Split Decision: Whiz Kids

Welcome to MovieJawn’s Split Decision! Each week, Ryan will pose a question to our staff of knowledgable and passionate film lovers and share the responses. Chime in on Twitter, Facebook, our Instagram, or in the comments below.

This week’s question:

In honor of A.I.'s 20th anniversary, what is your favorite performance by a child actor in a film?

In 1994, was any actor - child or adult - giving you range like a 12-year-old Kirsten Dunst? Presaging a career that gave us both Melancholia and Bring It On, not to mention The Beguiled and Spider-Man 2, the preteen Dunst acted circles around her adult costars in both Interview with the Vampire and Little Women. As Amy March in Little Women, Dunst is a perfect little shit-stirrer, a charming brat whose delivery of “Your one beauty!” is always on my mind. But it was as Claudia in Interview with the Vampire that Dunst earned real critical acclaim and a Golden Globe nomination - for good reason! Claudia is a vampire with the mind of an adult woman, the appearance of an angelic child, and the spirit of a demonic killer. Dunst plays all of these aspects and the conflicts between them with aplomb. At 12 years old, she proved that she wasn’t only an unselfconscious child performer, but a truly gifted actress.–Ryan Smillie, Staff Writer

Jodie Foster gives such an astonishing (and Oscar-nominated) performance in Taxi Driver that it is hard to believe she was barely a teenager when she made it. –Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

For me it doesn’t get any better than Jean-Pierre Leaud in Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Part of his incredible performance as Antoine Doinel—a role he would go on to reprise four more times over the next 40 years—is kudos to Truffaut’s deft hand, but Leaud is pure truth in 24 frames per second in this French New Wave classic. –Iran Hrabe, Staff Writer

My favourite child performance of all time is in my favourite film of all time - Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. Christian Bale does a phenomenal job of transforming from the naive child Jamie (approx 11 years old) at the start of the film, to the world-weary Jim (around 14-15) by the end. It is not so much puberty that has changed him, but his experiences as a Prisoner of War, where he has the maternal presence of Brit Mrs Victor (Miranda Richardson) and fraternal presence of Brit Doctor Rawlings (Nigel Havers), but wants neither of these. He is drawn to the shiny and exciting American camp and especially its de facto leader Basie (John Malkovich). Jim’s sense of childlike wonder surrounding planes and his hero worship of pilots never leaves him, however. We see the war through this character’s eyes and interpret events through Jim’s point-of-view, thanks to Spielberg’s direction (and we know what a great director of child actors he is, including in AI) and Bale’s performance. Interestingly, my opinion of Bale and his acting has drastically changed as he has gotten older, especially since he was Batman. But that’s for another time –Fiona Underhill, Contributor

Having done over a dozen feature length films before she even turned 13, Abigail Breslin’s stand-out role for me will always be Little Miss Sunshine. This 2006 dark comedy might not be a hard hitting child-centered drama like Beasts of the Southern Wild or Minari, but in a way that range makes her performance more impressive. At the age of 9, Breslin was able to carry vulnerable scenes, like the heartbreaking bedtime question “Grandpa, am I pretty?", as well as highly comedic scenes, the best example of which is obviously the infamous dance sequence. -Matt Crump, Staff Writer

There’s a couple that come to mind, but Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project takes the cake. They say that children are natural actors, they don’t second guess themselves like adults do. I can see how that is true. Prince holds her own in scenes with Willem Dafoe, a veteran of acting for the past forty years and climbing. She’s funny and sassy and she talks how a real kid. I don’t look at her in this film and think “Oh that’s some kid with parents coaching her from the sidelines, hamming it up for the camera” or whatever. I look at her and I’m like, “That’s Moonee.” –Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

OMG Ryan, Dunst’s delivery of “Your one beauty” gets stuck on a loop in my head sometimes, too. She’s seriously the best. My vote, however, goes to the kid cast from The Monster Squad: Andre Gower, Robby Kiger, Brent Chalem, Ashley Bank, and Ryan Lambert. The Monster Squad has been on my favorite movies list since I was about eight years old, despite having a hard time watching anything remotely spooky. I wanted to be Rudy (Ryan Lambert) so bad when I was little; I wanted to be in a montage writing letters to the army and making silver bullets in shop class all set to Rock Until You Drop; I wanted to be besties with Frankenstein. To me, it’s the kids that make this movie so much fun. –Jaime Davis, Staff Writer

There are so many amazing performances by children on film, and I have a pure love for any sort of art that tells a story through the eyes of kids. But my favourite performance has to be Anna Chlumsky in My Girl. This was my favourite movie as a kid myself because I identified with Vada more than any person that I had ever met. Her character is complex, from her inner fear of being responsible for her mother’s death, and her belief that she will get sick and die at any moment, to her protecting herself by choosing just one friend to let her guard down with, and her misdirected idealizing an older teacher. She makes me feel wonder, she makes me laugh, and she helps me to heal. Anna’s performance makes me cry without fail, every time I watch it. The scene that gets me the most is when she just sits on the stairs and cries into her own arms while overhearing the funeral talk. But then, after she has grieved, she returns to her creative writing class to bravely and calmly share her final poem… omg. She is my best friend, forever. –Ashley Jane Davis, Staff Writer