BookClub: What Maisie Knew

Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s 2012 film reworks Henry James’s novel into a present-day custody dispute, seen largely at child height. Six-year-old Maisie moves between two self-absorbed parents and the new partners drafted into their fallout, turning domestic routine into a shifting set of loyalties. The movie’s significance is less in plot twists than in how it registers neglect as environment, not incident. Screening outdoors at Bryant Park, it lands as a New York summer public event rather than a premiere moment.