of their dead parents. But we aren't shown or told much about them, and all Klaus and Violet have to remember their parents by is a metallic silhouette of their parents' side profiles. "Unfortunate Events" is the latest in a long line of movies (including "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial," 1982; "Flight of the Navigator," 1986; "The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter," 1990; "Peter Pan," 2003; and "Catch that Kid," 2004, more recently) portraying mentally or physically strong children, but ultimately having them return to the home or the family as a safe haven. And like the whole "Spy Kids" series (2001, 2002, 2003), "Unfortunate Events" is big on family "sticking together." However, the movie alludes to some interesting points.

The orphans stick together as a family, but partly because they are legally forced to. Also, we see older children taking care of younger children, or children taking care of other children--true, because they have to take care of each other, but Klaus and Violet are successful in taking care of Sunny. This reflects a reality that many persyns in the united $tates are familiar with: the decay of some forms of childcare under patriarchy, without the emergence of advanced forms of childcare that are further away from patriarchy, and signs that there are alternatives to biological parents' parenting their own children only.

The Baudelaires are English, but in the real world, after imperialism is overthrown, oppressed nationalities especially may experience a restoration of patriarchal forms of childcare while patriarchy is still being destroyed. For example, imperialism causes some children in the internal semi-colonies of the united $tates to become orphans. Without imperialism, there may be fewer orphans, but temporarily more children in patriarchal childcare in nuclear families.

Certain patriarchal forms may resurge after imperialism is destroyed, but patriarchy will still need to be destroyed. This includes the practice of placing orphaned children with relatives even though they may be abusive. "Unfortunate Events" deserves praise for trying to illustrate (painfully--Olaf slaps Klaus across the face at one point) that there will be no end to child abuse while the institution of childhood, and patriarchy more generally, still exist.

Count Olaf is after the Baudelaires' inheritance, and the movie does not question class and patriarchal practices of inheritance, but it is not so much that the children want to keep the inheritance for themselves. Legally, the children have to die before Count Olaf can get the money. They may just be trying to survive. Olaf relies on different kinds of force, intimidation and threats to control Klaus, Sunny, and Violet, and other persyns' actions and hate for children effectively protect Olaf, but the Baudelaires repeatedly outsmart Olaf, even Sunny. The point here is not that infants are capable of defeating adults, but rather, that infants, too, are oppressed under patriarchy since gender oppressors obtain benefits from infants through a system that subjects children to violence and enervation. "Unfortunate Events" illustrates this in a limited way. Olaf is able to take advantage of Sunny's small size. It may be given that Olaf will go for the most vulnerable child, but he repeatedly calls Sunny a "monkey" to demean her. Later, he puts her in a cage. What Olaf thinks about children is a condition of his actions toward them.

Like so many other movies that feature child characters, "Unfortunate Events" represents or misrepresents a particular aspect of children's oppression under patriarchy without even trying to portray what children have in common socially. For example, just looking at the movie, it is hard to imagine that Klaus (a boy, nearly a teenager), Sunny (baby) and Violet (a young teenage girl) have anything in common as children. No other child characters appear in the movie. "Unfortunate Events" does go a little bit further than other movies by suggesting that the Baudelaire orphans all have something in common, and maybe even that they are children "against the world" of stupid grown-ups, but the children are supposed to be talented and unique, that is, different from other children. So, Klaus, Sunny, Violet are exceptional. However, "Unfortunate Events" does do a little bit to show how children in general can survive despite, and because of , adults' "mental illness."

In the presence of his troupe, Olaf scolds Klaus and Violet for not making roast beef for dinner, as if he could afford roast beef, but he plainly lives in a dilapidated, unkempt mansion. Also, Olaf seems to be oblivious to the fact that he's a bad actor, and he presumptuously casts himself in leading roles. Some kind of mental disturbance may be a cause of Olaf's brandishing a knife to threaten the children. Olaf is intimidating, but at relatively likable Uncle Monty's place, he is extremely careless with his disguise and is too quick to run after being exposed as an impostor. Olaf's lack of self-control poses a risk to the Baudelaires, but is also a weakness that they take advantage of.

