Less than ten minutes before watching the first trailer for The Childhood of a Leader, I was grousing to a coworker about directing debuts from actors. 99 out of a 100 are mediocre indies with the marketing budget to grab a handful of screens when they should be struggling for festival entry with the rest.
Watching the trailer for The Childhood of a Leader is a wonderful way to be proven wrong. The directorial debut of actor Brady Corbet (Force Majeure, Melancholia, the American Funny Games), The Childhood of a Leader looks to be the fascist demon spawn of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Andrzej Zulawski’s The Devil.
Did you watch the trailer yet? (up top)
Named for a Jean-Paul Sartre short story, The Childhood of a Leader trailer is a chilly and compelling nod to euro cinema. The movie, about a budding, adorable psychopath on the road to tyranny, made a splash at the Venice Film Festival and with director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Swimming to Cambodia).
And how about that Scott Walker score? Hoo boy, can’t wait for this one.
Here’s the official synopsis:
“A child’s angelic face conceals a budding sociopath in the audacious, senses-shattering feature debut from actor Brady Corbet. A powerhouse international cast led by Robert Pattinson and Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) headlines this dark domestic nightmare. Set amidst the turmoil of World War I and its aftermath, it follows the young son of an American diplomat living in France as he learns to manipulate the adults around him—a monstrous coming of age that ominously parallels the rising tide of Fascism in Europe. A stylistically fearless tour-de-force, The Childhood of a Leader reaches fever-pitch delirium thanks to ravishing cinematography and a thunderous score by legendary, boundary-pushing musician Scott Walker.”
The Childhood of a Leader will be out in theaters on July 22.
