Janet Planet

 

Writer/director Annie Baker on the set

Annie Baker with Elias Koteas

Annie Baker with Sophie Okonedo

JANET PLANET       B+                                                                                                         USA  Great Britain  (113 mi)  2023  d: Annie Baker

Winner of a Pulitzer prize-winning play, The Flick, by Annie Baker, in 2014, and named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017, Baker is one of the preeminent voices of her generation while also a professor teaching playwriting in various institutions, including NYU, Barnard College, Hunter College, the University of Texas at Austin, and Stony Brook Southamption.  Married to Nico Baumbach, younger brother of Noah, fictionally portrayed by Owen Kline in Noah’s autobiographical family portrait The Squid and the Whale (2005), currently a film theorist and professor at Columbia University, and part of the extended family of film director partners Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, with Baker appearing briefly in Baumbach’s While We're Young (2014), her first film as a writer and director is unusual in that it appears to be told from the perspective of a quirky 11-year old child, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler, who has her own YouTube channel, Zoe._.Ziegler), a lonely, introverted, yet delightfully insightful daughter who has no real friends of her own, but has an extremely close relationship with her single mother Janet, an effectively understated Julianne Nicholson, most recently seen in Krystoffer Borgli’s Dream Scenario (2023).  What sets this apart is not only the time period of 1991, when the director would have been the same childhood age, but more importantly the woodland setting outside Amherst, Massachusetts (where Baker was raised) known as the Happy Valley, a quiet and peaceful rural community known for its beautiful trees and wildlife, where it recalls that spacy West coast atmosphere of growing up in the 60’s, when alternative living was in vogue, like living off the land in communes.  It’s rare for films to capture that unpretentious mentality so effortlessly, but this is one of the better mother/daughter films out there, as they actually talk and listen to one another, respecting what the other person has to say, strangely enough still sharing a bed together, remaining organically attached, with the director having a gift for extremely natural and realistic dialogue that is reminiscent of a Cassavetes film, complete with “likes,” “ums,” and plenty of weird pauses, where the hushed silences are full of meaning.  They remain isolated from the outside world, living in their own private world where time passes slowly, Time Passes Slowly YouTube (2:36), a song that doesn’t actually play in the film, but it appropriately captures the time and space this film travels in, completely removed from the social media rampage and hurried pace of modern life.  Baker’s plays are lessons of empathy, as she is a playwright who carefully listens to people, re-creating human speech with such delicacy that her characters feel startlingly familiar, as if we know these people.  That is the beauty of this film, a study in mood and character, as it takes us places we’ve never been, having the luxury of spending time with people we never knew, yet they remind us not only of ourselves but those people around us.  From the outset, we know this is operating on a different wavelength, with an unhurried, unconventional structure of scenes that rarely have a traditional beginning and end, but seem to exist midway between, often cutting off midstream or lingering long after they presumably end, utilizing a short script, shooting only 50 of the screenplay’s 70 pages, with a sound design that encapsulates the noises of nature, particularly frogs and crickets at night.  Reflecting a lifestyle we probably tuned out years ago, this takes us back anyways, immersed in such a beautiful pastoral setting that allows us to simply spend time with these two characters who we become become intimately familiar with by the end, as if they are members of our own families.  Drawing comparisons to the self-reflective cinema of Charlotte Wells’ 2023 Top Ten List #7 Aftersun or the magical realist world Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman (2021), a compelling aspect of the film is that it takes us into the imagination of a child, where there are moments of adolescence that have not yet been articulated into words, but remain unspoken, a time of confusion and uncertainty, but also magic, with this film drawn to those inexplicable feelings of growing up, where we carefully observe the adults around us, trying to understand the mistakes they make, along with their sadness and pain.

