How does one start on such a film?
With its stars, I suppose. The children. I have never ever, not even vaguely, wanted children, ever. But very, very occasionally (twice in my entire life, to be exact - and watching this film being one of them) I also understand how children can be wonderful: they are givers of hope and surprising depositories of wisdom. Now if I can have a child like any of those in the film rather than some screaming manipulative brat you see all the time in restaurants and aeroplanes, I would definitely think twice about it. A good kid like Ashley, whom I warmed to immediately (my favourite child, even though I honestly like all of them - to describe them all would simply take up too much space) - her wide, honest smile, her Afro hair, her round glasses, her shining like a jewel in the environment she is in. Her opening words in her section: "My life is like a movie." "How so?" "Because there are different trials and tribulations, and then I finally overcome them." How adorable is that?? And her giggle at the end of her reply that just goes straight into your heart, because by her laugh you know she is still a child, though by her words you know she hasn't had an easy life.
Most of all, the children make one realize how fragile and brittle adults are. The children who got eliminated in the Nationals - not one of them expressed bitterness, regret, anger, sullenness or anything negative. And they are too genuine on screen to make one suspect artifice (the parents, on the other hand......). Adults speak of competitive loss and rejection as personal blows - just read the autobiography of any writer, sportsman, musician. I myself have taken rejections (of which I have received many) as if it was the end of the world, which, of course, it isn't. But I felt literally apocalyptic, which is just pathetic. These children are a whole lot wiser, smarter, better people than alot of adults I know. I watch them and I know they are going to go on to great things and bright futures because they do something that comes so naturally to them: they aspire, they dream, they strive for something. Which is alot more than I can say about alot of adults I know (my good, struggling self included): atrophying, regretting, watching time waste, growing old and losing aspirations. It's pretty sad when one has to take children a role model. Yet, it is also perfectly natural.
Ashley ends her section with these words:
"As I go higher, my goals go higher also. It's like I've got to keep on reaching, keep on reaching.....So this year, I rose above all of my problems, and this year I went straight through the local, straight through the regional, I was determined I was going to the Citywide Spelling Bee.....I told the photographer, he was like, 'so, what're you going to do when you get to Citywide?' I said 'I'm going to win.' And sure I did! I won Citywide Spelling Bee. Now I'm going to the Nationals."This girl's 13. She got eliminated in the 3rd round of the Nationals, but she's more of a winner than I'll ever be.
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