"Now, Jonah, a lot of people are going to touch on your weight tonight, but not enough to talk about what an asshole you've become."- Nick Kroll at the Comedy Central Roast of James Franco
Was he ever?
I did research a bit, for the fuck of it, to see if there was any dramatic, underground controversy or any specific, scurrilous statement that showed even a whit of him displaying his potential of being the next Christian Bale. All I found were from uncertain, unsubstantiated forum threads and some random post from BuzzFeed, which...
...yeah, sounds about right. It seems that the paltry, nugatory handful of grievances I found against Jonah Hill was that he's too serious in person, but isn't that his right? After Superbad skyrocketed him to success as the fat, nerd-looking, stoner man-child, branded that image on him, and then plummeted his career when he couldn't keep the schtick vital and fresh any longer (i.e. The Sitter), he had to do something to revive and sustain his career.
So, if it means making OSCAR-NOMINATED FILMS with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio and comedic film reboots of television shows to keep his rent steady and his prospects versatile and fruitful, wouldn't that be a better alternative than to just go and make, I don't know, The Sitter Returns? However, if there's any point during Hill's career where he can be found at his most serious, it's in 2018.
Outside of being on Vanity Fair's best dressed list (jeez, talk about being reformed), Hill, in the midst of the 2010s rapidly coming to a close in due time, has decided to bring us back to a time that feels so foreign, yet so identical.
Welcome to the mid-90's!
The film revolves around Stevie (hey!), a lonely 13-year-old boy in an undetermined grade level of school, although it is possible that it just might be middle school. His mother is doting, caring, and loving, but tends to focus more on her own sexual escapades, and his brother is an angry, abusive force of fear and intimidation. At a skateboard shop, he manages to creep his way into a crass, juvenile conversation between four skater boys: Ray, Reuben, Fourth Grade, and Fuckshit (yeah, really!). They take Stevie under their wings, which leads him to a sundry of social shenanigans and a closeness and companionship that he'd been looking for.
The exhilaration I got from watching this movie came from such an aesthetic and emotional sense. Hill's projection of the mid-90's is virtually flawless. I was born in 1996, so my knowledge of mid-90's culture from fresh eyes is not the most reliable, yet I can recall all of this. One ingenious gateway to the period that Hill uses is the soundtrack, which is phenomenally pristine and uniformly necessary. It blends 90s hip-hop, alt-rock, and even current, original pieces by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It's such a blast to the past that the songs used aren't exactly fragmented, rather they seem spliced as if it were a Movie Maker compilation video with each song starting immediately after the former has ended.
However, while the feel of nostalgia for the 90's is masterful, I, again, am looking at from the perspective of an outsider. I can recall all of this, because I knew these characters even in the mid-2000s: the skateboarders that rambled on with their discursive small-talk, virtual stubbornness to distance themselves from that pothead mold, their shallow insults, their empty yet carefree attitudes, and their propensities to lure in a young child to attempt to mirror their displays of destructive adolescence, perpetuating the cycle, yet empowering the child.
And that child, in whose eyes we see the film through, is Stevie, who is one of my favorite protagonists in any film period, mainly because in a way, I was him. His naivete, his alacrity and giddiness in being involved in discussions with the older kids, his beginning habit of embarrassing himself, his confusion via all the mixed messages his receives; all of that I identified with as a middle-schooler trying to mesh with the sacred, towering high-school students.
Except when it came to sex, he lucked out before I did. Lucky bastard!
This rapport with the older skateboarders and his effervescent determination to stand toe-to-toe with them leads to some moments of quiet power, such as Ray and Stevie saying nothing to each other, as Ray drills wheels on a new skateboard for Stevie in an unofficial initiation and token of growth, or even a rare moment of tenderness between Stevie and his brother, which displays the dichotomy of each one's relationship with their mom and almost offers a mentoring hand, before internally realizing that his credibility as a mentor to Stevie is ludicrous.
There are times where it seems that writer/director Jonah Hill delitescently uses the amalgamation of the redolent ambiance and the borderline plaintive content for further narrative potency. The opening credits showcase a rite of passage of sorts, as Stevie experiences the rush of intruding his brother's bedroom, leading him to right down every 90s hip-hop CD that his brother currently owns. The scene where Stevie and the gang are at a house party seems to showcase a jarring, misguided lifestyle and offset that with hazy, flute music that is a mixture of classy decadence and shrill danger.
And cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt is there to document all of it. His camera work in this film is intimate and searingly perceptive. When Blauvelt desires to project awe of this period and this environment, he widens his scope, leering and analyzing the world from a distance. When he needs to investigate and navigate the characters, he is so up close and personal, as to almost make the actors emotionally crack.
On the subject, the actors are all pure naturals. Sunny Suljic plays Stevie with a tragic isolation and a quiet observance that is uniquely his own for his character. Katherine Waterson portrays Stevie's mom as almost an innocent bystander with a myriad of skeletons in her closet. She has an innocent, forlorn nature, where it seems that the more she tries to exist as a loving mother, the more she withdraws into her own melancholy. It's an almost understatedly devastating performance. Lucas Hedges stunningly walks the tightrope between disgusting malice and begrudging vulnerability as Stevie's brother and Na-kel Smith, Gio Galicia, Ryder McLaughlin, and Olan Prenatt round out the cast as Ray, Reuben, Fourth Grade, and Fuckshit respectively, all grappling with their bleary, undetermined futures, but masking their angst and insecurities under sharp tongues and drug-induced laughs.
As a writer, Jonah Hill knows how to feel the moment. It's ironic that Harmony Korine makes a cameo in this film, because of all the 90s cinematic influences, he seems to balance the conversational realism of Kids and Gummo (both penned by Korine) with the grimy gut obliteration of movies like Singleton's Boyz n the Hood. Given that last comparison, it's astounding that Jonah Hill has enough profundity and empathy to not take the moral high ground and censure the hip-hop culture. It showcases those who worship the music, but misunderstand the message.
As a director, Hill knows how to project the moment. That's what you see with his actors, his cinematographer, his composers, his sound editors, etc. They don't try to convey or replicate the moment, but they merely let the moment approach the audience, whatever it is. By the ending of the film, the gang is watching Fourth Grade's short film, re-contextualizing and recapping all of their antics, and in a broader sense, the actual film. Then, the credits roll.
But we know, the film hasn't ended. It just stopped. We know there's more of an ending somewhere. There must be a true conclusion to this story. What could it be? The frightening part is that we don't know. And the brilliant part is that we don't know. Sure, a youth-fueled life of hedonistic fun and self-fulfilling minutiae can be refreshing in retrospect and especially in the moment, but how can you evolve if your goals and expectations don't exceed past that? Certainly, you can't, but do these characters ever find their ways for the better?
We don't know, because Jonah Hill's mid-90s isn't about easy answers, life-affirming resolutions, or lapses of plot to provide a temporary moment of crisis or conflict. It's about the search for purpose, loss of innocence, and one boy's attempt to find one man to look up to. And I loved every moment of it.
RATING: Four out of four stars!
