Location: Nuart
11272 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Los Angeles, CA 90025
François Truffaut's period piece stars the director as an 18th century doctor committed to educating a pre-linguistic child found living in the forest. Roger Ebert described the film as a meditation on the maturation process and an exploration of the way that young people think, learn and develop. Truffaut's Dr. Itard struggles with the frustrations and pitfalls of working with a pupil who has essentially no linguistic or social foundation and enacts a rigorous educational schedule with aspirations of teaching speech, language, morals and sociability. The film's trajectory is impressive and the lively subject learns at an alarmingly rapid rate. Despite the intrigue of the development process I was discouraged by the film's assimilation-based model of success. The titular wild child learns how to wear shoes, communicate and appreciate time spent inside, but at what cost? The victory of commitment to the perpetual march of gain-based progress struck me as slightly tragic. A natural intellect can enable someone to adopt society's system of rigor, punishment and rewards but I wonder if such successes can ever compare to the pleasure of being outside.
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