IF I GO WILL THEY MISS ME | Official Trailer<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPOSITIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After game-changing efforts like Moonlight, Dope, and We Grown Now blazed a path of prominence to what is now the golden age of black-led coming-of-age cinema, it was only a matter of time before more directors followed suit with their own autobiographical approaches, and with Walter Thompson-Hernandez’s short story turned feature length film being among the most artistically ambitious and vividly immersive additions to the subgenre, we come to experience the foundation-shaking grief of a disconnected family on the mend, with only the opportunity for fresh starts fueling their hopeful optimism for a soaring future. While Thompson-Hernandez admittedly isn’t a product of poverty-stricken Watts, he cohesively details its endless depths towards feeling like a fully realized character of its own in the movie, with everything from absorbingly blanketed sound schemes to its rich sense of connective community inscribing a restless conscience to the claustrophobic framing of so many battle-stricken families under one development, with the constantly intrusive elements of a neighboring airport breeding a dreamer’s liberation to fly far from the harshly overwhelming everyday realities of a non-existing relationship with his returning father. As someone who grew up with a complex relationship with their own father, there’s a candid honesty and genetic pain that beats deep at sensibilities of Walter’s direction, where everything from the familiar nuances of the boy’s isolated depression, to the restlessness of the father to settle down, leaves many combustible elements simmering under one collective roof, and while the dramatic allure of the director’s execution isn’t anything cinematically exaggerated or emotionally supercharged, it doesn’t mean that the uncovered revelations fail to spark a sense of self-inflicted tragedy that spawns from the relationships that father figures take for granted, leaving every painstaking moment between Junior and Senior resonating with this thickly enveloping sense of agonizing confrontation that grows louder and more inevitable with each passing moment of avoidance between them. The script, also written by Thompson-Hernandez, is full of compelling talking points that not only effectively flesh out the lived-in brand of chemistry and psychology between each dynamic within this tethered family, but also utilizes some freshly cunning uses of Greek mythology that articulates the unattainable magnitude of the way that Junior sees his flawed father, featuring some imaginatively unforeseen special effects work that seamlessly taps into the eager adventurism of a dreaming youth. What’s commendable about the screenplay is that Walter drops just enough breadcrumbs in exposition to effectively materialize the reasons of Senior’s treatment without fully justifying them, and while the exploration makes no mistakes about the elder’s insecurity and selfishness with being a dependable provider, there’s always an air of hopeful optimism to Walter’s direction that allows everyday to feel like another opportunity to an influenced child who simply wants nothing more than to be a registering part of the most important person in his life. While most of Walter’s dissection grounds itself fruitfully in the reveled realities of character experiences, it does transition metaphorically during surrealistic dream sequences that surmise a group of t-shirt wearing youths marching in and out of the family’s project community, with their symbolism and deeper meaning conveying that of the interconnectedness of shared trauma that visually demonstrates the emotional burdens and environmental scars passed down subconsciously from father to son. This certainly fits quite well with Walter’s own conceptual grappling of the weight of legacy that is enacted thematically within the movie’s own longwinded title, capturing a profoundly stirring childhood anxiety pertaining to abandonment and identity that contextualizes the very realistic consequences of physical and emotional resentment with those we’re supposed to trust most, all the while utilizing the aforementioned gang of cryptic forewarns as a haunting reminder of the neighborhood’s lost youths of abandoned children, where the heaviness of the psychological weight that coincides simultaneously between Junior and Senior leads them to one meaningful question encompassing their desire to survive under these circumstances. As previously commended, the film is quite a technical marvel when it comes to stimulating the senses, specifically Michael Fernandez’s poetically ethereal cinematography, which occasionally captures an otherworldly yet deeply authentic look at Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. The most meaningful moments for me personally were certainly those strikingly memorable frames of outsider fireworks resting against the project’s walls, evoking a feeling of unlocked memories to the mind of a future accessor, but even those metaphorical frames encompassing the sky and involving constantly flying aircraft feel beneficially integral to the escapist mentality of Junior’s wandering perspective, specifically during one of the movie’s final frames where the ocean bares an introspective gauging of the grave distance that now emanates between father and son. Marrying these majestic images with Malcolm Parson and Khalil Abdul-Rahman’s only heightens the film’s most emotionally resonating moments, featuring soulfully stirring piano-led compositions that swell wistfully during family-driven montages that link sentimentality and nostalgic accordingly, without meandering in the most manipulative