C’mon C’mon (2021) — Read Along
and the existential tale that hit far too close to home, and at exactly the wrong time.
Fancy a beautiful Joaquin Phoenix film and a whole heap of existential angst?
20th April 2022
Aside from the promotional posters seen many months ago I had zero knowledge of this film before I settled down to watch this two nights ago. My reason for choosing “C’mon C’mon” was a simple one and in line with my adoration for the film’s leading man but this beguiling and troubling film immediately slammed home with a resonance that I simply wasn’t expecting. There is a character name shrouded in the central human themes of the story, of our unique human characteristics, traits, fears and our relationships with others and their redeeming qualities, angst, worries and individual peccadillos. It’s the time we spend with others and perhaps it’s the time we spend listening to others rather than impatiently waiting for our time to speak.
Open to interpretation, I’d posit “C’mon C’mon” is a tale of grief and loss and the jagged line drawn between a loss we can digest, accept and find peace with and the grieving and a loss we cannot. There is existential angst from a deep personal level through to a wider world and the opinions gleaned from young people on their levels of happiness or the future of the world they inhabit. It’s a Mother and Son film but the familial ties and bonds run deeper than that, as does the undercurrent of depression, anxiety, mental illness and there’s an argument to be made for attention and hyperactivity disorder as well as the film’s youngest character on the borderline of the Asperger’s/Autistic spectrum. I’d posit further that when taken as a whole, the film represents the very exploration of a young life through to the end of an older one and the human frailties and foibles that afflict us all in between.
Here’s a broader capsule review:
From Detroit to LA, New York to New Orleans, a radio journalist is chronicling the lives and thoughts of young adults as to their experiences and thoughts on the world around them and their existential fears for the future. Reunited with his sister and young nephew, he’s thrown into the deep end with a 9 year old boy who acts way beyond his tender years and soon a very outward journey of discovery becomes more inward as he chronicles a brief moment of time spent with an almost unspoken about painful ghost of his past.
“C’mon C’mon” is shot in Black and White but with a perceptibly sepia toned tinge and is ostensibly a “four hander”.
Here are your principal players:
“Johnny” (Joaquin Phoenix). My 2 decades long admiration of Joaquin Phoenix started with 2000’s ridiculously brilliant “Gladiator” and on through the years with stellar performances as the “Man in Black” Johnny Cash, the shattering performance of a World War II survivor in Paul Thomas Anderson’s masterful dig at Scientology in 2012 or the performances as “Theodore” and “Joe” in two brilliant films where he was never really here. An Oscar was a worthy accolade for his mesmeric and body contortion performance as “The Joker” in 2019 but I was initially drawn here to the parallels with the 2014 film “Inherent Vice” and the unkempt paunch of the character he portrayed there. But whereas the “Doc” in the Paul Thomas Anderson directed “Inherent Vice” remains an unlikeable and untidy character, here “Johnny” quickly recognises the importance of his at first brief, then elongated, re-connection with his sister.
Dealing with the death and loss of his Mother, Johnny busies himself with his job as a somewhat travelling radio interviewer and correspondent. Forever loaded down with equipment, his microphone is never far away from his continual compiling of suggested questions for his interviewees or, as the film travels from the first and into the second Act, more of an audio diary of his thoughts and now his strained, awkward relationship with a 9 year old nephew he barely knows. Johnny narrates the story of his life whilst trying to unpick and unlock the secret that is his young nephew and enigmatic emergency travelling companion.
Phoenix’s performance is on a par with anything pre the Oscar gong in 2019 and a performance I adored in line with his completely different portrayal in the Lynne Ramsay directed “You Were Never Really Here” in 2017. The beauty of his performance here are the reactions to the stories of his life that he can’t divulge to a 9 year old boy, even if he wanted to.
“Jesse” (Woody Norman). A bubbling volcano of emotion that finally erupts in a brilliantly shot tree lined woods, Woody Norman is outstanding as a 9 year old seemingly trapped in a much older, pragmatic mind and body. There are hints at Asperger’s/Autism however these may just be the personal insights and biases I bring to Norman’s performance, but under the quiet, direct questioning and with absolutely no filter, beats the heart of a troubled young boy. His final goodbye to Johnny was as telling as Johnny’s later response as the film closes on a spectacular performance from someone so young and in only his fourth film.
“Viv” (Gaby Hoffman). Another of life’s coincidences fall into place with Gaby Hoffman’s brilliant performance of Viv, sister of Johnny and mother of Jesse. Gaby debuted and played a pivotal role in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams”, a film I hold incredibly dear to my heart for deeply personal reasons, and 32 years later she portrays a mother, a sister and a patient, loving wife to a husband struggling with his own sanity. There are personal echoes galore here, from the simplicity of a name through to the complexity of a mother wholly loving and adoring a son, yet needing a break from the routine driven adult 9 year old boy she shares her life with.
A stellar performance.
“Paul” (Scoot McNairy). Scoot first came to my amateur film critique attention in Gareth Edwards brilliant “Monster” in 2010 and ended the decade in a Quentin Tarantino movie! In between, I’ve adored his star turns in “Killing Them Softly” and “Argo” and here he is by no means the least of the quartet of stars. His individual performances are brilliantly cut and edited, heightening the roller-coaster of emotions from unrestrained joy through to the utter depths of dark despair, psychosis, dependency and a darkly portrayed depression. With certainly the least of the four character’s screen time, McNairy’s scenes explode with the maximum of impact.
This film of memory and of the building, recollection and keeping of them is on a linear time line of a few frantic days but cleverly inter-cut are longer term flashbacks as well as more recent ones, often only briefly hinting at the more deep seated reasons for the conversations that cannot be had. If my hunch is correct, that makes the juxtaposition of the questioning interviewer who cannot, or will not, expand on answers to questions posed to him even more laudable. Regardless, I can be a pale shadow of one of the characters above and I certainly empathise with the bafflement that only a demanding 9 year old son can bring! There’s a lady I admire greatly and there’s a lady who’s grace and presence I miss dearly.
And this is only scratching the surface of a film that silently crept up on me before enveloping my inner thoughts and isn’t letting go any time soon.
Should you so desire you can read along with me via my Youtube channel video at the very top of this article and you can also read this review together with many, many more inside volume 1 of my 7 volumes of “Essential Film Reviews Collection” available via Amazon with each and every volume FREE to read if you have an Amazon Kindle “Unlimited” package.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
