Through her eyes

What Maisie knew tackles divorce and separation through the eyes of a young girl who is caught between her parent's feud and distance. The film follows her and what she sees and it is her perspective and vision that the audience is shown. Maisie’s life with her paranoid mother and withdrawn father might play out like “a Jacobean tragedy”, but the film does not focus solely on that.

Although the subject of divorce and what it does to the child isn’t something new, the film keeps the girl at the centre and also does not use her vantage point to build stories about the parents and the separation. We do see the shuffling between parents and their new spouses, picking up the pieces and adjusting to life again. We also see that the interests of the child, who is being vied at the time of the divorce proceedings, seem to take a backseat to personal demands and and petty ego.

Although in transferring from parent to parent, the child becomes a casualty of misunderstanding and never-ending feuds, sometimes Maisie’s innocence and brightness seem to make the mishap around her seem less damaged. There is a sense of flow in Maisie’s life as she travels from one guardian to another and even though she might seem suddenly lonely, she immediately pops back to being a happy kid when she is shown love, affection and attention. The movie is precariously balanced on Maisie, who as a child is undergoing sudden and disturbing change in her life. The film and her life may collapse at any moment but somehow, through her vitality and through the kindness of strangers, she manages to stay afloat.