C'mon C'mon

C'MON C'MON   ***1/2

Mike Mills

2021

IDEA:  When nine-year-old Jesse's mother leaves town to care for her ill estranged husband, he's left under the watch of his radio journalist uncle, who takes him around the country on a project interviewing kids.

BLURB:  Mike Mills makes films of such genuine warmth, lightness, and empathy for people that they end up inadvertently exposing just how lacking these qualities are in so many movies from major American filmmakers. On the other hand, perhaps it’s not inadvertent at all; in C’mon C’mon especially, the writer-director seems to wear his heart on his sleeve with something like defiance, unashamedly courting potential calls of sentimentalism without ever succumbing to the mawkish devices or platitudes that would validate those accusations. In other words, he demonstrates how a film can be non-naively about positive relationships, open communication, and hopefulness without sacrificing dramatic interest or complexity. He makes it cool to be kind. One of the things that feels so quietly radical is his depiction of American masculinity. Through the blissfully tender rapport between Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman (an uncommonly centralized uncle-nephew relationship), Miller extols a male sensitivity and emotional candidness too seldom witnessed in popular Western media. This generosity radiates all throughout C’mon C’mon, pulling in every face - from the professionals to the myriad kid non-actors - into an expansive, egalitarian dialogue on childhood, parenthood, and the spaces connecting them. Mills also incorporates a number of other texts within his own, fostering a heteroglossic tapestry where every voice matters, and echoes; his black-and-white images further flatten hierarchies between the many places he depicts. C’mon C’mon is ultimately a gentle entreaty to listen and to learn. It has an air of pedagogy, even homily, but it’s not didactic; it’s more like a heuristic for a world we have the capacity and tools to make better, if we’re willing.