C'mon C'mon

       Woody Norman and Joaquin Phoenix in “C'mon C'mon.” A24 image via IMDB

Watching the new movie “C'mon C'mon” reminded me of a Zen koan.

It's the one about a virtuous monk in old Japan who receives a visit from a young woman and her father. She has just given birth to a child and her father is furious to know the identity of the baby's father. To protect her lover, the woman accuses the monk, and her father demands that the holy man raise the infant.

“Is that so?” is the monk's reply, before taking the child as his own and devoting his life to it.

After a year of guilt, the woman confesses the child's true paternity. She and her father return to the now disgraced monk, deeply apologetic as they ask for the child back for her to raise with her husband.

Giving them the child, the monk's only words are, “Is that so?”

I'm not suggesting that writer-director Mike Mills was trying to illustrate the parable … or that he's even familiar with it. And Joaquin Phoenix's Johnny would never be mistaken for a monk. A lonely guy, maybe, but hardly a spiritual master. He's part of a team of radio journalists traveling around the country interviewing teenage and younger Americans about their lives and their thoughts about the future.

One day he gets a call from his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffman) in Los Angeles. Her estranged husband has moved to San Francisco, where he's having (another) total emotional breakdown, Can Johnny come stay with her son Jesse (Woody Norman), just for a few days, until the crisis blows over …?

Those days turn into weeks. And when Johnny's work sends him back into the field, first to his home in New York, and then to New Orleans, Jessie comes with him.

Mills shoots in black and white, creating striking images of America's faces and landscapes. Along with extensive footage of Johnny putting his mike into the faces of kids sharing their knowledge and their uncertain hopes, there's a documentary texture around the lessons the man and boy have to teach each other. 

After hours, Johnny uses his recorder to keep an aural diary. It's cheaper than therapy and serves the same purpose. But whenever there's a chance, his nephew appropriates the recording equipment for himself, pointing the mic at waves on the beach in California and street noise in New York, a little explorer, discovering the new world of sounds.

While his uncle extols the value of capturing moments to hold forever, the mic and recorder are also ways of keeping everything at arm's length. Just trying to keep things together is a major preoccupation for everyone in the family, probably sister/mom/wife Viv most of all. 

Hoffman, usually at the other end of long distance calls at the end of stressful days, is Phoenix's match when it comes to building a role on emotional honesty, delving deep to find the strengths hidden under the flaws.

Like “The Lost Daughter,” another moody award hopeful this Oscar season, “C'mon C'mon” looks at extended family bonds in modern society where what used to be called dysfunctional is the new normal. Listening to the interview subjects candidly describe the world they're growing into adds to the film's sense of the fragility of it all.

Phoenix has built his Oscar-winning career playing a string of messed-up men, one after another. At least Johnny comes from the likable end of the actor's emotional spectrum, and the role gets more and more appealing the more time he spends with the kid.

Eleven-year-old English actor Woody Norman is the spark who brings not only his uncle but the entire film to life. He's precocious, wise beyond his years, cute in one moment, totally annoying in the next, a blend that will be recognizable to all the parents in the audience. With the capacity to dig straight into the truth with a simple question, he can stop Uncle Johnny in his tracks, seeing right through whatever smokescreen the man tries to hide behind. 

What's touching, and the grace note of the film, is the way the boy guides his uncle to fill the gap that's already there in his young life … and repays in kind. For all the angsty places the film has gone, it leaves you with a sweet aftertaste, a love richer for being so hard earned.

The film's title refers to a monologue young Jesse leaves on the recorder, saying in the face of all those uncertainties, our only option is to “C'mon … c'mon …c'mon …”

It has a nicer ring, don't you think, than, “Is that so?”