Life is overwhelmingly big. That’s why, sometimes, it takes a very small movie to help us make sense of it. Mike Mills’ new film, C’mon C’mon, will likely be referred to as “small,” despite the fact that it traverses four major U.S. cities and grapples with themes of death, mental illness, parenthood, coming-of-age, love, and loneliness, to name a few. In terms of its overall effect, C’mon C’mon succeeds as one of those rare films with the ability to make its audience forget that they’re watching a movie at all. It leaves you with laughter as well as tears but avoids the overly-saccharine aftertaste that might easily have overtaken a film about the growing bond between a lonely man and his young nephew.
The voices of children ring throughout C’mon C’mon, from the opening title through the closing credits. Their words are often inarticulate or hard to follow, yet sometimes alarming in their truth, in their depth. A kind of honestly cuts through their jumbled words–a clarity often destroyed by the over-thinking, over-intellectualizing adult mind. They speak about simple ideas of love and hope–ideas that we often take as cliched or improbable. They view adults, the world around them, the future in fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking ways. It’s almost startling to realize how much they’ve managed to comprehend about the world within such a short period of time on Earth. Mills–perhaps vicariously through Johnny–seeks some sort of naive wisdom from these voices. And no voice is heard more strongly in the film than that of Johnny’s nine-year-old nephew, Jesse. He’s a unique kid who absorbs everything in the world around him. He likes to listen to classical music on full blast on a Saturday morning and sometimes pretends to be an orphan. He’s grappling with what it means to be a person.
Mills has a knack for zooming out from the specific and allowing us to see the bigger picture–of situating the stories of his characters within a grander scheme of life. In his previous film, 20th Century Women (2016), the characters have an almost omniscient knowledge of their own futures. Their voice-overs tell the audience about where their lives will lead them after the movie ends–and even about how they will die. In C’mon C’mon, Mills uses the frame of Johnny’s interview project to allow us to step back, to consider the experiences of his family beside those of a broader, more diverse cross-section of the U.S. population. We learn about the cities that Johnny (and Jesse) visit, first by seeing them, then by hearing about them from the perspectives of the children who live there. Sweeping black and white cityscapes, anonymous and not-so-anonymous city streets, bridges and ships and beaches–these images force us to remember that we are not isolated, but part of these larger networks of people, places, and culture.
Stylistically, C’mon C’mon fits neatly within Mills’ cinematic universe. Yet in comparison to 20th, his latest film pulls back on the reins slightly. Where the former featured an impressive ensemble cast, each with his or her own story, own thoughts and tastes, own history and future, the latter centers a much smaller group of individuals, focusing mainly on a few specific relationships and themes. Mills typically inserts images and clips from history into his films, mainly for the purpose of helping the audience to contextualize and visualize the stories he tells. He also weaves in quoted material from essays and books, almost as though he’s constructing an essay of his own, arguing a point, gathering evidence to help us better understand his characters and their struggles. C’mon C’mon does this as well, though to a somewhat smaller extent. Mills draws upon excerpts from several different children’s books (this is the kind of material that Jesse absorbs at this stage in his life) and mainly those which strive to explain the complicated issues of life in a way that a young mind can more easily grapple with. He also references an essay on motherhood, through which Johnny strives to better understand parenthood and, more specifically, the experiences of his sister. I get the sense that Mills crafts his films in this way because perhaps he too approaches life by gathering information and seeking out answers in the world that surrounds him; through art as well as individuals, through theory as well as through personal experience.
Through his films, Mills explores the complexities of familial relationships–especially those between parents and children. Within these relationships, the characters often strive and struggle to understand each other–struggle to comprehend that the other is also a person with their own secrets, their own past, their own feelings. In 20th Century Women, Jamie seeks to understand his mom by reading second-wave feminist literature, while Dorothea tries to find her son within the music he likes, and within the frame of a candid polaroid. In C’mon C’mon, Jesse describes something his mother said to him–that he and she will never know everything about each other and that that’s just the way things are. Mills’ movies suggest that there’s an inherent level of intimacy within the parent-child relationship, but also an irretrievable sense of distance. There’s a similar idea at work in Beginners (2010). When a middle-aged Oliver learns the truth about his father’s sexuality, it’s almost as though he never truly knew him at all.
Darker recurring themes include coping with the loss of a parent due to illness. There’s a very real, very intense sense of weight attached to the experience of caregiving for a dying parent in Mills’ movies–particularly in Beginners and through brief flashbacks in C’mon C’mon. In the latter film, one particular scene jumps out. Johnny and Viv argue over how best to treat their mother, who’s suffering from a brain tumor. She experiences delusions and Johnny entertains them–helps her into her sweater so she can be ready for when her dad arrives to take her to the DMV. Viv shuts downs Johnny’s actions rather sharply–she’s the more pragmatic sibling. She wants to do what’s best for her mother without making the situation more difficult for everyone else. Johnny wants to make his mother happy–wants to protect her from further confusion and give her whatever she asks for. He finds it difficult to let go of that childish desire to please her. How can we cope with the anguish of this kind of loss? Both of the aforementioned films explore this question.