tendencies of most family dramas, and when you combine this Walter’s own handcrafted editing, it solidifies a singular vision that interpretively fires on all cylinders, leaving nothing to chance with a finished product that feels so personal to the director, even if merely based on other people who he grew up with. If this isn’t enough, the performances are nothing short of perfect from this collective ensemble, but especially J. Alphonse Nicholson, Danielle Brooks, and Bodhi Dell, who each naturalize their characters so authentically that they feel like fully realized characters, instead of actors portraying roles. Brooks feels like she dominates the spectrum with a career-defining turn that not only effortlessly manifests the exhaustion and conviction of her dedicative love with heartbreaking realism, but also a tenderly nourishing affection for her children that feels painstakingly evident by her balanced frustrations, and I simply couldn’t get enough of her in a movie that essentially pits her as the third wheel to the father and son dynamic at the movie’s creative forefront. As for Nicholson, he undoubtedly thrives in capturing the moral complexities of his character’s unfavorable design, delivering seamlessly on the volatile deep-coiled energies that contest the character’s second chance, but also a firm balance between raw tension and empathetic vulnerability that articulate the immaturity of a life that was immediately halted by his untimely incarceration, making him feel like a victim and a catalyst to his own destructive tendencies. This is of course rounded out by a spellbinding turn from 14-year-old Bodhi Dell, whose wide-eyed innocence helps anchor the film’s imaginatively myth-infused perspective with quietly penetrating emotional resonance, allowing him more than enough ample opportunity to hold his own against dramatic heavyweights who are blessed advantageously with a majority of the most meaningful material, but not with Dell’s own piercingly penetrating innocence bearing a significant influence over the registry of the impressionable stakes. Lastly, while many audiences will find the deliberately lyrical approach to its pacing to feel prolonged or distantly inaccessible, I found it naturally rhythmic in effectively emulating the beats of life that don’t always permeate productively in the confines of conflict, allowing for a far grander introspective exploration and dynamic development that values the past every bit as much as the present. This is especially the case for the opening act, which breezes patiently in not only articulating the divisive disconnect of father and son, but also the articulation of their environment, and while it takes more time than expected to produce expansion on the established conflict, once the storytelling shifts to deviate focus between father and son, it finds its way towards a compelling and rewarding narrative journey, providing enough underlining emphasis to the urgency of this family dynamic, without rushing us through some of the vital developments of its cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEGATIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I’m egregiously nitpicking, I can point to a couple of underwhelming aspects that find their way to the integrity of the finished product, particularly the aforementioned framed balance between father and son that eventually sacrifices one for the benefit of the other. When the storytelling is at its most prominent, it balances these perspectives accordingly to give us an informatively bigger evaluation of the effects that transpire from the causes, however because Junior’s arc becomes less and less depicted throughout a third act that seems to carry on without him, leaving the magnitude of the conflict feeling a bit deflating by the lack of influential impacts that are approached on the outside. Aside from this, my only other momentary hinderance pertained to some intrusive atmospheric elements to the detectability of the dialogue, specifically during the opening act, where I couldn’t quite get a grasp of some of the accents of these initial conversations. It does eventually clear up as the film moves forward, but for some strange reason the neighboring chatter or overhead aircraft engines overwhelmed the seamlessness of the ensembles deliveries, leaving me wishing for subtitles in a theatrical engagement involving exceptional sound technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL
If I Go Will They Miss Me is an authentically raw and tenderly poignant portrait of familial disconnect, by way of surreal imagery, Greek mythology, and a trio of achingly anchoring performances honing in on the lyrical meditation of boys becoming men. Walter Thompson-Hernandez’s long-form adaptation of his original short story earnestly articulates the power and dependability of community in the most dire of circumstances, leaving the line between love and liberation paved by the insecurities of fatherhood that create more cracks to a broken home’s foundation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Grade: 9.0 or A<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed By Walter Thompson-Hernandez Starring – J. Alphonse Nicholson, Danielle Brooks, Bodhi Dell The Plot – In Watts, California, a 12-year-old boy (Dell) attempts to connect with his distant father (Nicholson), following his incarceration, while sensing mysterious visions, in everything from airplanes to Greek gods, that seem to follow him through his everyday world. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9925"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9927,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9925\/revisions\/9927"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}