There is a second Massachusetts, nestled in the woods a couple of hours inland from the Ivy League and the sand-and-gravel dirtbags so often entrusted to carry the state’s banner onscreen. Oriented around a cluster of humbler liberal arts colleges fostering a chilled-out ambience beyond their campuses, an enclave of aging, free-spirited, post-hippie boomers has taken shape, their mentality never more coherently codified than during the up-with-people ‘90s. It wasn’t that long ago: Free Tibet bumper stickers, unshaven legs, Kokopelli pajamas, farmstand giveaways of surplus zucchini, big talk about unshackling consciousness from the strictures placed on it by our stifling, self-destructive society.
Playwright-turned-filmmaker Annie Baker situates her debut feature in this pocket of culture, one she knows all too well for having watched it from waist level as a child no older than preteen Lacy (the innately hilarious, faintly avian, altogether magnificent Zoe Ziegler). Those markers of setting come from an intimate memory bank, though unlike the zeitgeist objects pinned to Lacy — bars of Sculpy-brand clay, a Babysitter’s Club paperback, a tufty-haired Troll doll, the theme song from Clarissa Explains It All, the gibberish language Ubbi Dubbi popularized by the Boston-produced kiddie show Zoom — they signify more than placement in a specific time, each one a challenge to political convictions occupied with performing hollow, globally-minded virtue over the simple decency of doing right by those closest to you.
Lacy makes for a winning, deadpan point of entry for this little world, introduced flatly declaring over the phone that she’s going to kill herself if her mother won’t come get her from camp. But acupuncturist and single mom Janet (Julianne Nicholson, astonishing) has a life of her own, as she samples a few romantic partners — and with them, alternate versions of herself — over the summer before Lacy starts sixth grade. The terse, quick-to-anger Wayne (Will Patton) is a guy’s guy too close to normative hegemony; Regina (Sophie Okonedo) offers a drastic alternative in her woo-woo tendencies, which ultimately mask a certain solipsism that places a higher premium on abstract goodness than immediate compassion; in turns wise and pseudo-, Avi (Elias Koteas, reaffirming his greatness after a decade on the outs) drifts into and out of Janet’s orbit as if allowing brief visitation in his universe.
In romance as in childrearing, Janet figures out which of the old ways she’d rather dispose of and which she finds worthwhile enough to keep, considering the usefulness of antibiotics while rejecting the barrier of protective formality so many parents put up around their offspring. She speaks to her daughter as an equal, and the final scene’s poignant POV shots of Lacy watching her mother pass from one dance partner to another ask what effect that no-filter frankness could have on the girl’s development. Ziegler’s coy parting smile suggests something encouraging, that blazing one’s own path is rewarded with liberation even when the route can be confusing, lonely, or difficult.
Perhaps the most predictive image is that of little Lacy prostrate before a proscenium, a future dramaturg heeding the call of her destiny. Though there’s always been more than a hint of the cinematic in Baker’s theatre career, which brought her a Pulitzer for a play about a small-town movie house almost perfectly equidistant between Boston and Janet Planet country. She re-arrives fully formed as a film artist, with a developed and stunningly self-assured visual language bolstered by unhurried confidence behind the camera. This is not just one of the great films of its year, but one of the finest first films in the annals of the medium.
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