Gifted largely avoids these hefty questions. Whenever it seems like the movie might say something that seems too bold or too provocative, it pulls back. However, Gifted is far too gentle to really push the point. There are moments in which Gifted threatens to transform into a much bolder and more vicious take on that idea, one invested in questions of agency and determinism. These were the sorts of questions that powered Whiplash, the question of the obligations that a person owed to their talents and the sacrifices that they were expected to make to fulfill those ambitions. Does Mary owe her gift to the world? Is her grandmother Evelyn seeking to cynically exploit her, or does she have a moral obligation to share her talents? At one stage, he admits to having worked as an “associate professor” of philosophy, and the debate in Gifted is couched in abstracts. In some ways, Frank seems particularly suited to this dilemma. The central tension in Gifted has rooted in this question of how best to raise a child with these abilities, whether the correct thing to do with this talent is to teach a child to hone it and focus it at any cost. Instead, Gifted argues that Diane’s fragile mental state was a result of nurture, of the way in which society – and particularly her mother – treated her intelligence. However, Gifted is very careful to avoid explicitly stating that Diana Adler suffered from the kinds of mental illnesses that populate narratives like this, or that her depression was an inevitable side effect of genius. She never knew her mother, who turned out to be a mathematical genius. There are shades of this familiar cliché to be found in Mary’s family history. Gifted flirts with this idea, without committing. More than that, it can be handled rather clumsily in popular culture films like A Beautiful Mind come to mind. Although there may be some evidence to back it up, it remains a controversial generalisation. That popular notion is reinforced through narratives that tie intelligence together with mental illness, often suggesting that true genius is tantamount to insanity. The movie is essentially anchored in the frequent refrain that intelligence can exist as a barrier to happiness and fulfillment. There’s enough believable chemistry between Evans and Grace for it all to work.The conflict at the heart of Gifted is familiar. The film’s melodramtic beats are predictable but arehit with absolute precision (try not to cry when Frank and Mary are temporarily separated). Backlit by a vibrant orange sunset, Webb captures her in silhouette as she climbs her uncle like a small monkey, legs dangling from his shoulders and elbows resting on his head. In one scene, she asks him to tell her the truth about whether there’s a God. But, as his estranged mother, Evelyn ( Lindsay Duncan, playing her steely and British) insists: “She’s not normal and treating her as such is negligence on a grand scale.”įrank talks to the precocious Mary like she’s an adult – and she talks back like one. Her only friends are their adult neighbour Roberta (Octavia Spencer) and a one-eyed ginger cat named Fred and so Frank decides to enrol her in school so that she can learn to get along with kids her own age. Our whiz-kid lives with her uncle Frank (Chris Evans), a boat mechanic described, rather accurately, by one of the film’s characters as the Tampa suburb’s resident “quiet, damaged hot guy”. The unbearably cute, gap-toothed daughter of a deceased maths genius, she is the “gifted” subject of Marc Webb’s touching family melodrama. “3+3? Really?” asks seven-year-old Mary (McKenna Grace) during her first day at school.
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