Problem: positive
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Answer: Seriously, can you imagine such a spread of talent in one film without a huge budget: Daniel Day-Lewis, Ray McAnally, Brenda Fricker, Hugh O'Conor AND Fiona Shaw? There's no doubting that Fricker and Day-Lewis deserved their awards: but it would have been entirely justifiable to have seen O'Conor (as Young Christie) and McAnally awarded: the cliche is true here: they don't perform the roles, they inhabit them. Day-Lewis' performance is a tour de force - such a transformation that it is awe-inducing, but it was truly a mark of the Academy's intelligence that alongside this performance, they also honoured Brenda Fricker's beautifully restrained, still and heart-wrenching work as Christie's mother. By the way, if you haven't seen this magnificent actress in "Swann", that's another film well worth checking out for her contribution (and the sublime Miranda Richardson).

Problem: positive
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Answer: It takes a very special kind of person to make a movie that is so wretched, beguiling, disgusting and repulsive, but make it in a way that also makes it brilliant and the quintessence of personal cinematic liberation. Crispin Glover, in all of his "out there" antics and predispositions, truly made something that is unique. In a world that has become starkly partisan, this film seems to evade the standard lines of creativity and art and effectively startle everyone.

Right off the bat, the film takes on a rather distant paradigm (if there really is a model at all) and initially shapes it with the likes of Shirley Temple in front of a swastika and naked women pleasuring a man with cerebral palsy. It's rather shocking stuff, but if you had the opportunity for the Q&A sessions after the screenings, it clearly opens up a bag of worms that leaves you wondering whether this is art or just the lowest common denominator. In either guise, you sense the tremor that this film will ultimately cause. It will never be accepted, not even by the supposed auteurs of the world who boringly speak about the human condition. You may not like it, but it is certainly something worth watching.

Problem: negative
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Answer:
...but the actress playing the daughter just doesn't come across as credible.

It doesn't work for me when I see an actress of about 25 years playing the role of a 12-year-old... Other commentators have suggested that this is one of the messages of this film, that children may sometimes seem more adult-like than adults, but with the casting as it is in this film, it just doesn't work for me.

you might want to check other comments to find out what this film is actually about, because i couldn't bear watching it to the end.

i agree that the premise for this film is beautiful though - I wish another director would try to pick up this story again.