Janet Planet: Reconciling Motherhood, Childhood, and Personhood

Image courtesy of A24

The circumstances of Annie Baker’s debut film, Janet Planet, are specific: the film centers on Lacy, an 11 year old girl, and her mother Janet, as they while away the summer of 1991 in the woods of Massachusetts. Some critics might say that the film’s pace is as lackadaisical as those summer days, time spent waiting for something to happen. To those, revisit the memories of your own childhood summers, with your own specificities, and see whether you find more resonance. Baker’s narrative recalls the experience of retelling your childhood stories with an adult’s understanding, of discovering revelations as you speak them aloud.

This notion is, of course, the nature of the film. Baker’s screenplay is at least loosely based on her own childhood in rural Massachusetts, and Lacy’s imagination and flair for drama could certainly be indicators that the character is more autobiographical than fiction. But Zoe Zeigler, in her first film role, does Lacy justice, communicating all of her emotions with more nuance than most seasoned child actors. Her gazes telegraph the joy, anger, frustration, confusion, and adoration that Lacy experiences, even in scenes where she has few or no lines. And of those, there are many: Baker’s script was trimmed down to 50 pages, but the film is almost two hours long, meaning that many of those 110 minutes are spent in quiet observation of this tiny world of Janet Planet. 

Image courtesy of A24

Lacy’s gaze mainly rests on her mother, the titular Janet (Julianne Nicholson), with cinematographer Maria von Hausswolf’s lens often lending the audience Lacy’s perspective. In their aspirational home of open air and massive windows, Lacy has plenty of hiding spots to observe Janet’s world and its cast of characters. With these choices—framing Janet’s adult conversations around corners and through window panes, representing the perspective of a child who doesn’t quite understand them—Baker and Hausswolf demonstrate Baker’s decidedly successful transition from theater to cinema. Baker is an associate professor of theater at the University of Texas and a recipient of a Pulitzer, MacArthur, and Guggenheim, along with plenty of other awards with prestigious names on them. This story could still be compelling on a stage, but there is so much work done by Baker and her team to embrace the freedoms of the medium. Much of the film’s humor is thanks to the ability to pull off visual gags with framing or by building (or breaking) tension with editing. It also allows for all of that aforementioned lingering: extended shots of the details that Lacy might be fixating on, like her mother’s earring or a torn scrap of paper left taped to the wall after one visitor’s hasty exit. 

Those kinds of details are the same ones that I can recall when I flash back to my own childhood: vignettes of moments both milquetoast and magical, whether or not I realized they were at the time. Janet Planet captures the slow realization that our parents are not gods, and are sometimes actually just as scared and confused and gullible as we are. Janet is—to Lacy’s chagrin—imperfect. Lacy’s frustration with her mother is fueled by her fervent love; she acts out the most when someone else encroaches on their bubble, even though sometimes, she finds that her initial assessments are wrong. We watch Lacy learn new emotions: disappointment, humility, and even glimpses of maturity. As Lacy grows up just a little, Janet seemingly grows to understand the level of responsibility it really is to be a mother, and how those responsibilities change as her child does. “Sometimes I feel like she’s watching me,” she not-quite-astutely observes, realizing that more than just keeping her fed and warm and safe, she has an obligation to guide Lacy through the world, to set her up for the days when she no longer clings to her mother but instead is able to step out on her own on the first try. 

Image courtesy of A24

While Janet Planet is a directorial debut, it has the depth, attention to detail, and lived-in sensibility that feels like it came from a seasoned filmmaker. It also wisely stays in the realm of the objective: even while Janet wonders aloud about her quality as a mother, the film never invites the audience to cast judgment on her. Instead, Nicholson is allowed to emanate the charisma and enigma that draw so many into Janet’s orbit. Her chemistry with Ziegler is not only convincing, but compelling, with Ziegler’s raw talent more than making up for her lack of experience. Spending time in Janet’s Planet feels like a summer in the woods: a series of quiet moments that add up to something much more magical and meaningful than the sum of their parts. 

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