Movie Recommendation: C’mon C’mon(2021)
It’s tough being someone who “hates” kids and whose favorite movie is all about a kid. It’s because it’s just that good. C’mon C’mon(2021) fell into my lap on a plane ride, and suffice to say this was the only flight I’ve been on where I didn’t anxiously throw up. Thank you Mike Mills!
C’mon C’mon follows Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix), a traveling audio producer focusing on interviewing kids on what they think about life, living, the world, etc., and his relationship with his nephew Jesse. Or really, we follow Jesse and his relationship with Johnny. We watch them navigate unfamiliar places, people, and feelings together as Jesse’s mom fades in and out of her ability to care for her son.
Written and directed by Mike Mills, C’mon C’mon opens itself as an exploration into loneliness, family, and childhood curiosity. It has a distinct sincerity, something I’d yet to come across. It’s inviting, it’s raw, it’s simple but complex. It’s human. We follow moments of connection between Johnny and Jesse, with Johnny sowing the seeds of Jesse’s audiophilia, as well as every real moment of disconnect, with Jesse’s frequent running away.
By capturing each moment so passionately and profoundly, Mills effectively makes us feel like we too have been there—a middle-aged single dude with a nephew to unexpectedly take care of—and that’s why it just feels so genuine.
My big affinity for this movie lies in its themes, and how it approaches them. It creeps up on you in ways you don’t expect, and it’s so sweet & special. One of the main themes this film centers around is memory, more specifically the loss of it. In growing up and living through it all, we forget so much. So much of what we create & discover is lost in memory, and to see this idea communicated through a child’s discovery of it was so tender and raw. We see Jesse and Johnny, who both feel an irrepressible ache of yearning for memory, for the ability to hold onto moments in time and their feelings, and it’s pretty brutal.
In memory, we find certain feelings. We’re able to navigate the eddies of joy and love and despair within ourselves, and that’s a powerful thing.
With Johnny’s job being to ask questions, and Jesse’s nature being to never stop asking questions, C’mon C’mon can’t help but invite us in to reflect on our memories, to answer these questions too. “When we think of the future, what do we imagine it’ll be?” What do we remember? Are we happy? C’mon C’mon effectively suspends the watcher – immersing us in time – to think incessantly on what our lives have been and will be. We reflect, “try to make sense of that happy sad full empty shifting life [we] are in” and are able to wholly understand this very feeling: happy sad full empty.
And my final praise for this movie goes to the underlying score. Created by the Dessner brothers, the soundtrack behind C’mon C’mon is in one word: comfortable. Ambient, with synths and subtle chord progressions perpetuated through each track, the soundtrack centers the emotional tone of the movie. It feels gentle, it feels like a memory, it feels like us.
This movie broke into me in such a unique way, in that it approaches “coming-of-age” in such a profound way. Most movies these days have shouted at me “THIS IS YOU! YOU’RE JUST LIKE ME!” and I’ve believed it. But Mills’ C’mon C’mon merely unfolded itself as something that read “yeah, this could speak to you. We’re all alike in some ways and that’s pretty sweet.” So yeah, I may not be 9 years old and radically curious, or a middle-aged audio producer, but I do often feel the crushing weight of time & I don’t know how to deal with it. And so does everyone else. So, if you’re thinking about it, watch C’mon C’mon. It’s pretty incredible.
