Playwright Annie Baker has developed a distinctive style in which silences often speak louder than words, the words themselves mean more than what’s actually said, and routine conversations and events have the power of earth-shattering revelations. It’s an approach to drama that demands us to pay close attention to every line of dialogue and every flicker of emotion on an actor’s face, lest we miss crucial details. In some ways, that’s a deeply cinematic approach to dramaturgy, recalling the economy of Robert Bresson and Harold Pinter’s work, except that Baker’s is far more emotionally immediate.
The plot of Baker’s quiet and often moving feature directorial debut, Janet Planet, details the bond between 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) and her acupuncturist mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), in rural Western Massachusetts in the summer of 1991 just before Lacy enters the sixth grade. The closest that the film...
The plot of Baker’s quiet and often moving feature directorial debut, Janet Planet, details the bond between 11-year-old Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) and her acupuncturist mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), in rural Western Massachusetts in the summer of 1991 just before Lacy enters the sixth grade. The closest that the film...
- 10/8/2023
- by Kenji Fujishima
- Slant Magazine
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