Mills certainly portrays parenting in terms of the mutually beneficial aspects of the relationship between a parent (or parental figure) and a child. In his movies, we see single (or otherwise strongly independent) mothers trying to understand how best to raise their sons. This often means treating them as full-grown “people”–almost as adults–even as young children. In 20th there’s a humorous scene when Dorothea tries to open a bank account for a no-more-than-ten-year-old Jamie. In Mills’ newest film, Viv refers to Jesse as a “person,” and makes sure to remind Johnny to speak to him as one. This is why, despite her initial attempts to protect him, Viv eventually speaks frankly to Jesse about his father’s illness. He might not be able to understand exactly what his dad is going through, but he understands that something isn’t right. Jesse is perceptive, always listening and picking up on information about his parents and the other people in his life. Like any healthy young kid, he asks invasive questions about peoples’ personal lives or exposes secrets he shouldn’t know about. In one scene, as Johnny reads him a bedtime story, Jesse suddenly blurts out: “why aren’t you married?” To which his uncle gives a vague response about how he used to be in a relationship and they weren’t together anymore, but how they still loved each other. From the look on Jesse’s face, he doesn’t understand a word. That’s because even Johnny can’t begin to explain the complicated nature of adult relationships to this young boy who doesn’t yet have the capacity to grapple with the fact that life has more questions than answers, and that even the wisest of people can’t always tell what’s true and what’s not. That said, Jesse has a magnificent bullshit detector. Whenever Johnny begins to speak evasively, or in a way he doesn’t understand, Jesse says, “blah, blah, blah.” And as annoying as this is…he’s not wrong. He asks Johnny point-blank whether he ever interfered with Jesse’s parents’ relationship. It’s clear that he did, though he doesn’t admit it. Johnny often avoids admitting to his own mistakes and weaknesses.
The recurrent readings of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as Jesse’s bedtime story makes it difficult to ignore the idea of home, and what it means to remember where you come from. Near the end of the film, when Johnny tells Jesse that the young boy probably won’t remember much about their time together as he grows older, Jesse becomes upset and confused. It’s hard for him to understand that life and time will fill his head with so many moments, so many memories, that it will become difficult to keep hold of them all–even the ones which seem so important at the time. As we grow and change, it becomes easier to lose track of where we came from, who we used to be, and the people who shaped us. How do we hold on to those things that make us who we are? How do we grow up and live our lives without losing track of those people and those places that once defined us–that remind us of home? Is it even possible to do so? After all, Dorothy spends her entire journey trying to get back to that place she thought she wanted to run away from. The fear in Jesse’s face is devastating, and Johnny’s promise to remind him, should he ever forget….well, is there any better way to say “I love you.”
C’mon C’mon is filled with wonderfully surprising funny moments–moments that really shouldn’t be funny, but which allow us to laugh, anyway, at the absurdity of life. It’s late at night, and Jesse can’t sleep. He’s firing on all cylinders, jumping around on Johnny’s bed as he pleads with him to go back to his own bed. At one point, Jesse lets slip one of those bits of information he’s definitely not supposed to know: his mom had an abortion when she was younger. Johnny’s retrospective commentary tells us that he didn’t know this about his sister. In the moment, however, a very drowsy, very flustered Johnny attempts to sensitively explain “the right to choose” to a blank-faced Jesse who has absolutely no idea what his crazy uncle is on about. It’s a dark revelation made utterly humorous by Johnny’s completely inarticulate but noble attempt to deal with an extremely difficult situation. Jesse drops the subject almost immediately and moves seamlessly on to the next.
The relationship between Johnny and Viv proves one of the film’s most fascinating. It’s one we spend much of the film trying to piece together. The year following the death of their mother has forced a small wedge between them. It’s clear that they used to be close, but also that there are many things about Viv that Johnny doesn’t know or understand. He probably learns more about his sister through caring for Jesse than he does about anything else. If he didn’t previously approve of her relationship with Paul–Jesse’s father, who seems to suffer from bipolar disorder–he now understands why she feels compelled to care for him, to make sure he gets help. We learn about Viv’s complicated relationship with a mother who adored her brother but never understood her, and a bit about her rebellious youth. She’s a writer and a teacher and now, also, a single mother. We see only the iceberg tip of Viv’s story, mainly through the eyes of Jesse and Johnny, but what we do see is an imperfect person filled with creativity, with a great capacity to care, and who does the best she can despite her troubles.
Mills’ film traverses that line between fiction and reality so that we don’t see award-winning movie star Joaquin Phoenix up on the screen, and we don’t hear the words of a script falling from the lips of the players. We don’t see a young boy (Woody Norman) playing to the camera, or projecting and enunciating his voice toward an invisible audience. We don’t see performance but rather embodiment. We see a woman (Gaby Hoffmann) genuinely run ragged by years spent taking care of other people. We see a man learning what it means to be a parent (something that Phoenix, incidentally, also recently became). We see a kid driving his family insane–he’s cute, sure, but also endlessly frustrating. It’s rare to find a movie that feels so truthful. Almost nothing about C’mon C’mon feels forced or formulaic. Johnny doesn’t try to reconnect with his former partner, Louise. Nor does he decide to, for instance, move in with his sister to help her raise Jesse. The time that the Uncle and his nephew have shared together feels huge and significant. And yet, life continues on. And as the memories from their journey together fade into the past, and the two make new memories and spend new times together, the events of the film will not necessarily leave them, but rather fade into the background. This idea is hard for Jesse to accept. It’s probably hard for Johnny to accept as well. So, we do our best to make it easier–looking forward to the future, remembering the past where we can, and sometimes allowing our hopes to get the better of us.
Celluloid Thread 