Sonic sincerity, uncharted waters, and a hand to hold
✼ By Sudi Jama
The first time I watched Juno, I was just crossing the bridge from tween to teen. The film (dir. Jason Reitman) follows high school student Juno (Elliot Page) as she realises she’s pregnant by her best friend Paulie (Michael Cera) and opts to give the baby up for adoption. She comes across Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jessica Garner), a childless couple Juno feels can create a suitable dynamic for the baby.
The music for Juno was supervised by Margaret Yen, for which she won a Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album. In this installment of Reel Rhythms, I want to talk about Margaret’s choice of Cat Power’s “Sea Of Love” for Juno. But first, a little context. Heads up, I will be talking about the plot of the film here in case you haven’t watched already.
The film navigates between several stories; Juno’s pregnancy, Vanessa and Mark’s marriage, Juno and her best friend Paulie (the father of the baby), and Juno’s closeness with Mark. This four-parter comes to a head towards the end of the film, where Cat Power’s cover of John Phillip Baptiste’s “Sea Of Love” plays through a montage of the concluding scenes from each of the stories. In the conclusion of the first part, Juno has the baby and is lying in the hospital bed with her dad beside her (J. K. Simmons, cinema’s go-to dad – Side note: He’s currently voicing Omni-Man, a dad in the animated Invincible series, so good!).
Paulie, in the scene before, sees Juno didn’t come to see him run, something she always does. Putting two and two together, two being her closeness to labour and two being her absence, he runs to the hospital to see the sleepy, spent Juno lying down. Her father leaves the room, and Paulie wordlessly goes to hold her.
The track’s autoharp sounds harmoniously incongruent, sincere and imperfect, just about in-tune and yet angelic. She softens and erupts, sobbing into his arm, feeling both mournful at the loss and comforted that the baby has a safe home in Vanessa’s arms. In her narration, she explains how both her and Bleeker didn’t feel like the baby was theirs – “I think he was always hers”. In her father’s words, “Someday you’ll [Juno] be back here … on your own terms”. Like the autoharp, Juno is caught in a trance of overlapping waves.
A new story emerges out of the film; a closeness between Vanessa and Juno. Vanessa finally touches the motherhood she’s craved, something she’s felt so put down for. I remember, I was around 13 when I first watched Juno, I thought she was this uptight, uncool, boring character who put a dampener on Mark’s super cool lifestyle. As you watch, and as you grow and see the film again through older eyes, you see her sincerity and the validity of her desires. You see this strange man cosplaying as a committed husband, going out of his way to bond with a 16-year-old, slow-dancing with her in his basement and sighing “you’re too young” when he drops the bombshell that he’s divorcing Vanessa. Juno pushes him away, rightfully angry at him thinking this was some casual decision, that it’s a decision that she’d welcome after spending the entire movie showing the couple ultrasound pictures and sharing hospital updates. Who you previously thought was cool and interesting turns out to be a real creep and a deadbeat. Who you previously thought was – insert internalised misogyny here – actually is looking out for Juno and the baby’s best interest. The story ziplines down to Juno and Vanessa in this very punchy sequence of events, both thrown out into space but in orbit with each other.
“Come with me, my love
To the sea, the sea of love”
The track is hesitant and melancholic. The speaker is taking a leap of faith – a declaration of commitment to be together with a loved one. The sea is vast and unknown, lending a metaphorical image to Vanessa’s newfound motherhood, and her connection with Juno, as one of unpredictability and courage. Together, the baby and her will navigate side by side and connected by the trust of love. Similarly, Paulie and Juno gain some buoyancy in their limbo of floatation. We know from the film’s start that Juno and Paulie have sex and, shortly after, Paulie begins dealing with growing feelings for her. We see Juno suggest to having the same feelings but is understandably occupied in processing her pregnancy and her baby’s future. Just before going into labour, we see a heartfelt scene where Juno confesses to Paulie.
Fast forward to where the song comes in, there is familiar hesitance; A knowing of the depth of their connection, yet a switch in dynamic that both of them must dive into. This confessional scene provides such an amazing bridge to the Cat Power track. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried to seeing Juno and Paulie hug. They were both a lighthouse to each other, in unwavering support, right from the start.
“Do you remember when we met?
That’s the day I knew you were my pet
I want to tell you
How much I love you”
From Juno and Paulie’s embrace, the shot cuts to Vanessa staring through the glass at her new son, choked up and wracked with anxiety. This is all so new to her. In just a couple scenes before, a line can be linked back to this scene. After Juno finds out of Mark’s plans to leave both Vanessa and the baby, she rushes out of the basement into Vanessa just coming through the front door. Mark sheepishly explains his decision, one that’s clearly come out of the blue for Vanessa. Still processing this for herself, she thinks out loud to Juno that “He’s just being a guy. The books all say the same thing. A woman becomes a mother when she gets pregnant, a man becomes a father when he sees his baby. He’s gonna get there”. The important thing here is that Vanessa doesn’t need to have carried the baby to feel like a mother, she just is, regardless of the harmful rules of motherhood imposed upon women. Juno’s stepmother, Bren, and Vanessa share a sweet moment, their stories now intertwined as new mothers. Vanessa picks up her son and turns around to ask “How do I look?”. Bren replies, “Like a new mom. Scared shitless”. Despite what all the books tell her, she’s already there. She built the nursery, she took the steps to contact Juno, and now she is standing here in this hospital wide-eyed but not alone. What did Mark do except villainise her? My fist is in a ball right now just thinking about it.
The culmination of the track comes in the zoom into the baby’s nursery, with a note hung on the wall. It reveals the note Juno began writing in her car after she found out Mark was leaving Vanessa.
What the track ultimately boils down to is a knowing union. What the film does so well is showing sincere acts of communication, and this song is as sincere as it gets to me.
| All media embedded distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
✼ Words By Sudi Jama
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