Out of Frame: Momma's Man

John Cassavetes once said that, "In this country, people die at 21. My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21." It's that early soul-death, as well as Cassavetes' own style and tenor, that informs much of Momma's Man. Like Cassavetes, Jacob is concerned with the knotty emotions of real adults, which often defy explanation or logic. The filmmaker never launches Mikey into a long monologue breaking down his interior emotional landscape, preferring instead to draw his characters as impressionistic watercolors, wispy brushstrokes that demand viewers to judge for themselves motivation and what goes on behind long sad-eyed stares and unspoken gestures. What is it that's holding Mikey in this sudden emotional traction? Where does the despair come from that causes him, on multiple occasions, to stand at the top of the steps leading down from the apartment, cautiously testing the void with an outstretched foot and silently daring himself to jump? There's plenty of evidence around, but all is shown and none is told.

The approach demands acting of extraordinary sensitivity, which Jacob gets from his cast, particularly from Matt Boren in the lead role. More surprising are the performances he elicits from Mikey's parents, who are played by Jacob's own parents, legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and his wife, the painter Flo Jacobs. Flo is the weaker of the two, though part of that may be that the writer seems to be unsure exactly how to characterize her; her overbearing care ranges from doting to invasive, and at times she can seem completely detached while at others she seems to understand more than she lets on. The confusing characterization isn't aided by sometimes wooden line readings. But Ken Jacobs is thoroughly amazing as the father with a laser-like intensity and the ability to see right through his son's stories. The elder Jacobs' most valuable contribution, though, may have been their own apartment. They play characters that mirror who they are in real life, and Azazel Jacob elected to use their own loft, where they've lived for over 40 years and where he grew up, as the setting for most of the movie. As a result, the visual space of the film, the crumbling industrial loft with the rows of shelves and stacks of belongings of these two apparent pack-rats and collectors of oddball flotsam, is more real, more lived in, than any constructed set I've ever seen in a film.

Apart from Cassavetes, it's easy to see the mark of Jim Jarmusch on Jacob's film as well. Stranger than Paradise star Richard Edson tellingly steps in for a small role, and the film is shot through with the same surprising moments of visual poetry amid otherwise drab and unremarkable surroundings as that film. And there is humor so bizarre that it borders on surreal: the profane (and utterly awful) break-up song Mikey finds in his old notebooks and attempts to recreate on a beat-up acoustic guitar; the ex-con friend that Mikey reconnects with who made it through his stint behind bars via exercise and the inspirational work of the Indigo Girls—he serenades Mikey with a spirited rendition of "Closer to Fine" that is as weirdly hilarious as it is uncomfortable; or the group of teenagers for whom he purchases beer, only to find himself just as outcast from them as we guess he was from his own high school peers once they no longer have use for him. His days exploring the changing streets of his old neighborhood are full of these odd and telling little episodes, brilliantly constructed yet simple set pieces that do a lot with very little.

Mikey's sudden inability to maintain his status as a functioning adult will undoubtedly elicit annoyance from most audience members, but because Jacob never makes excuses for his character, never tries to manipulate us into pitying him, the film never falls back on easy stereotype. His emotional shut down has roots anyone can identify with, and the methods by which he claws his way back come out of the kind of messy, difficult to define brands of love rarely seen in the movies. Momma's Man is deeply personal, and uncomfortably realistic, filmmaking at its finest.

Momma's Man is playing exclusively at the Avalon Theatre, check showtimes here.