Some of the best films I saw at the Sundance Film Festival this year were about parents and children and all that brings them together and pulls them apart. Writer-director Walter Thompson-Hernandez’s If I Go Will They Miss Me, about a knotty father-son relationship, was one that deserved more hype and buzz and an award to boot. An adaptation of Thompson-Hernandez’s own short that won the short film jury award in the US Fiction category at the 2022 Sundance, If I Go Will They Miss Me had its world premiere in the NEXT section of the festival this year.
Centred on adolescent Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell), an artistically inclined, intelligent and intuitive kid, who looks up to his father Big Ant (J Alphonse Nicholson) as a role model, the film deals with their unspoken care and affection for each other as well as the tussle between them to cement and strengthen their bond. No wonder their eyes rarely meet; an awkward distance stays even as the father wants the son to give up drawing and toughen up. Confusion best defines Lil Ant’s feelings as he admits things are better when his dad is not at home, yet he hopes he stays on with them.
There’s this sense of jaggedness to the family dynamic at large with Big Ant, on his return from prison, trying hard to fill the cracks in his relationship with his wife, Lozita (Danielle Brooks), which contributes further to the unease and restlessness in Lil Ant. Casting Director Alan Luna brings together a terrific ensemble of professional actors and non-professionals. The performances, be it Dell, Nicholson or Brooks, are all lived in. They feel like a family, however dysfunctional. Thompson-Hernandez’s cinema is not about the story, as it is about the telling, which is defined by economy. Less reveals more; the bigger picture is implicit in the several small moments, and there’s conviction in the power of suggestion rather than overt explication.
The seamless narrative moves fluidly and effortlessly between kitchen-sink drama and magic realism. The production design by Marina Perez makes for a great sense of place. There is a robust authenticity and detailing to the Black working-class Watts neighbourhood in South Los Angeles that the film is set in, right down to its proximity to the airport and hence the planes constantly flying above, for real as well as a steady metaphorical element. Despite the shabbiness of the ground reality, Lil Ant’s flights of imagination are underlined with lyricism with cinematographer Michael Fernandez's gentle portraiture of the characters and Malcolm Parson’s compositions in a wonderful cinematic harmony in building a sense of soulfulness that permeates the film alongside the several stresses, strains and breaking points. The film boasts of a wonderful soundtrack, with the cherry on the cake being Jon Batiste’s “This Bitter Earth”. The paintings that Lil Ant creates, his allusions to Greek mythology, comparing his dad to Odysseus and Poseidon and himself to the winged horse Pegasus, and the fanciful images he perceives of neighbourhood boys play acting like airplanes approximates the fickleness of their condition even as it adds a touch of the surreal to their dreams.
Eventually, it’s all about the realisation dawning on Lil Ant that it’s not just a name he has in common with his dad but a legacy of shared talent, dreams and ambitions, and pain and disappointments passed down generation to generation. It’s about looking in the mirror to find your dad’s reflection staring back at you. If I Go Will They Miss Me takes you through the bleak and gloomy corridors of life, but with poise and grace and draws out the poetic and profound from the prosaic.