Shot on 16mm by Swedish cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff, known for her work with Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason, using oblique angles and unique compositions, this contemplative, low-budget indie film with lengthy takes subtly captures a hidden life we rarely have access to, drawing on fragments of dialogue, casual conversations, and a calculated use of reflective silences to focus on the quiet drama of everyday life, exploring how our environment and the people that inhabit it end up shaping us, yet perhaps the biggest surprise is that Janet talks to Lacy like an adult.  Reminiscent of Anna Paquin’s candid relationship with Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993), this is a portrait of two lost souls coming together over a brief period of time, with Lacy having a rather possessive relationship with her mother, where all outsiders feel like interlopers.  An atypical maternal figure, drawn to the counterculture hippie lifestyle, yet still feeling a bit lost, Janet seems to collect people, apparently attracted to damaged men she can take care of, appealing to her nurturing instincts, perhaps rooted in a difficult relationship with her Holocaust survivor father, while Lacy is influenced by the peripheral people she lets into her life, even spying on them, but it's never permanent.  The only constant in Janet’s life is her daughter, as friendships come and go, but Janet and her daughter are two misfits bound together by trust and love, expressed with a refreshing lack of sentimentality.  Lacy watches her mother intently, shown with remarkable detail and sensitivity as she practices Suzuki piano lessons on her miniature keyboard while also delving into imaginative worlds of her own creation, occasionally breaking out in humorously direct outbursts, like “You know what’s funny?  Every moment of my life is hell,” while Janet is a healing acupuncturist who works out of their home, with the name Janet Planet appearing on the front door identifying her place of business.  Lacy has little figurines that she arranges like an extended family on a small shelf, opening and closing a curtain, as if putting them to bed for the night, providing her immeasurable comfort, evoking similar scenes from Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982).  Following other playwrights who have successfully made the transition to directing films, like Harold Pinter, Kenneth Lonergan, Martin McDonagh, Neil LaBute, Mike Leigh, David Mamet, John Patrick Shanley, or more recently Celine Song and Tina Satter, this film is told in chapter headings, where each chapter marks both a beginning and an end, like the changing seasons, reflecting people that wander in and out of their lives.  First and foremost this is a quiet film, offering an experience of watching ordinary people doing ordinary things, where the surprises that come are reflected in how Lacy views what she sees, as both mother and daughter struggle with human connection.  The first chapter is Janet’s current boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), a Vietnam veteran with a troubled past.  While he has a daughter, Sequoia (Edie Moon Kearns), that lives with her mother, Lacy enjoys playing with her, as we see them gleefully running around a shopping mall like an adventure playground, a happy and joyful experience, yet she’s endlessly curious why she doesn’t live with Wayne, a question he never answers, but seems to grow more and more irritated by the question, at one point succumbing to a migraine headache, where Lacy’s pestering questions touch a nerve, perturbed that she won’t leave the room when asked, growing so exasperated that he lunges at her, which is the last we see of Wayne.  Janet asks her daughter what to do, and Lacy suggests that she break up with Wayne.  As simple as that may be, what mothers actually take their 11-year old daughter’s advice?  That, in itself, is a revelation, as is the music heard by Laurie Anderson, Laurie Anderson - My Eyes (Remastered) YouTube (5:28), an artist who sings about the randomness of our fates and the seeming insignificance of our place in the universe, asking existential questions about the choices people make. 

