NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Thomas Wolfe once wrote, “You can’t go home again,” but Mikey, the protagonist of Momma’s Man, attempts to prove this wrong. Played by Matt Boren, Mikey is a pudgy, balding thirty-something new father who, while visiting his mother and father in New York City on a winter business trip, can’t seem to leave his childhood home. At the beginning of the film, Mikey bids a fond farewell to his parents and get on a train to JFK airport. However, when the train reaches its destination, he inexplicably decides against getting off. Next thing we know he is back at his parents’ loft apartment giving them a vague explanation about his flight being canceled and telling them he’ll have to stay for another day. His parents, excited about the prospect of spending more time with their son, welcome him back. Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, Momma’s Man is an exploration of a man-child on the precipice of serious adult responsibilities. Will he keep climbing up or will his fear paralyze him and cause him to slide back down?

So begins the curious case of Mikey. It starts out innocently enough – Mikey says he’ll catch a flight back to Los Angeles the next day. In the meantime he begins methodically examining boxes containing his childhood mementos. He reads old comic books. He plays hilariously awful songs he wrote as a teenager on his acoustic guitar. “Fuck, fuck, fuck you—hope you die, too,” he sings. When his father, who is trying to sleep through this song in another part of the loft, yells out for him to be quiet, a flicker of pleasure flashes across Mikey’s face – perhaps a remembrance that THIS was what rebellion used to be like. It becomes quickly apparent, though, that Mikey doesn’t have any immediate plans to go back to Los Angeles and he begins lying about what is keeping him in New York and when he intends to leave. While ignoring phone messages from his distressed wife (Dana Varon) pleading with him to come back to her and their infant child, he doesn’t appear to have any understanding of his motivations (or lack thereof) for staying. However, it is obvious that something is bothering him and holding him back. Gradually, Mikey’s reminiscing morphs into regression. He lets his beard grow and becomes less concerned with his appearance. At his lowest point, he is alone and drunk in the loft, and starts crawling on all fours in his underwear – mirroring an earlier scene in which a small wind-up toy baby crawls on a table. Boren does a good job in his understated role and lets his eyes and subtle facial expressions speak for his character in stretches without dialogue. That he manages to elicit sympathy playing a character that really doesn’t deserve much is a testament to his acting abilities.

The struggle to let go also extends to Mikey’s parents who, at least initially, are all too comfortable to let him stay as long as he wants. However, as Mikey lingers on and as his excuses become less and less plausible, his parents’ compassion is put to the test. Mikey’s parents are played by the director’s own parents – legendary experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his wife Flo, who is a painter. This casting gives Momma’s Man an added degree of emotional authenticity. Azazel Jacobs pays homage to his father’s films by showing Ken Jacobs screening them for Mikey and the viewers onscreen. Towards the end of the film, we also see some home-movie footage of the director as young boy asleep at the kitchen table in the loft. Obviously, it is a somewhat autobiographical and deeply personal film for the director.

Just what exactly is behind Mikey’s distress is suggested but never explicitly revealed. Jacobs leaves this up to the viewer to decipher. The director succeeds in achieving a balance between sweet, tender moments and some comic scenes in addition to hinting at a deeper undercurrent of darkness. Similar to the way in which Mikey’s parents confront him with compassion, the director never resorts to ridiculing or belittling his protagonist. The pacing is probably a bit slow for some viewers but it parallels Mikey’s own sluggishness. Momma’s Man is shot in grainy 35mm by cinematographer Tobias Datum and captures a New York City neighborhood that, as Mikey’s childhood friend Dante (Piero Arciles) laments, is quickly disappearing to gentrification.

Mikey’s parents’ cluttered lower Manhattan loft is a character unto itself and also happens to be the home of the director’s parents as well as his own childhood residence. The loft is part studio and part warehouse and filled to the ceiling with rows upon rows of art, toys, books, antiques, creative clutter, and beautiful junk. Contrast it with Mikey’s threadbare apartment in Los Angeles and you can understand part of the reason he is so reluctant to leave – it is infinitely more interesting. There are a few slow 360-degree pans to show its labyrinthine qualities. Its personality changes as the film progresses: at first it takes on the quality of being comforting but eventually it becomes suffocating and claustrophobic as Mikey finds it difficult to escape. A number of times we see Mikey attempt to leave the loft and make it as far as the stairs leading down from the front door. As the camera lingers on his foot hesitating to take that first step out of the door, it is a perfect visual representation of his ambivalence to leave adolescence behind and walk into adulthood.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will be showing Momma’s Man on Jan. 23 (7:00 pm), Jan. 24 (7:00 pm) and Jan 25 (7:00 pm).