“If I Go Will They Miss Me”
(USA)
Screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center Black Harvest Film Festival (November 6-15)
Metacritic (7/10), Letterboxd (3.5/5), Imdb.com (7/10), TMDB.com (7/10), Imdb.com critics review
#BrentMarchant #IfIGoWillTheyMissMe #Watts #LosAngeles #absentfather #admiration #dysfunctionalhousehold #fathersandsons #comingofageprocess #poeticeloquence #rolemodel #Greekmythology #airplane #Poseidon #filmshort #heroworship #adulation #bewilderment #incarceration #Odysseus #Troy #TrojanWar #philandering #DanielleBrooks #druguse #escapistthinking #flyingaway #wingedhorse #Pegasus #BarryJenkins #SpikeLee #ClementVirgo #WalterThompsonHernández #BodhiDell #JAlphonseNicholson
Fathers and sons – the history of these relationships is often as complicated as the dynamics of the individuals involved in them. The hero worship that sons hold about their fathers often runs deep, regardless of whether such admiration is genuinely merited. Meanwhile, the elders’ bewilderment about such unconditional adulation – not to mention their unexpressed shaky confidence in carrying out their duties as suitable role models – frequently leaves their heads spinning, sometimes leading to inappropriate, unexplained, overreactive behavior. And those are the circumstances at play in this second feature from writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernández, based on his 2022 film short of the same name. In the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, 12-year-old Little Anthony (“L’il Ant”) (Bodhi Dell) is going through the coming of age process in a dysfunctional household. He’s a bright, creative boy transforming into a potentially gifted but confused young man. In part that’s because this middle child in a family of three siblings spends much of his time trying to get to know the often-absent father he barely knows, Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), who has been in and out of jail for much of his son’s life, including when he was born. Curiously, like many impressionable young men, L’il Ant reveres his dad as if he were a god, not unlike the mighty Poseidon from Greek mythology, one of the lad’s personal interests and a metaphorical characterization frequently depicted on screen. Yet his dad’s incarceration for long stretches also raises another mythological image in his son’s mind – that of Odysseus in Troy fighting the protracted Trojan War. So, considering Big Ant’s absence and his inexplicably inconsistent treatment of his son, is such idolization deserved? What’s more, Big Ant’s unabashed philandering, his rocky relationship with his wife, Lozita (Danielle Brooks), his blatantly self-absorbed attitude, and his routine drug use don’t exactly qualify him as the textbook husband and parent. At the same time, though, he’s as quietly puzzled about the role he’s supposed to play as L’il Ant is about trying to understand the man responsible for helping to bring him into the world. In fact, given these less-than-ideal conditions, L’il Ant often wonders, as the picture’s title suggests, would he indeed be missed if he were to disappear from it? Such escapist thinking regularly feeds into his fascination with images associated with flying away, as evidenced by his preoccupation with the many airplanes that fill the sky over his neighborhood and thoughts of the mythical character Pegasus, the winged horse. Consequently, can these challenging conditions be reconciled? That’s what this offering seeks to explore with poetic eloquence set against a backdrop of difficult living circumstances. These themes are presented with an imaginative aesthetic in a style reminiscent of the pictures of filmmaker Barry Jenkins and, to a lesser extent, more nuanced versions of the works of directors Spike Lee and Clement Virgo. Admittedly, however, as impressive as the visual creativity is here, it occasionally intrudes on the narrative a little too much, hampering the flow of the story. This is made up for, though, by the superb performances of Dell, Nicholson and Brooks, all of whom are at the top of their game in a story that’s simultaneously both uplifting and heartbreaking – not unlike the very nature of relationships between fathers and sons. as anyone on either end of such connections can attest. “If I Go Will They Miss Me” may not be the kind of release that viewers expect going in, but, then, that’s also an apropos description of what these fragile and precarious relationships are often like.