These two current movies both have boy protagonists (Joshua is eleven and a half and Vitus is ultimately twelve) who happen to be both intellectually brilliant and piano prodigies. 'Joshua,' a psychological thriller with horror overtones, is scary and depressing. 'Vitus' is an upbeat fairy tale children could watch, if they can read subtitles: dialogue is mostly in Swiss German and Hoch Deutsch (with a little English). Neither of these films is quite an unmitigated success, but both have interesting things to say about the plight of being super-smart and prematurely accomplished. Maybe Joshua just wants to be loved; Vitus says he just wants to be a normal boy; but fortunately, there's more to it than that in both cases. Together these are two poles of attitudes toward such young people.
Joshua's posh Upper West Side "haute bourgeoisie" or "über-yuppie" life takes a dive when a new baby enters the scene. His college-boy-jovial hedge-fund-trader dad Brad (Sam Rockwell) is videoing the infant, and when Joshua ((Jacob Kogan) plays one of his virtuoso pieces, they just ask him to quiet down. Also present in that first scene are his born-again grandma (Celia Weston) and his gay musical show-biz uncle (Dallas Roberts). The uncle is the kindred spirit in the room.
It's funny: both Joshua and Vitus wear little suits and have tidy mops of hair and seem a bit undersize for their ages. But Joshua is a bad seed who spins out an aura of evil and fear off the screen as time goes on, while Vitus is geeky and a prig (for a while anyway) and has a lust for his baby sitter that's at best nutty, but he's otherwise ultimately sweet. Joshua brings down his family, and Vitus saves his. Vitus becomes a successful entrepreneur, and learns to dress casually.
Joshua is like an incubus. He just stands there, sometimes scaring Brad or his mom Abby (Vera Farmiga) by popping up behind them. His face and voice are without affect. Even when he says "Mommy? Daddy? I love you," it's creepy.
Vitus is distant too, initially anyway. He doesn't fit in at school and insults his teachers. But as a small child he has a down-to-earth babysitter, Isabel (played by Kristina Lykawa, later by Tamara Scarpellini), and they enjoy hanging out together. She gets fired and replaced by his English mother (Julike Jenkins), who has blossomed into a controlling stage mom. But where Joshua only occasionally sees his simpatico uncle, Vitus gets to spend a lot of time with his wonderfully relaxed and entertaining granddad (Bruno Ganz, anything but a Hitler this time) , who makes things and goes on walks with the boy and talks about his dreams of being a pilot way back when.
Bad things start happening in Joshua's household from day one (the film takes us, rather harrowingly, through 70-plus). The baby is fine for less than a week when she begins to cry constantly, which brings Abby back to the shaky state she was in during Joshua's early stages--and then some. Perhaps if they'd found an older nanny for the kids, or just the baby, and paid more attention to Josh, the household would not have come apart. Joshua has some very suspenseful moments. You may think the boy will go for the baby, but that's a red herring. His methods are more devious than that and involve night vision film-making, Egyptian methods of mummification, and a performance of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" that is redesigned as if composed by Bartok. (Like the two boys who play Vitus, Fabrizio Borsani and Teo Gheogiou, the boy who plays Joshua, Jacob Korgan, is a genuine piano prodigy).
'Joshua' has a good, ironic sense of its eastern urban white milieu, and though it may fizzle away a bit at the end, it does make you genuinely uncomfortable. This independent first film by Ratliff uses the conventional sound effects and disintegrating set devices of the horror film in fresh ways. But making Joshua into a monster limits where things can go. Rockwell, Farmiga, and Westson are good insofar as they avoid drifting into caricature. Ratliff previously made a documentary about fundamentalist Christians, and the grandma's attempt to "save" Joshua becomes a realistically creepy element. She gets her reward. This is an indictment of insensitive parents, but its picture of a wunderkind demonizes the type.
'Vitus' is a softer world, but this boy is suffering too. In a way his burly dad Leo (Urs Jucker), who creates hearing aids and becomes CEO of a company, is another version of the squash-playing yuppie represented by Sam Rockwell, but he seems more present. The problem is Vitus doesn't fit in in school and then his mom takes him from his childhood piano teacher, who he says he loves, to a famous lady who declares "a rational mind and a warm heart, those are what make a great pianist." "That's why I want to be a vet," Vitus answers, refusing to play for her or become her student. Eventually he contrives to stage an accident after which he seems to have lost his special talent and his high IQ. He precedes to carry out some exploits with his granddad that lead to the film's conclusion. This could be rather fun for a young viewer, though some American critics have found this charming story "simplistic" or "sappy." It does perhaps leave you a little flat because its feel-good finale is too fanciful. 'Joshua' is a film that's riveting and disturbing: its narrow horror focus makes for a concentrated effect. But it's much more fun to watch ''Vitus, which brings up the same issues--about how it's tough to be exceptional--without demonizing brilliance. Teo Gheorghiu may be a little but nerdy, but he has a sensitive face and delivers his lines in ways that are sprightly and nuanced.
