The crucial question of talking pictures has always been what to do with the soundtrack, and few filmmakers have done much with it. For the most part, the recording of sound has been used shockingly unimaginatively, to transform movies into something close to filmed plays. Even many of the greatest films lapse into this unquestioned habit, fixating on the dialogue of outward action in lieu of the relentless flow of characters’ internal monologues. Yet the artifice of voice-overs, too, risks falling into convention.
In his new film, “C’mon C’mon” (which opens Friday in theatres), Mike Mills comes up with an inventive and deeply affecting way to bring his characters’ teeming reflections and memories to the fore. He makes the movie’s soundtrack—and emotional life—complex by making the drama complex in form. “C’mon C’mon” is a tender and turbulent melodrama that amplifies its power with a documentary current. The result is a film of an extraordinary amplitude; it’s both poised and frenetic, contemplative and active, heartily sentimental and astringently contentious, intensively intimate and expansively world-embracing, exactingly composed and wildly spontaneous. What’s more, it brings not only its characters but its cast of actors into the cinematic maelstrom of inner life, and thus offers an extraordinary showcase for their artistry.
Sourse: newyorker.com
