Honest to Blog: Juno
Just buy the soundtrack. Trust me.
Diablo Cody, stripper-turned-blogger-turned-screenwriter and director Jason Reitman took Hollywood by storm in 2007 with a film that was everything we all wanted – a breath of fresh air. A dimensional, fascinating protagonist who was, shock horror, teenage and female; strange yet hilarious jokes; genuine emotion and humanity; and enough cool touches to win over everyone.
What goes up must come down, however, and the internet backlash against this film was swift; claiming it to be self-aware, contrived and ‘trying too hard’ to be quirky/indie/alternative/any other synonym for ‘unique’ that people like to type with venom. What those people forgot, however, is the reason this film became popular to start with: because it’s really, really, really good. Incredible, in fact. That’s fo shizz, homeskillet.
The witty, frank and offbeat Juno MacGuff (Elliot Page) is pregnant by her awkward best friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), and decides to give the baby up for adoption. With the support of her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), her father (J.K Simmons) and her stepmother (Allison Janney), she finds an upper-class married couple with no children (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) to whom she can bequeath her bundle of joy. She soon finds that even someone as preternaturally wise as her can be knocked hither and thither by life’s bittersweet waves.
Jason Reitman is wise enough to keep his touch light – the script and all it entailed was bursting with character and freshness already, adding any more tricks would have been overdoing it. The framing device of the seasons mirroring the development of Juno’s pregnancy is a nice touch, reminding us always that life moves right along. He keeps the all-important emotional realism centred, letting his actors do their heavy lifting as the camera unostentatiously captures it.
This isn’t just a story about a pregnant girl with a smart mouth, Diablo Cody uses that catalyst to explore all the shades of life – a yearning, childless mother; a frightened man; a tender-hearted boy; parents with broken wisdom. She does stomach-churning adult emotional conflict as well as she does smirking teens, and that’s what everyone seems to forget. Mark’s apologetically selfish confession is as memorable as Juno’s reference to China giving away babies like free iPods. Homeskillets and hamburger phones be damned, this is a writer who loves humans in all their goodness and sometime evil. The script’s only misstep is Juno calling Vanessa’s preferred name for a baby girl, Madison, “a little gay.” Accurate for a girl that knows no better, still boring.
Elliot Page is magnificent and has a beautiful chemistry with would-be-lover Michael Cera – in the scene in which Juno tells him of her pregnancy, her moving a living room set onto his front lawn for no reason may seem ridiculous or even stilted, but the worry and question in her face grounds the entire business firmly in poignant emotions. Before she swings back into her trademark snark, of course. Page takes a character that could have been a scrappy, irritating wannabe punk and makes her into a work of contradictory, lifelike art. She has less wisdom than she thinks she does, but more than the world gives her credit for. This is perfectly encapsulated in her first scene with Mark and Vanessa, in which she knowledgably admits she is “ill-equipped” to be a parent while still in high school, then a minute later cracks that being pregnant makes her “pee like Seabiscuit”. She holds her own in an adult world most of the time, but when her eyes widen and brow furrows at Mark’s confession, Juno suddenly looks no older than her sixteen years. “I want things to be perfect, I don’t want them to be all shitty and broken like everyone else’s family.” She is guileless and knowing at once, seeing the hardship of family life but still thinking it can be fixed magically. She learns more about life from the trials of Mark and Vanessa than she does from the life in her womb. Her tears at the side of the road over these feelings throb with grief, and when she announces such things to be “way beyond (her) maturity level”, I defy you not to smile. By the film’s end, after her heart’s realisations and labour’s pain, you will have fallen in love with her completely. Master Page, I believe this performance is just about flawless.
Michael Cera is accused of playing himself in every gentle lovesick puppy role, but it really doesn’t matter if himself is this likable. Emotionally tricky scenes – being told you’ve gotten a girl pregnant, having another boy barb you about it, talking to the girl about breaking your heart – are all handled with sweet understatement. Also, every teenage boy in the world should know that his response to Juno’s news of her pregnancy, “What should we do?” is the perfect thing to say. It’s not just her problem, pal, you’re in there too. Literally.
People who think teenage girl best friends don’t have blistering sarcasm and self-effacing inside jokes have clearly never seen them interact. As John Green wisely says, teenagers are treated like they’re stupid and it’s a bunch of shit. Juno and her bestie Leah are thick as thieves and as sharp as them too. Juno’s parents are a gift from cinematic heaven – they are shocked but not appalled, sharp but not cruel, sympathetic but not syrupy. Played perfectly by Simmons and Janney, they are parents as they should be. They admit their kid has messed up, but they support her anyway. Seeing Janney’s Bren, the not-evil stepmother, verbally wail on a judgemental ultrasound technician is one of those moments in film during which you can hear the entire audience rallying behind the character speaking. Simmons’ Mac has a daddy-daughter advice session after Juno announces that she is “losing her faith with humanity” that will redeem your own faith. The beauty of their blended family is visible everywhere.
Jason Bateman is wonderfully ambiguous, and Jennifer Garner shines as a woman born to be a mother. Hers is a performance in which you can see an actor’s real experiences shining through them – when Garner talks to Juno’s pregnant bump or looks at the ultrasound picture, you know her face is one of a woman thinking of her own child. Bateman has all the passive anger of a man who’s been living a lie, and the gentleness of one who knows it isn’t his wife’s fault.
