Movies for When You Need a Cathartic Cry

Just call Mike Mills

I wrote and deleted an intro to this post a few times, so I’ll just say this: I felt pretty awful last week, and you probably did too. But I still had to be a functional person in my day-to-day life, as I assume you did. And I don’t want to tell you to use movies as a distraction from real life, necessarily, but as a break? Sure. Movies are often a safe place to experience feelings, or even a way to poke a hole in a feeling you didn’t even know you were repressing, allowing alllll that emotion to come seeping out (gross, but accurate). Often, when I feel bad but can’t, say, start sobbing in front of my child, I just hold in that feeling and then let it out later while watching something completely unrelated to the subject at hand.

What I was looking for this week was a cathartic cry. A close cousin to the happy cry, but not quite. A cathartic cry is never depressing or tragic, but it can be nostalgic, hopeful, bittersweet. And the first movie I thought of was Beginners by Mike Mills, which I watched last year. For about 90% of the movie, I thought, “hmm, yes, good movie.” But then at the end, there’s this montage with a voiceover that sent me into wracking sobs, so suddenly that I shocked even myself. I hadn’t realized Mike Mills was laying the groundwork for these emotions, but he was! The entire time I thought I was simply watching Ewan McGregor fall in love, but I was actually ready to sob about Christopher Plummer!

So I figured C’mon C’mon, the latest Mike Mills movie, would be a good pick, and reader…it was. C’mon C’mon is a lot of things: wistful, nostalgic, sad, heartbreaking, hopeful. It belongs to my favorite genre of movie: “People who are trying even though they keep messing up.” Or, maybe the genre is more accurately called “Movies that remind me we’re all in this together, even though we’re actually all very annoying.” Basically, this is all I want out of a movie or a book or a TV show. A reminder that we live in a society, that we’re part of a community, that we have an obligation to each other even when we don’t feel like fulfilling that obligation. I like to be reminded that we’re all connected, and I like to feel that most people are ultimately good, even when they’re confused or burdened or even occasionally cruel.

It’s a lot to expect of a movie, but for me, in that moment, C’mon C’mon delivered.

The film is about Joaquin Phoenix (I’ve moved on to a new Phoenix brother, I guess), a podcaster who’s interviewing children about the future. And listen, if you start your movie with black and white shots of Detroit, snow slowly falling as children talk about their hopes and dreams…then, yeah, you’ve got me. I was in before I even knew what was happening.

Joaquin’s semi-estranged sister, played by the luminous and effortlessly cool Gaby Hoffman, needs him to watch her nine-year-old son because she has to go help her partner/son’s father, who’s poorly managing his bipolar disorder. And so begins a movie that doesn’t have much of a plot, really, other than Joaquin and his nephew hanging out, the nephew accompanying Joaquin to recording sessions in NYC and New Orleans. The kid is a little bit traumatized, naturally, given what’s going on with his parents. Joaquin doesn’t understand how to take care of a kid (or, in a couple of scenes that stressed me the hell out, how to keep his eye on a child in a public place!!). They walk around and get in arguments and get to know each other and it was all really lovely.

Also, as previously mentioned, I’m very fond of Joaquin Phoenix and I think people should leave him alone. I know he has a weird reputation, but he’s had such a weird life! In C’mon C’mon, he really and truly seems like a regular guy, which I loved. Perhaps Joaquin’s most important role was playing a slightly schlubby podcaster all along.

There’s no huge climax in C’mon C’mon, no big answers to big questions. I cannot stress this enough, very little happens in this film! It is quiet, both figuratively and literally with that lovely lil’ Dessner brothers score. It’s about people and their everyday problems, the kinds we all have: trying to help each other, trying to love each other, trying to balance our lives and often failing.

Ultimately, C’mon C’mon didn’t make me sob like Beginners did. But it did make me feel both good and sad. And I couldn’t help thinking, every time Joaquin interviewed a kid about what they thought the future would be like, how much we’re failing our kids. How scary this world is. We have an obligation to each other, and that obligation is a gift, not a burden. Loving someone isn’t a liability, even when it feels like it.

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I also just watched a TV show—a buzzy TV show!—that was quite stressful and full of stuff happening. It was, however, completely engrossing. Hollis and I just finished Severance and wow, what a time. It’s such a thrill to watch something that’s totally unlike anything else. The look! The premise! The colors! I do think you shouldn’t be legally allowed to watch it unless you’ve worked in an office job, though. I’m not saying that my job in a factory was as bad as working for Lumon, but I did work there for years without developing a clear understanding of what we actually made, so in a way it’s like I was severed.

Every performance is so good and by the time that finale came around…you guessed it, I had tears in my eyes! Severance is also quality “we all need each other” entertainment, full of a few bad guys but mostly people who are really trying. And I’m calling it now…if John Turturro isn’t nominated for best supporting actor, I’m writing a polite but strongly worded letter! I just love him, and talk about aging well! He looks better now than he did when he was young (I’m NOT starting a John Turturro stan account).

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That’s it for this week. I’m also listening to Sondre Lerche and reading Jane Austen’s Emma and spending as much time sitting on my deck as possible (our deck is very literally falling apart and needs to be replaced, but it gets the job done, if the job is giving me a place to read and work). The newsletter will likely be sporadic this summer, since I don’t really have childcare and I should probably be working on books, but hopefully I’ll see you soon. And let me know your cathartic cry movies, please!