The film takes a different turn in the next chapter entitled Regina, as the two of them visit an unusual performance troupe in a local farm commune that features life-size puppets (from an artist-run theater company, Double Edge Theatre Official Website), which takes us back in time, singing Elizabethan rounds and madrigals, including the melancholic Round and Round by Libana, YouTube (2:15), an a cappella women’s chorus, recalling the atmosphere of outdoor country fairs (like the Oregon Country Fair), with Janet recognizing one of the actresses as an old friend, Regina (Sophie Okonedo), who soon comes to live with them.  While she’s black and speaks with a British accent, she has that same laid-back atmosphere of the 60’s, a soul searcher attempting to find meaning in her life, hoping a change will do her good, taking up Janet’s offer to literally rescue her from a group that she describes as cult-like, Janet Planet Exclusive Movie Clip - What's a Cult? YouTube (1:39).  Despite their longtime friendship, and a few adventures with Lacy, Do lots of people fall in love with you? #JanetPlanet TikTok (1:07), Regina intrudes on their familiar space, getting high together with Janet and suddenly turns judgmental, stumbling into unwelcome psychic regions, Who’s to say? Annie Baker’s #JanetPlanet is now playing in ... TikTok (54 seconds), bringing a heavy sadness that suggests she’s still got her own issues to work out, with her ex-boyfriend, the theater group leader Avi (Elias Koteas), seen out the window picking her up and returning her back to the commune.  That’s the lead-in to the third chapter, Avi, the bearded yet soft-spoken, spiritual guru from the commune, who’s much nicer than Janet was led to believe from Regina, surprisingly so, quickly growing closer together, where the biggest surprise is that he goes off on these off-kilter philosophical tangents that come out of nowhere, with both Janet and Lacy seemingly in awe and admiration, as if in a trance, but the hypnotic spell quickly wears off and he disappears back to the commune as well, leaving mother and daughter alone once again to reflect on their lives.  With undercurrents of mysticism and spirituality, this is the kind of film that will completely alienate conventional viewers, lacking the patience to discover what lies beneath.  An unusual coming-of-age film, going against the grain of child performances, Lacy’s communication style is very direct, something her mother calls “forthrightness,” nothing particularly off-putting, but it can be startling coming from a child who’s so openly curious, observant, and straightforward.  Her mother, whose performance seems to evolve over time, has a speech late in the film that penetrates to the very soul, with Lacy remaining completely silent after asking if her mother would mind if she dated a girl, responding that she’s often thought she might be a lesbian due to her assertiveness, which might be too much for a man, yet remains judgment free (all the more impressive since it comes during the AIDS epidemic), while also confessing about her own cyclical series of constant ups and downs with revolving partners, wondering if that array of swirling emotions has screwed up her life (Baker’s own parents each married multiple times, which can be very destabilizing as a child, very infuriating), thoughts few mothers would ever consider sharing with their daughters, yet that’s essentially the heart of the film, as this young girl is trying to find her place in the world with a mother who doesn’t seem to have ever found her place.  While there are sudden revelatory monologues, and a mystical presence that surrounds the story’s edges, the motivations of the characters are often left unexplained, yet each, in their own way, is searching for self-acceptance.  One afternoon, during a bucolic picnic, Avi reads to Janet a section of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, Elegy IV by Rainer Maria Rilke - Famous poems, where afterwards he admits, “I really like you.”  But she is more interested in the poem than the man, asking him to “Read it again.”

… and when I feel
inclined to wait before the puppet stage, no,
rather to stare at it so intensely that in the end
to counter-balance my searching gaze, an angel
has to come as an actor, and begin manipulating
the lifeless bodies of the puppets to perform.
Angel and puppet! Now at last there is a play!
Then what we separate can come together by our
very presence. And only then the entire cycle
of our own life-seasons is revealed and set in motion.

Dream Scenario

 

Director Krystoffer Borgli

Borgli on the set with Nicolas Cage

Borgli directing a scene

DREAM SCENARIO            B-                                                                                                   USA  (102 mi)  2023  d: Krystoffer Borgli

When a nerdy evolutionary biology professor (a balding Nicolas Cage) suddenly starts appearing in the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people, he becomes an immediate media sensation, seemingly harmless at first, with marketing strategists crafting get rich quick schemes of how to take advantage of his massive recognition, but when things take a dark turn, as the dreams grow violently terrifying, that instant stardom turns sour, becoming the object of derision, where he is literally shunned by the same society that initially embraced him.  This is a cringeworthy satirical assessment of failed dreams, missed opportunities, and the devastating harm done by social media, where fame is equated to hysteria, as innocent people can easily be ostracized by false and fabricated accusations, where a herd mentality takes over with violent tendencies that blindly condemns anything out of the ordinary, as society has always embraced security through conformity, in this case leaving careers shattered and lives destroyed, paying little consequence for their bullying behavior, hiding behind the anonymity of their invisible lives, leaving behind a trail of reckless impulsiveness.  Reminiscent of a terrifying scene in Jacques Audiard’s 2021 #6 Film of the Year Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e) where a law student is mistaken for a porn star, with both male and female students openly demeaning her with cyber bullying and sexist taunts, forcing her to withdraw from school and alter her career, while also seemingly spawned from the wild imagination of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in Spike Jonze’s ADAPTATION (2002), where writer’s block turns into a screenwriter’s nightmare.  The common thread here is actor Nicolas Cage, known for choosing oddball roles played with a strange, over-the-top quirkiness, where his extended range is allowed to shine in this film where he can be completely unfiltered, bringing an eccentric intensity into the role, from a mousy nobody to an unhinged maniac, appearing in ADAPTATION twenty years ago in perhaps the greatest performance of his career, utterly brilliant in a dual role as rival sibling screenwriters, earning an Oscar nomination, with this film feeling like an extension of that role, kind of an absurdist and often surreal writer’s fantasy written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli in his English language debut. Shot on 16mm film, giving this an intentionally grainy texture, using distorted sound and abrupt cuts that continually keep viewers off-balance, the film creates its own visual language.  