In the real world, the mental abilities of some parasites living in imperialist citadels are decaying for different reasons. (This doesn't necessarily appear as "mental illness.") To the extent that this deterioration of mental abilities, and this descent to lower modes of thinking like sentimentalism or what-feels-good subjectivism, worsens as metropolitan imperialist-country parasites get older, the possibility is raised that some oppressor-nation children will dictate to oppressor-nation adults--and particularly that oppressed-nation children will dictate to oppressor-nation adults. This is on top of the fact that children are gender-oppressed and have an objective basis to support the revolution in different ways, while the vast majority of oppressor-nation men and wimmin, who are exploiters and gender oppressors, do not. Although "Unfortunate Events" does not deal with revolution, it is interesting to see the Baudelaire orphans take matters into their own hands because they think they know better than the crazies, fools and idiots surrounding them. It is not so much that stupidity (whatever this means) is peculiar to gender oppressors like adults in oppressor nations. On the contrary, adults may have a sort of monopoly on cognitive development because of the social exclusion of children in so many different ways--but children ought to be encouraged to recognize their differences with other persyns and take important matters into their own hands if the supervising adults refuse to change their mistaken ideas.

It is possible to tease out these themes further, but overall, "Unfortunate Events" deserves a neutral rating for doing little to change the status quo. Some of this has to do with the fact that there is so much bullshit in this fantasy movie to wade through to get to anything meaningful. Also, the movie undermines its own best elements. For example, Aunt Josephine's various fears seem irrational especially when her house's foundation is built onto the face of a cliff above Lake Lachrymose, but her seemingly irrational fears about unlikely home accidents turn out to be premonitions; the idea is that Aunt Josephine wasn't that crazy after all. The Baudelaires aren't enthusiastic about accompanying eccentric Uncle Monty on his trip to Peru and seem to feel that people are pushing them around, which alludes to a certain reality under patriarchy by which children are pressurized into a restricted group of households, usually relatives', but Lemony Snicket suggests that sticking with Uncle Monty would have been ideal for the Baudelaires. The movie depicts the Baudelaires as being intelligent compared with all of the adults, which counters the notion that biological children are all unintelligent and senseless compared with adults, but despite all his knowledge, Klaus almost superstitiously believes that there is always a way out of a bad situation. And while "Unfortunate Events" happens to be right in showing how vast book knowledge doesn't necessarily mean having correct ideas, there is a difference between perseverance and superstitious persistence that the movie itself blurs.

The whole movie is very dream-like. In the movie, everything does happen for a reason, like in roleplaying games. There is always a way out of a bad situation, which is the premise of Violet and MacGyver's feats. In addition, there is a lot of deliberate anachronism in the movie; the movie looks like a dream. For example, Olaf drives an antique car with power door locks and lock knobs that can disappear (as if by magic, but this isn't clear). Olaf's dark, dingy mansion is across the street from a contemporary, quaint house, while the Baudelaire mansion is located in what looks like a suburb in industrial England. In the "Harry Potter" movies (2001, 2002, 2004), there is at least a sense of how the witches and wizards' fantastical inventions came to exist (by magic), and there is a more or less clear separation between the Muggle world, which looks like the real world, and the wizard world. In "Unfortunate Events," it is difficult to discern any history behind the simultaneous existence of Olaf's power door locks and Mr. Poe's "car stereo": a bulky audio tape reel player. In "Unfortunate Events," no attempt is made to explain the fantastical inventions and fantastical situations; they're simply there. While "Harry Potter" and "Unfortunate Events" may both be products of idealism, "Unfortunate Events" makes no effort to ground its fantasticism in any reality, not even a fictional one. As a result, it encourages idealistic ways of thinking and discourages looking for patterns in objective reality that are based on history. Sequels to "Unfortunate Events" may explain some of the stranger elements of the movie, but as it stands, the movie's redeeming elements have the context of a fantasy world.

"Unfortunate Events" is very dream-like, but real childhood is a nightmare in which children are coerced, silenced, terrorized, and made to be fearful. The victimization of children is not a consequence of just incompetent or malicious caretakers, but will happen as long as children as a group are oppressed under patriarchy. It is doubtful that the adults and even the children who laugh at Klaus, Sunny and Violet's expense will understand this after leaving the theater.

Check out MIM Theory no. 9: Psychology and Imperialism .

Check out MIM's revolutionary feminism page .