What Maisie Knew

670 Words3 Pages
What Maisie Knew Scrolling through the endless options of Netflix’s movie collection, I happened upon a lovey film titled, What Maisie Knew. It is a beautiful, moving story about the disintegration of a family, the building of a new one, and all the conflict that comes with that. The focus of the movie is through the eyes of a young girl named Maisie, played by Onata Aprile. In the movie, she is the daughter of a rock and roll singer and an English businessman as her mother and father, respectively. The parents, who live together but are unwed, struggle over finances, decision-making, and conflict management. The couple’s relationship becomes toxic to the point of splitting up, which leaves Maisie confused and scared. As she relies on grownups that are undependable and unpredictable, Maisie eventually ends up living with her father’s ex-bride and previous babysitter Margo, and her mother’s new runaway husband, Lincoln. Maisie’s journey of finding a safe home and loving parents is a heartbreaking film which gives an in-depth look at what a child must feel when he or she is bounced between dysfunctional biological parents. The cause of Maisie’s suffering is the result of a heated communication climate between her parents, which builds into an escalatory conflict spiral. The communication climate between Neil and Susana, Maisie’s biological parents, is emotionally charged and heavily laden with verbal attacks from both sides. Direct aggression, a criticism that threatens the face of a person, is apparent in phrases such as: “Walk away, like you always do,” “You’re like a teenager,” and “You’ve never had a creative thought in your life.” These quarrels become more frequent and result in an escalatory conflict spiral, a communication pattern in which one attack leads to another until the initial skirmish escalates into a full-fledged battle. The battle,
Open Document