The work of Mike Mills and his overlooked masterpiece ‘C’mon C’mon’
When reading the screenplay for Mike Mills’ 2021 film C’mon C’mon, I am struck by the ambiguity and open-ended questions that mark each page, with the director leaving traces of his thoughts about the intentions of the characters in the monologues and slug lines, with tiny amendments that muse about whether the actors should say something that implies unspoken tension or sections that are scored out to allow for improvisation.
Mills doesn’t want to create a concrete text with definitive answers – his work is defined by an open-ended approach that embraces the ambivalence of life itself, allowing for the story to be infused with the experiences of his collaborators in an attempt to find answers along the way.
His films are washed in an ineffable tenderness and sentimentality that emphasises a lesser-seen perspective towards the business of being alive, with other filmmakers choosing to shroud existentialist subject matter in a cloud of pessimism. But Mills is less concerned with the anguish of discovery and more with the underlying humanity that connects us in this journey, relishing in the dissonance of big feelings, unresolved pains and the quest to solve them, highlighting that there is joy in this journey, despite how intimidating it may seem.
20th Century Women, directed in 2016, is perhaps one of the most well-known from Mills’ body of work. It follows a single mother called Dorothea Fields, who enlists a group of hardy women to help raise her teenage son, doing so against the backdrop of a pivotal cultural moment in 1970s Santa Barbara. The euphoric coming-of-age story is as much about the self-realisation of the grown-ups, with Mills embracing the idea that life is an ever-evolving search for answers and the beautiful messiness of people who we are told should ‘have it figured out’. There is a comforting humanitarian quality found in his work through the idea that no one is ever truly grown up, that life is a constant barrage of obstacles and challenges that reinforce an eternal sense of youth, and that we are all people doing our best to stumble along the same unknown path.
However, this quality is perhaps most affecting in his 2021 film C’mon C’mon, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny, a podcaster tasked with looking after his young nephew Jesse over one summer, embarking on a cross-country trip together.
Phoenix’s character, Johnny, is a podcaster recording a series about the inner worlds of young people and their thoughts on the problems facing the world, with Mills choosing to intercut the story with authentic interviews of young children who share their opinions on things such as climate change and how they envision their future. As an artist but also a middle-aged man who is plagued by an existential dread and the pressing feeling of not being where he should be, Johnny attempts to find meaning through the words of young people who are untainted by the weight of life’s problems, trying to renew his spark for life and the worries that have become too heavy to carry.
Mills weaves the creation of Johnny’s quasi-documentary alongside his relationship with Jesse, showing the early awkwardness of their connection and how their friendship grows as Johnny relinquishes the facade of adulthood and embraces the messy feelings they both share, becoming united in their confusion, questions, pain and euphoria about life itself.
C’mon C’mon is an expedition through the tangled web of communication and the ways we fail to do this, showing the wisdom of young people in their ability to be unfiltered and candid as they openly feel their way through the world, no matter how loud. It shines a light on this unspoken desire to break free from the cage of convention, to return to a realm of childlike wonder and reconnect with our unbiased perspective of the world.
Through their time together, Johnny and Jesse open our eyes to the false sense of knowledge and power many adults feel over young people, believing this widespread myth that we somehow have some deeper understanding of our purpose and the nature of being alive. The relationship between both characters highlights the similarities we share with children. It shatters the differences we believe separate us, uniting us in the beautiful chaos of this eternal voyage that nobody truly has any answers to, encouraging us to scream and shout over the things that make us mad and sing loudly when life goes our way and to just c’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
