JANET PLANET IS A SMALL MASTERPIECE OF THE SMALL MOMENTS IN LIFE

Written and Directed by Annie Baker, the new movie brought water in my eyes:

I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I was 11-years-old, I started to fall out of love with my parents. They were getting divorced, and the atmosphere was messier than I even realized at the time of the breakup. They’re lovely people, and have a great co–parenting relationship, but above all of the emotional wreckage, I started to understand that my parents were people; people with their own vices, fears, mistakes, anger, and sensitivities; people often suffocating under the weight of the mental loneliness provided to them by their fathers and mothers. I’m grateful for this loss of innocence, even if I get a sharp pain from the nostalgia of love: worshipping my father transformed into understanding how complicated Black life is; seeing my mom as an angel transformed into understanding the trauma that Black women carry. They stopped being superheroes and protectors — started being tales of caution and just people also figuring out who they are. All kids have the weight of their parent's decisions and mistakes, and start to astutely study them once they get old enough. 

Janet Planet, the new film from playwright and now-screenwriter/auetur Annie Baker, is a movie about a 11-year-old who is starting to see her mom as a real person — not just a figment of childhood bliss. But, Baker — a Pulitzer award winner — is crafting a kind of movie that is not didactic, or melodramatic with a big sweeping indictment of generational gaps. While the audience is recognizing that the child will grow, the movie is more concerned with the small arguments, small events, and the negotiations and conversations that a mother has with her daughter.

The mother in question is named Janet (a dependably excellent Julianne Nicholoson), and the daughter is Lacy (Zoe Ziegler, in one of the greatest child performances in cinema history). Janet and Lacy have a solid life together; they live in a western Massachusetts home filled with books, windows that allow for Lacy to see clandestine adult conversations in real time, and have dinner outside on a gazebo-like deck. Janet, however, is still a young mother, and wants a life on her own terms. When we meet Janet, she is with her boyfriend Wayne, who figured that he would have Janet all to himself this summer. Lacy wants out of summer camp, though, and soon, she is torpedoing Wayne and Janet’s plans with her precocious and inquisitive nature (Lacy asks a ton of hilarious questions to Wayne, like why he doesn’t live with his daughter?). Soon, Wayne is out of the picture — after Lacy recommends breaking up with him — and the mother and daughter are alone, back to sleeping next to one another at night without any male disturbance. Friends, an actress and drifter, come; and then they go. The one thing that remains is Janet and Lacy. It’s motherhood disguised as partnership; while the camera zooms out for dinners, it zooms in on the intimate scenes, allowing us to be alone with these two women. Baker’s direction is so mature, so detailed — from the bugs that populate the area, to the small theatre group that is in the town — that it feels unlikely that this is her first movie. This is a master at work; her next movie should have tickets go on sale right this minute.

Still, Baker doesn't let her direction override her two magnificent actresses. The newcomer Ziegler, is a born star. Her eyes tell the story of a shy but sweet girl who is growing into her own person, filled with her own overbearing thoughts and behaviors. It’s the small things, in a movie that celebrates the small aspects, that make this a child performance that will be considered seminal five to ten years from now. Her eyes are plain, and her face — pointy nose, oblique ears, and big glasses — is immensely unique, giving her look something that could be a halloween costume for a person in the chess club at your local high school. She’s shockingly witty, and aware of her own limitations and orientations. At one point, in an intensely sweet conversation, Lacy asks her mom if she would be okay with her dating girls. The crowd laughed, I did too, but the acknowledgement of her possible sexuality gave me more goosebumps in an already air condoitioned theater. Child actors can be great, but they can also be unreactive, or comedic filler in an otherwise tense setting. Lacy isn’t that; she exists within the presence of all the adulthood happening around her – from a woman reuniting with her toxic boyfriend, to her mom’s boyfriend wanting her out of the picture. It’s a testament to Ziegler that this works so well. She feels completely unguarded while still mysterious the whole time. 

Nicholson’s been great as a New York detective, an uptight prosecutor, a coach’s wife, but she’s never been better than what she is here. It’s a performance of fun restraint. Watching her live is cooler, more honest, than big melodramatic ideas of motherhood. Baker gets being a young mother so well: Janet still has time for men in her life; still has time to open her doors to a sketchy friend. There’s scenes where she defends her choices, nontoxically telling a friend (Sophie Okonedo) off. She’s a young woman figuring out life, possibly getting involved with faux deep men (Elias Koteas) because her daughter is the least thing she is worried about. 

There’s never toxic with this crew. There’s nothing saccharine either. When you think their might be a beef between the two, like when Janet has to pick up Lacy at camp, life goes on, as it often does when it is a home of two in the suburbs of Massachusetts. A mother and daughter who share an inseparable bond are, along with the hot air and ambient sounds, spending summer together — possibly making a mistake or two, but trying to learn through those choices together along the way.

I don’t want to give too much of the movie away, although the movie is not about plot, but a scene late in the movie immediately lifted my emotional consciousness, watering my eyes as the screen went black. A character is looking at another character enjoying a friendly and joyful activity, and as she continues looking, a smile creeps on her face. It wasn’t necessarily a smile that exuded a certain joy in the activity, but rather a quiet triumph: the pleasure of being a real person after the everyday moments that can be taxing. It was a kind of catharsis; soon, she’ll be doing an activity while the other one watches.