The sheer audacity of the film is at times hilarious, taking us down a dark turn we’ve never taken before, yet what stands out is the utter cluelessness of Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), a tenured professor with aspirations of publishing a book on the Swarm intelligence of ants, not exactly in everyone’s wheelhouse, but in his delusional and self-obsessed mind it’s something people should be interested in, where a driving force may be to pull him out of the obscurity of anonymity, resentful of his lack of notoriety, as he hungers for validation.  While it’s been decades since his research in grad school, he still hasn’t published or even started writing anything.  He leads a banal yet comfortable life with his architect wife Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and two teenage daughters, Hannah (Jessica Clement) and Sophie (Lily Bird), with the film opening with Sophie reluctantly floating into the air screaming for her Dad to help while he passively looks on, remaining conspicuously unconcerned, never showing any interest in his daughter’s anxiety.  But it’s all a dream.  Nonetheless, Paul grows defensive, baffled and embarrassed at having to explain his lethargic behavior in the dream to his daughter, trying to convince her this would never happen in real life.  However, Paul is not a man of action, and may as well be invisible, as he’s the kind of guy people pass by on the street without giving him a second thought.  For most people he simply doesn’t exist, forever lurking in the background.  Even in his classroom, he’s largely ignored by students who are only there because it’s required, and are otherwise bored by his teaching methods, which generate no spark of interest.  So when he starts appearing in their dreams, finding himself in the fantasies and nightmares of strangers, mostly as a non-intrusive bystander who simply happens to show up, watching the most horrible things happening to people without helping, he is there, but just stands around, useless and impervious to what’s happening to them.  It wouldn’t really amount to much except their friends and other people they know also have the same kinds of dreams, where he always appears as a passively inert figure who just happens to be there, as if taking a wrong turn somewhere.  To the film’s credit, they never offer any explanation for this astounding development, yet somehow it feels connected with just how unlikable Paul is in the eyes of others, perhaps a manifestation of his own subconscious feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy, becoming a hideous example of his own crippling insecurities.  

Social media is what connects all these people together, as they’re surprised to discover the same man is appearing in all their dreams, becoming an instant celebrity, talked about on television reports, where Paul’s photograph becomes a viral Internet meme shared by people around the world, showering him with the attention he has long sought after, where it goes to his head, thinking he’s somehow responsible for this phenomenon, literally bathing in the limelight.  “So, then I’m finally cool,” he says to his daughter, hoping it will draw attention to selling his book.  He’s not alone, as others also try to capitalize on the moment, including an enterprising new-age PR firm called Thoughts? headed by CEO Trent (Michael Cera, always appearing in a baseball cap) and his associate Mary (Kate Berlant), suggesting Paul could enter a dream holding an advertised product, or have Obama dream about him, thinking they could rake in the money, literally naming their own price, as Paul is the hottest thing on the market, with Trent describing him as “the most interesting person in the world.”  But the film veers off on another tangent when Trent’s attractive assistant Molly (Dylan Gelula) takes Paul aside and expresses a personal interest in spending some time with him, as in her dream Paul was an active participant in a sex fantasy, which catches him a bit off guard, as he was never active in another person’s dream before.  This goes about how you might expect, as Molly is thrilled by the idea, but Paul fails to live up to what she imagines.  It’s an unsettling experience causing humiliation and shame, yet it’s played for laughs, where the experience alters the entire tone of the picture, knocking him off his pedestal, suddenly becoming angry and testy with people, as he can’t control what is happening in their dreams.  The subtle shift turns nightmarish, becoming disturbing and alarming, as Paul’s benign passivity in dreams grows more menacing, turning into a grotesque Freddy Krueger figure, where his instant stardom quickly fades, and people turn on him with a vengeance, becoming more aggressively vicious, hounding him wherever he goes, spray painting “Loser” on his car, where the entire world loathes what he’s become.  They no longer want to have anything to do with him, including his own family, who reject him, tragically losing his job in the process, spiraling into a pathetic netherworld of exile and ostracization.  The flip-flop into horror loses the acidic bite of satire, resembling something else altogether, yet the cruelty on display is staggering, mirroring what can happen when social media turns toxic and runs amok, leaving a hollow emptiness where reality used to be, creating a heartless, soulless landscape of what the world would look like without a human conscience.