Warning: The following may be more like writing in a personal diary than about a movie. When I first read the movie description it was very clear to me that I just would have to watch this film. Wow. What I read sounded so much like my own story. And what I saw on the screen last Saturday really was a story about the same troubles I experienced whenever I visited my old home in Germany during the past few years. It may be fiction, and of course I did not grow up in such an impressive loft, my father is not a filmmaker and my mother not a painter, I don’t have a baby, but in Mikey’s I saw a reflection of my own personal story.
There are hardly any films or characters I could say this about. Am I as emotionally stunted as the summary above described Mikey’s character? Is this a story many people share but would never talk about in public, perhaps because they feel embarrassed about it? Or is it really just such a coincidence that the story line matches my own experience very closely? But not only Mikey’s character and situation appeared so familiar to me, his parents’ gentle way reminded me of my own parents, too.
Before I moved to Baltimore I lived in Furtwangen for four years, which is a drive of about six hours from where my childhood home used to be. During this time I never felt nostalgic about not being with my parents anymore. We were still in touch and I had quite a few friends in both places. This suddenly changed when I moved to Baltimore. When I returned home for the first time in several years and found the remainders of my childhood, youth and early adulthood, I felt a lot of sadness, despair and nostalgia and just didn’t want to leave all this behind, my loving (and aging) parents, my old best friends, my family, my “stuff”…
I was in the same position that I could have and would have extended my stay if I have had the opportunity–just like Mikey in this movie. Whenever I visited home in the past few years I felt wonderful being able to connect with my past self as well as the familiar, supportive and friendly environment again, but it has always been difficult to face the many changes that occurred during the time of absence, and to leave it behind again later for a long time. Even after all these years I am not sure how to handle the emotional waves that break in on me when I visit the old place. Sometimes I feel it might be easier if I just didn’t visit it again.
All these impressions are very internal and based on love for my parents, my old home, my friends and the happiness of my childhood. How could anybody want to grow up? I never talk about this topic, and I never heard other people talk about similar experiences, until I saw Momma’s Man which makes this film very special and personal to me. May it be fictional, semi-fictional or real…
To describe Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man is to sell it short, for on the surface it is one of the most oft-told stories in the indie-film book. In this case, however, descriptions are deceiving, for in reality, Jacobs’ heartfelt drama is an unexpectedly resonant example of artistic expression at its fiercest and most deeply personal. Mikey (Matt Boren) is an emotionally stunted young man in his early thirties, who has left behind his wife and baby in California for a few days in order to visit the cluttered, cavernous TriBeCa loft in which he grew up. When his work is done and it’s time for Mikey to return to his new home, something prevents him from doing just that. As he continues to ignore his wife’s desperate phone calls, Mikey lounges around the loft like a kid again and reunites with a few old friends, to the rising concern of his loving, supportive parents.
Conceived initially as a love letter to his supremely unique childhood home, Jacobs upped the ante by casting his own parents in two major roles (his father Ken is a celebrated experimental filmmaker, his mother Flo a painter). However, whether or not one recognizes this going into Momma’s Man is of no importance, for the film carries itself with an undeniably personal air, elevating it beyond mere fiction and turning it into something much deeper. Momma’s Man is a profoundly touching, universal ode to that terrifying time when one must grow up and embrace adulthood once and for all. (Michael Tully) (from the filmfest-guide)
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This was the last screening on Saturday and I will conclude it with a few shots of the film festival created by the CAmm Cage/Media Lab/Creative Alliance at the Patterson.
