Janet Planet

As impassive and melancholic as a chrysanthemum, the adolescent Zac suddenly puts on Lacy Ziegler’s wedding attire in the middle of summer camp and begs her mother (Janet Nicholson) to pick her up early. The urgency was palpable. “I’m going to kill myself…,” she states matter-of-factly. “I said I’m going to kill myself until you call the […] and make them come get me.” The next day Janet Planet coms up but Lacy responds differently: “I was thinking nobody wanted to be friends with me… I take it all back… I was wrong…”. This doesn’t impress her mother: “This is an ugly pattern”.

Here’s the witty line that immediately transitions us into the play dynamic of their relationship: a child is positioned opposite the parent, with the child hanging on to her mother’s ‘I am confused at how to survive without you’ and the mother who is worried, ‘What type of a mother am I?’ Is it normal for a daughter to cling this tight into a mother? Or should it is the mother who should be the one who does not allow them to be close to each other as much? Lacy, whose eyes are fastened behind wire-frame glasses, is vigilant of Janet, obsessively. The woman requires an object near her when she tries to sleep at night. On that night, when Janet tries to stand up from the bed, Lacy certainly reminds her that she has to taste a strand of Janet’s hair. Janet, turning her head fondly towards the wife, stretches out a lock of hair that she had been holding in her hands, and reaches out to her daughter. “Janet Planet” by Annie Baker is as minimalist and concise as her words on stage in the performance are, so suffocating.

A Pulitzer- winning dramatist, Lacy describes vividly a mother-and-daughter duo living in Massachusetts in the year 1991. The gradual movement through grass and tall trees is noise absorbing allowing them to lead a serene existence. One of the objectives of the novel “Janet Planet’ is also present in the title. All of Janet’s world is built around Lacy because that is the only female inside Janet’s world who inspires love, friendship or womanhood. Janet has operated and runs her own practice as an acupuncturist while being able to support her poetry boyfriend Wayne (Will Patton), an uncommunicative older man with a troubled past who takes care of a nurse. It appears that their romance held Janet up as a maternal crutch in Wayne’s otherwise turbulent life. Lacy makes it a point to always make the “surrogate” for whom she has to compete with, pay attention to her and every other child.

From her backstory, we also find out that Janet does have bad issues concerning her interactions with men, though it is never clear as to why Lacy feels this way about her. We experience Janet as her daughter does, in little clumps of time, from her puff of 11 years old’s perception of the world. Janet is surrounded by Wayne and Lacy whom she has to balance like a third party member in a love triangle. Quite a good part of the strife is however miniscule and such that a foreigner wouldn’t notice it. All interactions they share in that house somehow don’t appear to be loud, but rather quiet. Everything that relates to these two people living together is very uneventful, however this emotion gap is on the surface of everything suffered loud instability. In this case the events span through the last few months of Lacy’s and her mother’s life with certain people moving in and out from the world of Janet. When Janet is noticed, Lacy remains occupied with piano classes or playing with dolls on stage which proves to be a little less difficult.

Lacy has no friends, which she says, “is a complete mystery. This is quite the puzzle. However, when looking at It from the outside, the picture seems quite simple – she is simply that much in love with her mother to allow anyone else in. Lacy, while having brief episodes of bonding with other kids – mostly during the time she spends with Wayne039s daughter Sequoia – would rather keep close to her mother and the other adult in her presence, who encourage her spoiled ways. Now, in what is arguably the most energetic moment in the film, Nicholson and Ely sit through a parade staged in the middle of the woods.”

Janet is not with Wayne and has once again found herself without a couple. Started in a meeting, Lacy’s picture explains in some detail the quietness of the and Lacy’s realization of a peaceful, and rather boring, reality. However, Lacy’s excitement only supports that this dullness may have been Cotten robin would need to be forced to round well somewhat attractive to her manic energy filled tornado.

This moment gives an understanding of their lifestyle pattern when considered. Janet goes through all her lovers whereas Lacy goes on watching, long periods spent apart with just the two of them and hugging each other in breaks and those arms serve as a comfort through the rough times in between. But what seems to be novel about “Janet Planet”, is how honestly and tenderly it presents the subject of a girl growing up, who’s mother does so with as much interest and warmth. Probably the most fantastic scene of the whole film features Janet (that name doesn’t change) and her friend Reagan, played by Sophie Okonedo, both being high and dialoguing to themselves about their lives, from little kids to young adults. Regina describes her abusive upbringing and that letter which she only got when a girl and which meant the world to her.

Janet speaks of her ‘Father, the holocaust survivor and her angry mother’ and how they brought her a dove when she was three and was begging them for a pet. That’s a bummer too, a warm first minute of two friends reuniting and the talk of them goes forth. Then Janet discusses such decisions of hers and their consequences that, in her opinion, places her under judgement from everyone else and also herself for everything. Regina does, however, say the same thing to her friend that would stop both of them from asking if the other wants to know that she is lying to herself and that there is no merit in that defense. As the fight dies down, and it has been pretty evident the whole time that Lacy had been there and from the start of the dull fighting, she had been in waiting in that position hearing this mature discussion in one way or the other concerning her.

As she, coughed, she’s all those decisions taken by Janet. We are not strangers to her as she is the one born to her mother and differs from others as she is not of kindergarten age. Nicholson and Ziegler are simply heartwarming together and each of them carries within them the feelings of joy, sadness, reflection, and compassion in all their depictions. It is a treat being an audience and enjoying the speaking parts for such a finite duration. Janet Planet creates that sense of normal intimacy between women and girls that has largely found itself banished to television in the last few years. It is as though we spent a whole season and more with this baby family and even at that, it still feels quite insufficient. It is a world that the Baker interior designs for her characters which is very colorful, warm and attractive. What month is this – fifteen? Finally, after what felt like an eternity and tension building up – character actor Elias Koteas joins the fray as Avi (a potential romantic interest for Janet). One of my dearest friends fights like a woman and wins. It so hard to say “goodbye to you” all time considering the fact that it has to end. As typical Plain Janet, comic and unconventional, she shrieked out as best as she could inwardly. However, solace is that Janet Planet is always waiting for us.

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