Released by A24, Mike Mills’ newest film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny, a single and childless radio journalist who travels to various cities to interview children about their thoughts on the future. When his sister Viv (Gabby Hoffman) must attend to her mentally ill husband, Johnny cares for his young nephew Jesse (Woody Norman) and the two embark on a transformational journey that tests both their patience and emotional breadth.
Mike Mills’ films are often deeply personal. Beginners (2010) pays thoughtful tribute to his father while 20th Century Women (2016) does the same for the women who raised him, primarily his mother and sister. C’mon C’mon was inspired by a bath time conversation he had with his son (so a fitting setting for some of the film’s more pivotal conversations) and thus explores parenthood from the viewpoint of both the parent and child. Like the twinkling star motif that reappears from his other films, the themes of growing up, making sense of the world, and learning how to appreciate your parent or child all play a role here as well. The film seems to be personal for Phoenix too – though that might be said of any of his roles. Every time I see him on screen, I think of his late brother, River, and I may be projecting my own sadness, but the man seems to carry that weight with him always. You only have to watch his acceptance speech for Best Actor at the 2020 Oscars (Joker) to feel his anxiety and the pain of loss. And the fact that he and his partner, actress Rooney Mara, are currently raising a baby boy named River is further reason that his role here feels so intensely sincere.
The film’s storytelling is underpinned by the interviews of young children and teens. As the film opens, Johnny and his team, poised with their recording devices, ask questions that seem on the surface cliché: What do you think happens to you after death? If you could have any superpower, what would it be? The answers they get (all unscripted and authentic), however, are anything but. And the follow-up questions are obviously meaningful to the kids who are answering: Will families be the same? What scares you? What makes you happy? What will you remember? The opening closes on this last question in such a way that it’s clear Johnny often asks himself these very questions. And this is, of course, the irony in the film – that he can deftly and charismatically ask tough questions and get fantastic answers but is emotionally stunted when he must answer them himself.
You can’t hide important answers from yourself for too long, especially when you have a child to take care of and interact with. Jesse’s sudden presence in Johnny’s life is an adjustment to say the least. With his bouncy head of curls, Jesse is cute, articulate, funny, and wise beyond his years. But he’s also annoying, whiny, quick to anger, and deeply sad about his father. In other words, he’s a nine-year old kid. When he yells at Johnny in a drugstore because Johnny won’t let him get a musical toothbrush, we cringe because the scene feels so real. How many times have we, as parents, said no to something we think is a frivolous waste of money? How many times do we just automatically say no even before our child is finished asking for something at the store? This is simply how kids act sometimes – they are balls of energy, both destructive and kind. It’s just a roll of the dice which you’ll get in any given moment. Parenting is hard, and sometimes a “nightmare” as Viv tells Johnny in one of her many “telehealth” sessions.
But Johnny isn’t used to parenting and must learn to change tactics. Unlike the kids he works with, Jesse refuses to be interviewed. He is more interested in touching and holding the microphone and recording devices and when Johnny allows Jesse this indulgence so that he can view the world in a different way, Johnny unwittingly becomes the interviewee both literally and figuratively. As the film progresses, Jesse asks him why he doesn’t talk much, why he’s not married, and – the zinger – whether he has trouble expressing emotions.
The film, in some ways, is a classic parent-child relationship story in which the tables are turned on the adult who really is the one in need of parenting and emotional stability. But in so many other ways, it is much different – and better. Not only do the interviews help anchor the story’s arc, Viv’s mothering is ever-present even when Johnny and Jesse are not physically present with her. Johnny and Viv are in constant communication by phone calls or texts about Jesse’s emotional health. She is not, however, presented as a mother who enables her child but as one who recognizes that kids sometimes just “suck” and parents sometimes are awful. She doesn’t have all the answers and has no shame in admitting that there are “scripts” online that can be helpful in talking to kids. She also recognizes that her husband’s bipolar tendencies may be part of Jesse’s DNA as well and clearly has put a lot of work into making sure that Jesse stay in touch with himself.
This becomes evident with another of the film’s clever narrative techniques. Segments of the film are semi-introduced by essay or book titles on the screen, parts of which are read by Phoenix’s voice-over (apt since he is a radio journalist). The implication is that Viv has read these on her own and to her son, so Johnny gets to know the two a little better through these texts. One is Angela Holloway’s The Bipolar Bear Family, a story about a young cub who struggles to understand his mother’s behavior and her subsequent diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. Another is Jacqueline Rose’s essay collection, Mothers- An Essay on Love and Cruelty which argues that motherhood is the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts. This argument is central to not only Jesse’s mother but Johnny and Viv’s mother, who we see in flashbacks suffering her final days with dementia with the siblings on the edges, nearly cracking under pressure. But the most piercingly touching is Claire A. Nivola’s children’s book Star Child (if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve heard Phoenix’s beautiful reading of it already). As Mike Mills has said about this book, “I read Star Child to my kid all the time, and I cry, and my kid makes fun of me. But the themes of Star Child are near and dear to me; they’re really the themes of all my films. What do you remember, the way life whizzes by you, etc. I think all my films are about trying to understand your life as it’s happening.”
C’mon C’mon is somewhat, in fact, very similar to the people in the simple watercolor illustrations in Star Child. Though it’s in black and white (after all, radio has no color either), its characters are often seeing laying or sitting on the floor, playing in bed, lazily laying on each other. The adults are always near the child in a sincerely empathetic way – listening, finger tapping, pantomiming, watching. Because they too are trying, as Star Child says, “to make sense of that happy, sad, full, empty, always-shifting life you are in.”
The music is also perfectly matched with the film’s material. Classical music serves as a sound device for Jesse’s father who we mostly see in flashback. When he’s with Jesse in these moments, we don’t hear their words, but see their closeness in expressions and gestures accompanied by the key-hopping “Evening Breeze” by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou. From lively to contemplative to melancholic, music almost represents life itself and the strangely beautiful world that we all must say goodbye to one day. Claude Debussey’s “Claire de Lune,” especially, seems as if it belongs nowhere but here.
C’mon C’mon is a one of the sincerest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s not loud and it’s not full of esoteric meaning. It’s simply a story that feels incredibly personal and confronts the facts about our temporary existence. Life is painful, life is sweet, life is sometimes definitely not fine. With another stellar performance by Phoenix, a really nice showcase for the often under-appreciated Hoffman, and from Norman, an honest portrayal of how kids really think and behave, this film will make you wonder at the journey that is parenthood – and life itself.
Rated R with a run time of 1h 48m
