This
movie only garnered one Oscar nomination, for Best Original Screenplay, and
while Annette Bening is most often cited as the film’s notable snub, it’s a well-made
film that would’ve been deserving in many categories. Seeing it was a film experience that I can
best describe as “intriguing,” and I’m still mulling it over.
Dorothea
– career woman, mother, divorcee – is doing what she can to raise her 15-year-old
son Jamie in California in 1979, but she’s at something of a loss. She feels him slipping from her, and she can
sense that he doesn’t know how to figure out who he should become. Deciding to take the “it takes a village”
adage more seriously, she enlists the help of Abbie, Dorothea’s punk-rock
feminist boarder, and Julie, a 17-year-old neighbor and close friend of
Jamie’s. Dorothea reasons that, as
Jamie’s mother, she can’t gain entry to the vital points of his young life and
psyche where he most needs guidance, and she believes that between them, these
three women can teach this boy how to be a man.
It’s a
really interesting story, messy and imperfect but really compelling. From a straight-up plot standpoint, it gets a
bit bumpy for me at times – it can feel like it jumps too directly from one
plot point to the next now and then, like it’s crossing off story beats on a
checklist - but overall, I thought it
felt very different and expansive. For
me, even if it sometimes stumbles with the nuts-and-bolts aspect, it greatly
succeeds at both the macro and micro levels.
The overarching themes are beautiful, and I love the device of inserting
various characters’ backstories into the narrative using a mix of flashbacks
and stock footage with another character’s voiceover filling in the
details. It nicely shows how much we’re
all shaped by the times in which we live, and it’s a handy realization of the
idea of everyone being their own walking story.
I also really enjoy these small, profound moments sprinkled throughout
the film; the first one that stood out to me was when Abbie tries to take
Julie’s picture as part of a “day in my life”-style photography project and
Julie flatly replies, “I didn’t happen to you,” but there are many such little
gems.
The
actors all do really well playing characters who are people-in-progress trying
to figure themselves out in uncertain times.
For me, the standout is probably Greta Gerwig’s Abbie – I’m not familiar
with Gerwig, but she brings just the right mix of chaotic energy and
slightly-numbed cynicism to the character.
Annette Bening does a fine job with Dorothea as she tries to turn her
admission that she doesn’t know what she’s doing into a plan, and Elle Fanning
plays Julie with a brittle fragility that’s wonderful to watch. On the guys’ side, relative newcomer Lucas
Jade Zumann does well with Jamie’s coming of age, and the always-reliable Billy
Crudup plays William, another boarder of Dorothea’s, with understated
gentleness and humor.
Warnings
Sexual
content (including brief nudity,) language, drinking/smoking/drug references,
and thematic elements.
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