James Benning’s mesmerizing new film spans decades of U.S. history with simple and seemingly minor gestures. Foregrounding its own structural form, Little Boy shows us a series of prefabricated toy models being painted in close-up, accompanied by the rallying cries of folk and pop standards, followed by images of the models’ final construction overlaid with passages of political oratory, from voices inspiring or nefarious. The cumulative image is one of a society doomed to cycles of domestic decline and implicated in international terror in the name of “peace-making” interventionism. A companion piece to American Dreams: Lost and Found, Benning’s 1984 film composed entirely of baseball card memorabilia, Little Boy—its title recalling the lyrics from Pete Seeger’s “What Did You Learn in School Today?”—is an American epic in miniature. (Film at Lincoln Center)
TRT: 74 min
In person: James Benning
"[With Little Boy,] Benning creates less of an auditory panorama of American politics than an event-based hermeneutics, an autobiography as an affected listener." —Louise Bouvet-Zieleskiewicz, Les Nouveaux Riches
"A movie that uses the past as a herald for the future. In the hands of James Benning... the term [little boy] becomes a delicate yet incisive essay on historical violence." —Lucas Camargo de Barros, IndieLisboa
"In the way it echoes childhood hobbies, Little Boy is the companion of American Dreams (lost and found). By making the production conditions visible, Benning plays on the idea of war as both commerce and hobby." —Antoine Thirion, Cinéma du Réel
"[Little Boy] presents an opportunity for a stream-of-consciousness game of I-Spy to suddenly override the usual critical faculties of the viewer—a different mode of 'paying attention' than trying to think deeply about the much more intentional juxtapositions of song, model, and speech." —Zach Lewis, InReviewOnline
"[Little Boy] transcends the filmmaker’s own nostalgia... Depending on prior knowledge and preconceptions about defense spending, racial politics, unionized labor, American intervention in the Middle East, and climate emergency, not to mention musical taste, Little Boy can be an emotional film with resonance that goes beyond Benning." —Laura Staab, MUBI Notebook
(Available to download after screening date)