So for now you just call me something personal like, Jesus Christ.
I’m not Christian, I’m sorry your children died.
The screenplay for C’mon C’mon is a pretty exciting read—the draft I have, not quite the final, but close enough. The dialogues sport the witty sharpness that only comes from the pen of a writer. Some will be nuanced by a more real if less eloquent tension, once shot. The situations are perfectly relatable, often touching—the electric feel that art gives when it seems to have reached inner places we only thought we knew. Moving from the specific to the chorus and back is strangely visual on the page, where questions are posed to diverse children letting the word improv be a clue to the world their unscripted answers will unfold. One in particular scared me, took me by surprise, made me reflect on how the world will look like after I am gone—different.
Mike Mills explores hidden ties between listening, remembering, future, and control, giving us something sensory to cling to—a sound recording gear, mobile phones, classical music. Ten-year-old Woody Norman is brilliant, in fact, inspiring. His natural performance sets the bar and the style, the other actors seemingly trying to catch up and do their best to play along. The low-contrast, bright b/w feels like a great choice to bring different cities, people, and experiences under the same silvery sky. Some aerial views of LA and street photographs of NYC are particularly stunning. I would so love to visit New Orleans!
And yet I wonder if said all this is still OK to not have loved C’mon C’mon so madly—perhaps a film that relying too much on what really is a non-exceptional extraordinariness, shows how taking life to the screen straight, even with the support of unquestionable talent, is not enough to get an exceptional film.
