Juno
Review by Zachary Keith Parker
Jason Reitman’s indie film, Juno, sculpts an appreciation for the little details that compose one’s sense of living rather than getting lost figuring out the world’s scheme of things. Like a natural conversation between friends, the comments and attitudes reveal more of a worldview than a dialogue over serious issues with large terms.
Juno, the film’s teenage protagonist, becomes pregnant apart from her “own terms” and immediately begins to plan how to face her new situation. At first, she tells the father, her boyfriend, Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, wonderful), who sensitively explains his lack experience or advice to offer before he takes off running with his yellow-shorted track team.
At the advice of her high-school friend, Juno goes to a nearby abortion clinic, outside of which stands a protesting high-schooler. As Juno walks in, the high-schooler objects, “Your baby has a heartbeat!” Juno’s “whatever” attitude doesn’t stop her until the high-schooler declares, “Your baby has fingernails.”
In the following scene, Juno sits in the clinic lobby, where several other expecting mothers are biting their fingernails, tapping the table, scratching their arms and necks. This torrent of fingernail sounds assaults Juno’s hearing as an expression of how the tiniest details are what make us alive. Thus Juno and her friend look through the paper, finding potential parents to adopt Juno’s baby.
Juno tells her father, Mac (J.K. Simmons) and mother, Bren (Allison Janney), about the impending baby, as well as her choice to give the baby up for adoption. Mac takes her to meet the potential couple, Mark (Jason Bateman, in rare form here) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner, more believable as the film progresses).
As soon as Juno has the baby, she’ll give it to Mark and Vanessa, the latter of whom desperately wants a baby with an earnestness matching only her obsessive care for cleaning and organizing her house and life. With Vanessa, it’s the details of caring that prove her beautifully focused, maternal love.
As her husband, Mark, Bateman becomes much more real than his quirky, Arrested Development character as he and Juno develop a somewhat questionable friendship based on common interests in music and movies.
As their friendship develops, both are led to a new revelation regarding the value of finding someone who shares an interest in the same trivial though personally important details or quirks as one’s self.
Quirks abound in Paulie Bleeker’s life from red tic-tacs to yellow headbands, but he cannot get Juno to see his abiding love for her, where director Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking) shows the import of not only shared interests, but of establishing shared feelings of commitment.
As Juno, actress Ellen Page shows her extraordinary commitment to the craft, portraying her teenage heroine with more maturity and ease than most any other performance I have seen recently. Not many other recent films have employed such a varied, but perfectly suiting soundtrack that makes the movie experience all the more enjoyable and memorable.
This memorable teenage dramedy has so much to offer in the way of enjoying life that it easily makes itself a more mature alternative to Judd Apatow’s fantastic, Knocked Up, where crude jokes about funny situations are removed to let Juno’s many moments of pleasure (and reflections) in life’s funny quirks infuse the film’s experience in hopes of encouraging the viewer’s.
The film celebrates the joys of marriage as well as of parenthood. Much like our heavenly Father, the focus in relationships and parenthood is not pleasing one’s own self, but sacrificing one’s self for the other (something Michael does not learn) and enjoying the joy God gives us when we are content with giving up ourselves in imitation of Him.