Directed By Annie Baker

Starring – Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Will Patton

The Plot – In rural Western Massachusetts, 11-year-old Lacy (Ziegler) spends the summer of 1991 at home, enthralled by her own imagination and the attention of her mother, Janet (Nicholson). As the months pass, three visitors enter their orbit, all captivated by Janet and her spellbinding nature. In her solitary moments, Lacy inhabits an inner world so extraordinarily detailed that it begins to seep into the outside world.

Rated PG-13 for brief strong adult language, some drug use and thematic elements.

Janet Planet | Official Trailer HD | A24 (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

In her debut directorial effort, Annie Baker seamlessly conjures the tedium and loneliness of being a kid, and it’s in that refreshing depiction where the film finds originality against an industry that constantly articulates it as the so-called best years of our lives. While that sentiment is in the majority, there’s something about ‘Janet Planet’ that I took familiarity with, framing its narrative with a stripped down production value that gives the film a home videos kind of feeling, but also this compelling parallel between mother and daughter, with the two protagonists at a crossroad in their lives, where each of them are looking for something drastically different, but ultimately come to find it in the relationship between them that lies right in front of them. The film often entails the idea of how kids look at their parents with a form of adoration that feels impenetrable, and how that mentality becomes jaded when those defensive walls come tumbling down, where kids not equipped to handle such a complex world are suddenly forced to interpret its madness, all in the confines of the person they idolize most reaching for strange people and hobbies that allow them to see their elders as the people they’ve never been as protectors and providers. Because of such, Baker’s narrative certainly isn’t one that caters to the highs and lows of typical cinematic structure, instead persisting with episodic chapters inside of Janet’s three visitors, with each arc peeling back layers towards getting us closer to the characters we experience in doses, all with a naturalistic element of the dialogue that never comes close to bordering obviousness or heavy-handed in its intention. As previously commended, cinematographer Maria Von Hausswolff articulates a distinct look not only in the geographic pallets that the story emanates from, but also that flavored sampling in fashions and weathered imagery that feel unmistakably 90’s, all without the gimmick stealing focus from the engagement, in ways that could’ve easily become distracting. Hausswolff’s framing falls a bit suspect, but her intimate proximity in depicting each of the character’s facial registries speaks a subconscious language to the audience that we effortlessly pick up on, as conversations pertaining to the character in frame reach occasionally tense and uncomfortable circumstances with how they’re materialized, offering little freedom or levity for the audience to shy away from, while conveying a deeper insight into the way Lacy’s mind works, which paints lots of psychological food for the audience to continuously chew on. Part of me appreciates that these characters, mainly Lacy, certainly don’t abide by perfect outlines, as there were plenty of times throughout the engagement where I found myself annoyed by the unnecessary conflicts that Lacy always seems to steer as an inexperienced adolescent. Not only does it add a defined atmospheric combustible element between Lacy and Janet’s visitors that always seems to blow at the most unpredictable moments, but also alludes to the idea that not all internal and external conflicts between the characters will be smoothly resolved by film’s end, resulting in proverbial masking tape to glaring obstacles that allows such repetition to continue in the lives of two people who can’t even find simplicity in the most elementary tasks. Despite these many impactful benefits to the film’s quality, it’s the performances from Nicholson and Ziegler that are most meaningful, delivering on a naturalistically beautiful and lived-in element of their chemistry that doesn’t take much, even immediately, to buy into this mother/daughter dynamic. Nicholson articulates stoicism, empathy, and especially vulnerability in a woman who simply seeks love and balance to value her life, and as a result, Julianne supplants some of her best work to date in a role that certainly mirrors some of her approaches to real life parenting, as a mother of two children. As for Ziegler, she breaks through the stratosphere with an eye-opening portrayal that relies more on facial acting than emotionality. Ziegler’s greatest quality is certainly her eyes, which firmly study and react to the craziness of adults that constantly surrounds her, appraising a subtle underlining layer of humor to scenes constantly cloaked in drama, which keep the film from feeling confrontationally stuffy.

NEGATIVES

While there are many elements to ‘Janet Planet’ that are superbly crafted, the thin plot and aforementioned divisive structure leaves plenty more to be desired, resulting in a 108 minute engagement that became tediously repetitive in keeping my interests from expanding. Once again, this is an example of a film that doesn’t require a three-sliced structure, as doing so not only makes each compartmentalized section feeling confrontational with the consistent momentum of the movie’s pacing, but also points to the glaring issue of one section of the storytelling feeling far superior to the other two. The film gets off to a solid start, with a mentally abusive Will Patton being Janet’s boyfriend, but unfortunately it’s followed up with a friend moving in that goes nowhere fast, and an Elias Koteas third act cult leader arrival, who garners about five minutes of actual screen time to build his arc. When a majority of your film is plagued by meandered storytelling with little to no pay-off, it will test audience patience, and very rarely ever get them back, and it’s that repetition and abrupt resolutions that kept me from ever fully latching on to a story with such humanly grounded characters and a beautiful dynamic between mother and daughter. Also compromising are some technical aspects to the presentation that can’t measure up to many of the film’s strongest qualities, mainly the shot framing and editing, which feel constantly at odds with the direction of the narrative. Between out of frame shots, where a quarter or half of a character’s face is depicted, or scenes slogging on long after they should’ve rightfully been cut away, the film crafts a winding road of difficulty that aren’t exactly the best methods of attaining character isolation or atmospheric awkwardness, resulting in casual annoyances that grow glaring with the repetition of a presentation that unnecessarily desires experimentation to enhance its engagement. Finally and perhaps most impactfully to the integrity of ‘Janet Planet’, the film lacks a meaningful climax and profound punch during its closing moments to send audiences home moved or at the very least talking, serving as an exclamation point to an inconsistent engagement that confirms how the film goes nowhere slow. That statement might sound harsh, but ultimately the film’s ending opts for a conveniently happy ending that is essentially just another day in the lives of Janet and Lacy, with another unexplored and unresolved sectional arc that not only wastes away an Elias Koteas performance that could’ve definitely impacted the landscape, but also a flat last few moments, which make the film feel like it runs out of time, instead of finalizes its many arcs with finality and resolve.

OVERALL
‘Janet Planet’ is a deeply touching and sentimental debut from Annie Baker, but one that is simultaneously conflicted by a reserved form of storytelling and distracting technical merits that make this a bit of a tediously frustrating engagement. Despite this, the film is aided tremendously by naturalistically human performances from Nicholson and Ziegler, which prove its heart to be in the right place, even if its directional arc seems to be on another planet completely.

My Grade: 6/10 or C