C’mon C’mon feels like an emotional sibling of Linklater’s Boyhood (2014). The movie in some ways is so patently contrived as to strain credulity and as Friend observed as we compared notes afterwards, Joaquin Phoenix’s occupation makes him so unbelievably flexible for the circumstances of the movie, bordering on Ms Doubtfire levels of convenience for the plot. His job as a New York radio reporter, which allows him access to high quality, free daycare while at work, coupled with an infinite font of travel funding to move about the country feel like a gift for the cinematographer more than any reflection of reality.
The film is entirely adorned with homages to the world of podcasting and longform journalism. Molly Webster, RadioLab’s queen behind the scenes, graces much of the movie. The interviews with children about the future and their internal lives are mesmerizing and raw and so perfect that the cynical part of you will be angry that they were able to train children to recite these perfectly vulnerable and wise monologues, but the pure part of you will rejoice at the fact that these are the unvarnished, unadulterated words of youth speaking directly to you through the movie.
As someone who only recently re-listened to a few year’s worth of recordings I had done of family visits while traveling for the first time since all of the craziness of the last couple years, I feel like I have some special credibility to bring to the concept of a person obsessively filtering their experiences through the fastidious recording and collecting of other’s words. It’s what compels me to save the cries of the tiny goblin who lives with us now for review when it is larger and able to be surprised by its own sounds. It’s what forced me to hold onto and eventually max out my voicemail storage when I found out my dad was sick and I wanted to have his voice on my phone when he was calling just to say that Mom had scared him on his way back from the bathroom at 2AM or to leave half of the set up to a joke as a means of seducing me into calling him back. It’s what compels me to have the entirety of my road trip with college friends from six years ago loaded and labeled into forty tracks for easy listening. I have the last trip as a non-parent with a friend, meditating on what fatherhood will be some day, and my grandmother explaining one of her recipes, the sounds of waves crashing on a beach I’ve never returned to, and a skate park in a town I couldn’t find on a map. I have the stories of my brother explaining about his fear of horses and two tiny and precocious children who are now in college, explaining what they can about lynxes and politely ignoring how much I interrupt them in our interview. And I know that I’m not alone, there are lots of people who find it hard to throw away negatives or erase messages or digitize photo albums, and so this experience of the fleeting nature of memory objects is something we can all access in some way.
The fun of C’mon C’mon is not in the quiet pain of Phoenix reconnecting with an old souled nine year old or the joyousness of their fast friendship, but in the moments of supreme awkwardness: the orphan roleplay, the questions at the pizzeria that undress Johnny to his bone, the strain and anguish on Phoenix’s face when he clicks through possible responses to Jesse’s questions like the chambers of a pistol, the scripting of an apology. Sure, it’s a film that exults in not one, not two, but three separate spoken word readings of short stories and essays about motherhood and lost boys, but it’s also a movie that slyly reads through the adventures of Dorothy and Ozma at Jesse’s bedtime without comment. It’s got a light touch that follows its heavy hand.
And as I discreetly checked my phone a few times to make sure everything was OK at home for the first time as a father, I recognized that this movie was hitting me at the right time in my life, a weekend when a friend is separating from her spouse and taking her teenager with her. It made me think about what I would want to say to that kid if we had a chance to sit down. I think I would want to say something like:
There is so much love in this world. The first time that we met, you hugged me and told me that you loved me and I told you that it was too soon to say that, but you were right and I was wrong. I didn’t know then what you did, which is that sometimes we don’t choose love. Love hits us like an asteroid, knocks us out of orbit, and we are permanently changed by it. Sometimes the thing that hurts the most is losing someone you love, because love is so often a thing with momentum. It hurtles forward, planning birthdays and vacations and weddings and storms and even bad things that you think you’re going to hate but you love thinking about loving someone enough to get angry about them. When someone you love falls out of love, it can feel like you are not able to be loved, that you’ve lost whatever qualities are necessary for affection and attention. Love is most acutely felt in the absence of its reciprocation. It makes you wonder how long has it been one-sided and how long have you been filling what you thought was a well that you’d be able to draw love out of some day when it was actually a sieve. There are so many people that raised you into the person you are and if you think back on this moment in a few years, it might not be completely obvious to you that a lot of people were thinking about you daily, wondering how they could best watch over you and keep you safe. People spent long nights and phone calls planning and worrying and wondering, your mom most of all, and most of that worrying and planning and wondering had to be invisible, but just because it’s invisible doesn’t mean its not real or that it’s not powerful, like the moon’s pull on the tides. I hate that I can’t be closer while you’re going through all of this, but you aren’t going through this alone and you never have to. I’ll be around, because I can’t help but be there.
I guess I would say something like that, maybe. Anyway, a fun movie for the right moment.
