Throughout C’mon C’mon, a sensitive, naturalistic family drama from director Mike Mills, Joaquin Phoenix’s Johnny interviews a few dozen kids from Detroit to Los Angeles to New York to New Orleans about their hopes and fears for the future, on both a personal and larger existential scale. These scenes are not scripted, the children not actors, they respond with all their serious thoughts and feelings about the state of the world and what their place is in it. It’s both grim and inspiring to see, and on either end, moving. C’mon C’mon is a film that is at its’ heart about endeavouring to understand children, and these sequences really buffet that idea as they give honest voice to the feelings, concerns, and aspirations of the next generation.
Honesty is one of this movie’s great strengths, it feels so intimate and real in its’ evolution and specificity. The characters have such believable, engaging relationships, there’s nothing artificial in any of the dialogue or the personalities, fitting in immensely among those real subjects who dot the spaces between the drama. Johnny is a radio documentarian a touch estranged from his sister Viv (Gabby Hoffman) since the death of their mother a couple years earlier; but she calls on him to look after her young son Jesse (Woody Norman) when she has to leave for a few days to care for her husband’s (Scoot McNairy) severe bipolar disorder. A few days turns into a week and then multiple weeks as uncle and nephew grow closer across three states and along new levels of understanding.
In spite of Jesse’s precociousness, there is nothing all that conventional about his and Johnny’s story: they don’t start out from a place of manufactured antagonism, there’s no extraordinary obstacles to overcome for them to bond –indeed what obstacles there are are fairly ordinary; or ordinary to a point. Jesse is a bit of an eccentric kid, possibly neuro-divergent, with routines and habits that must be adhered to. He has a certain game for instance with his mother weekly, where he pretends to be an orphan who needs shelter for the night. Viv and Johnny acknowledge it’s bizarre and a bit disturbing, but they play along. He has a tendency also for asking frank questions in the expectation of equally forthright answers –and where a lesser script might play up Johnny’s fatigue and distaste of these quirks or make Jesse unnecessarily angry or moody when his pattern is disrupted, Mike Mills understands that’s not the way these relationships actually play out.
Johnny, used to talking to kids, approaches Jesse on his own level more often than not, and though it does exhaust him, he takes it on with a responsible attitude. Jesse, on the occasions his antics are rejected, doesn’t lash out as much as get annoyed –and is capable of moving past it. Uncle and nephew get along for the most part, and for the most part it’s adorable. That’s not to say their relationship isn’t troublesome or taxing, that Johnny doesn’t have to put up with a lot, but it comes out of things that feel immediately real. Like when Jesse wanders off while the two are shopping in a drugstore, terrifying Johnny until he pops up again –thinking it a practical joke. And there’s Jesse’s difficult feelings towards his parents, his anxiety over what is happening with his father –which he understands just enough to be upset about but not so much to totally comprehend it. Johnny has to take on a heavy degree of patience in dealing with this, often consulting with Jesse’s mother over the phone, which make for some of the movies’ best scenes as she walks him through the trials of parenting. Gabby Hoffman is liable to be overlooked in terms of awards consideration talk, especially for this movie, but she is incredible, deeply astute and relatable as she takes on her emotional hardships in the background.
Phoenix is no less good though, sharp and thoughtful and relatably charming. His chemistry with the young Norman is beautiful, he too giving an exceptional performance that is impressively authentic in a kid so young. He really is the glue of the film, the key to its’ mission statement. Early on, Johnny attempts to interview Jesse as a test, but the kid won’t do it. Later, he becomes Johnny’s assistant, wearing the audio equipment and recording a lot of background sound -it becomes their go-to activity and a way for Johnny to technically work while looking after him. It’s clearly something Jesse enjoys a lot though, and it strengthens his trust in Johnny as they go from place to place. Eventually, Jesse is comfortable and curious enough to record his own thoughts about these big questions Johnny asks kids, without Johnny present of course -it’s where the unusual title comes from, and it honestly does say quite a bit about where his mind is at in these circumstances.
As this goes on, Mills’ direction is very stirring. Like with Branagh’s Belfast there’s no particular reason for the black and white photography, apart from that it looks good -and in its’ sweet, realist atmosphere and beautiful drawing of New York it reminds me a lot of Frances Ha. Mills also chooses to intersperse visual exposition at key moments of relevance -a shot or two of Johnny and Viv arguing over the care for their mother or in emotional distress during that time informing delicately the present narrative and cleanly conveying a picture of the characters’ emotional baggage. And Mills does something else that I’ve never seen before in a film: he cites his sources -Johnny is very much an east coast intellectual, and when he reads something from a study or nonfiction book or even a novel or storybook, the quote appears on screen with proper attribution, adding not only to the movies’ documentary feel but its’ innately journalistic approach to its’ subject matter. Another characteristic of the film is Johnny recording a kind of audio diary of his experiences with Jesse and looking for meaning he can extract from them. It makes for a very self-conscious, introspective air and one that translates into your own learning experience watching.
It is still a fiction of course, and because of that it doesn’t take any easy ways out. C’mon C’mon is extraordinarily satisfying for this though as it climaxes with an act of conscious expression of Jesse’s uncertainty and fear -that itself is a triumph. And of course the endearing relationship between Jesse and Johnny. All throughout, this is a film that takes kids and their anxieties seriously, and asks adults for the patience and understanding to help them cope, even connect with them on a meaningful level. Generations are so divided these days, it’s nice to see a movie with that kind of optimism.
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