Juno and Mark trading music recommendations and horror directors proves the self-effacing coolness of both. In a way, it’s a backhanded slap by writer and director to the sort of hipness they know their film has – liking weird music or movies is fine, but as these characters eventually prove, it’s not what makes you a good human being. Liking Hershell Gordon Lewis – or, for that matter, Juno – is no replacement for actual integrity. Juno falls for it, and that’s another gentle reminder of how much she doesn’t know about the world, despite her maturity in other ways. Her and Mark’s almost-May-December chemistry is lurching; they’re not so much flirting with each other as with each other’s time periods. Juno is experimenting with the adulthood her condition would usually bring, and Mark yearns for the irresponsibility of an adolescence he never grew out of, comics and punk records included.
Speaking of that, high-schooly drama – the secret love of jocks for weird girls, crushing on teachers, arguing couples – is at the mercy of Juno’s (and thus Cody’s) stinging frankness. Besides being plain funny, this humanises all involved; girls who get pregnant don’t exist in another world, they do science lessons and drop their books and laugh at stupid boys, just like you.
The affectations of Juno and her compatriots – outdoor living room sets, TicTac addiction, hamburger phones, puppy embroidery, pipe chewing, horror fandom – could have been shallow, self-aware ‘indie movie touches’, but somehow they’re truly charming. There’s always a friend with a favourite sweet, or a dad who secretly loves slasher movies. Reducing the inclusion of these quirks to nothing more than a gimmick means shutting another of life’s beautiful details out of cinema-land. Make up your mind, critics: you want films that are close to life, yet criticise when that life happens to be odd. Life is best when it’s odd, we all know that.
Besides the brilliance of the words and the people gifted with saying them, the whole of Reitman’s assembled gang pulls together to complement the unique script with unique audiovisuals to create a gorgeous little world in which Juno learns her life lessons. Steve Sakland’s production design makes a bright wonderland of the places we all know – candy-filled corner store, messy teen girl bedroom, sticker-covered locker, knick-knacky Midwest house. Trust me, the modern teenager really does have that many pictures all over their walls. Hand-drawn style opening credits to a sweetly swinging children’s song echoes the homespun innocence changer of the story itself.
Monique Prudhomme’s costuming is perfectly naturalistic, everything from Juno’s sweater vests to Paulie’s yellow sweat bands to Leah’s ugg boots being something the kid next door could wear. The one touch I particularly enjoyed was Vanessa’s nursery painting attire, a yellow-splattered Alice in Chains t-shirt, the implication being that it was Mark’s and she ruined it. It’s a clever, tiny shadow of the problems between them.
Eric Steelberg’s cinematography is also naturalistic, painting snow and blossoms to be perfectly lovely as the seasons churn by in Juno’s pregnancy; and the golden light bathing Juno and Bleeker after the birth is like the halo of their gentle love. (Ugh, that was too much, wasn’t it? Damn it, films making you emotional… makes your writing ooze with syrup…)
The best-selling soundtrack – The Kinks, Buddy Holly, The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Kimya Dawson, Mott the Hoople – might be ‘determinedly indie’ to some, but it never feels forced. If the strums of Holly’s ‘Dearest’ are perfect for a moment of Juno’s reflective sweetness, then to hell with accusations of hipsterdom, use it! The Moldy Peaches’ ‘Anyone Else But You’ (one of Dawson’s bands) is the ballad of Juno and Bleeker, retracing their steps back to naïve sweetness after a scary brush with real life. They will eventually learn of more hardship, but let them have this innocence while they can.
Now, let’s deal with that much-discussed contrivance or self-awareness. Juno may speak in wit-laced dynamite to rival Tarantino characters, but there is a reason beyond the hip comedic appeal that every cynic claimed – everything from her smart mouth to her ‘alternative’ interests is a search, a defence mechanism to shut out that scary thing called the world as she discovers who she might be. Right from the start, Juno’s acid-tongued shield is held aloft. When the barking of a tiny dog lurches her from contemplation of the sweet, awkward sexual debut with Bleeker; she yells for the dog to “shut his friggin’ gob”. Sure, she wants the dog to shut up, but it’s also her knee-jerk reaction to her own guileless emotion. Woops, I think I’m feeling something serious, cue the automatic quip!
You can see moments like that through the whole film – woops, Vanessa loves the kid, better call it a sea monkey! Woops, I just found out something heartbreaking and now I’m crying, better crack that I’m allergic to fine home furnishings! Woops, I think I might be in love, better compare it to macaroni and cheese! Some kids smoke, some do cheerleading, she listens to Patti Smith and uses words like cavalier and shenanigans. To decry her is to put down every young person that has ever lived or will live. No one knows what they’re doing at the start, and that bittersweet learning is the tender heart of a film with winking humour and cultish appeal.
In a way, the film itself is like its heroine – both bury themselves in the bells and whistles of snark and hipness, hoping no one will notice the vulnerable emotion underneath it all. Whether you listen to Patti Smith or not, that’s a humanity we can all share. As she says, “I guess normalcy isn’t really our style.” It isn’t anyone’s, and that’s why Juno is perfect.
