Directed By Mike Mills

Starring – Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffman, Woody Norman

The Plot – Johnny (Phoenix) and his young nephew (Norman) forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they are unexpectedly thrown together in this delicate and deeply moving story about the connections between adults and children, the past and the future, and all in between.

Rated R for Adult Language

cmon cmon trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Underlining sentiment. Mills as a director is someone who prescribes a deeper meaning and merit to the many unique perspectives that have inspired his career throughout. For “20th Century Women”, that film served as a love-letter to his do-it-all mother, who raised and shaped the visionary we see before us, but for “C’Mon C’Mon”, it’s very much a revealing and evocative experience through the scope of childhood, and all of the commentary that comes with it. This not only brings forth a periodically overwhelming heft alluding to the fear of being a child, with all of the urgencies that requires them to fight to be heard, but also an unabashed honesty in their interpretations that often simplifies matters that adults define as overtly complicated. It’s all communicated brilliantly from Mills introspective direction, but never in a way that requires words to paint their various assessments. Instead, we get a tenderly naturalistic unfurling that values experience over exposition, while cementing Mills with his most intimately revealing portrait yet, with so much love and emotion imbedded in the fabric of its material.

– Entrancing visuals. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan uses a colorless consistency to paint a starkly beautiful canvas that is used as anything other than an artistic gimmick in the context of the aesthetics. Instead, the absorbing black and white color pallet is used as a gentle filter that simultaneously enhances the intimacy that grows between this initially distraught family, but also forces the audience to invest wholeheartedly towards the integrity of the narrative, as a result of literally stripping down all of the enhancements, and instead leaving us with a story above all else. In addition to this, the landscape photography of the film’s ever-changing geographic setting affords us a richly exotic variance between regions that is realized fruitfully throughout Ray’s culturally influential backdrops. This brings vibrance, but above all else; credibility to the established settings that are brought forth in on-screen text during transitions, and when complimented with textures of colorless emphasis, alludes to the overhanging moral ambiguity of the various themes that the screenplay continuously tackles.

– Personal connection. One aspect to this experience that paid off immensely for me, but not one that will touch everyone for obvious reasons, is the familiarity from the predicament of this child protagonist that I found myself frequently relating towards. Considering I grew up in a fatherless home, and raised by a single mother, I coherently interpreted the immensity of responsibility that lay at her feet, while it feels like the world is crumbling at the seams. I also found much about Jessie’s predicament, particularly his mending fences with a distant uncle to reflect that of my own trysts with three uncles of my own, who only came around when the family dearly required it. It allowed me to value what about their dynamic was pivotal towards shaping a foundation of trust between them, but also in the aspect of Jessie’s evolving characteristics, which the film supplants with the kind of authenticity that urges the audience to engage in their connection for love, rather than moments of temporary conflict that the film uses for unnecessary dramatic heft.

– Dialogue perfection. Speaking of authenticity, the abundance of interactions and corresponding banter solidifies an endearing quality to the film that required me to hang onto every word, for how rooted in naturalism it felt. Whether feeding towards the personality of the particular character who the lines stemmed from, or just conveying three-dimensional speech patterns in a way that conveys some deeper internal conflict residing from within, Mills constructs what I feel are some of his most introspective delves of dialogue in his entire career, in turn supplanting expansive characterization that brings these characters and their motivations to life with the passage of past memories weaving in and out of mention, spontaneously. Nothing ever feels obvious or heavy-handed with the way it materializes before our very eyes, instead emerging with earnest spontaneity that feels personally stitched together with the identity of each particular character in mind, and feeling all the more synthetic in approach because of such.

– Dynamite cast. Phoenix, Hoffman, and Norman give highly impactful performances for entirely different reasons that pay a balanced dividends to the prominence of the film. For Phoenix, the master of the understated performance reaches for one more notch in his storied career, this time instilling deeper meaning and frailty with a revealing body language and facial resonation that conveys deeper significance in the bouts with history he continuously faces. We don’t ever require emphasis on the interpretation because Phoenix’s poker face is among the most revealing without any dialogue necessary to echo their sentiments and supplanting what could be another Oscar nomination for the man who took it home for “Joker”. Gaby Hoffman is another utility piece to the film’s prominence that affords her a balance of empathy and anger that vividly articulates the disparaging circumstances of this broken home, without taking away from the nourishing connection she shares with Jesse. As for Norman’s Jesse, we have the one case a year where I pick a child actor to receive an Oscar nomination. Norman here is uniquely brilliant, attaining the typical precociousness expected for a child actor in adult movies, but never in a way that feels one-dimensional in the way it’s delivered. Norman instead doubles down on an honesty and assertiveness that truly makes him the one true magnetic force of the entire picture and is as good of a supporting role as anyone I’ve seen in 2021.

– Thought-provoking. While nothing too heavy with regards to the stakes it supplants to the integrity of the narrative, there are more than few topic points of discussion laid out in the banter between Johnny and Jesse that prolongs the movie’s lifespan in the minds of audiences, long after they’ve seen the film. Most of it pertains from the aspect of honesty stemming from the way children see the world, with persistent positivity and misconception that brings to light the true absurdity in the way we the adults value unimportant matters, but for my money the bigger picture pertains to those void-filling father figures, and what it takes to define a child’s life as whole. I found this to certainly be the most endearing aspect of the film, but also one that Mills has clearly done his homework on, as the resurrecting conflicts between them point to temporary instances of annoyance, rather than a formulaic outline that all but highlights a third act distancing between them. It gives audiences plenty of substance to chew on thematically, but tempers expectations by exploring them in ways that all together allude convenience, with each serving as the building block to the other’s emotional stability.

NEGATIVES

– Repetitious. Without question, the single biggest obstacle to mainstream audiences, and one that will determine their interest in the film, is the lack of deviation in storytelling tempo and tonal consistencies that occasionally strain the pacing. This is most obviously felt during the third act, where a resolution with about twenty minutes of material is stretched to thirty-five, while padding out the run time in a way that the pacing of the film forcefully runs out of gas. In my opinion, if the arc of the movie built towards a long-term conflict to play into its authenticity seamlessly, then it would’ve prepared us for something substantial with the resolution. Unfortunately, as it stands, much of what minimal conflict persists is tied up conveniently in a way that completely avoids a climax, leaving the pay-off feeling condensed, as a result of an execution that is a bit too gentle to ever throw any turmoil to the table.

– One-sided outline. While the characterization for the film is mostly stimulating, as indicated with my aforementioned positives, the one weakness is easily Phoenix’s Johnny, who eventually becomes a supporting character in a film that begins and ends by his side. Phoenix’s performance does the heavy lifting, but it’s the lack of pursuit for his respective arc that constantly undercuts the layers of his character’s backstory. It wouldn’t be so condemning if the script didn’t hint towards key events in his life that the film itself never truly exploits, but unfortunately much of the delve into his psyche goes mostly unfulfilled, and Johnny becomes the kind of mysterious figure whose intrigue begs to be dissected upon within the context of the film’s many psychological layers. There’s certainly enough there in clues for audiences to coherently piece matters together towards a theory of their own, but speculation is never as satisfying as solidifying, and it becomes apparent that the time spent with such a character, leaves him as ambiguous as the radio voice he dons for a fictional on-screen living.

My Grade: 8/10 or B+