“If I Go Will They Miss,” Walter Thompson-Hernández’s flooring and formidable feature film that expands on his short of the same name, is a film about tension.
On a narrative level, it’s about the tension between family members who love each other deeply, yet struggle to find a way to heal enough to fully show that love to each other. Look deeper than this seemingly humble narrative, however, and you’ll see whole worlds of immense meaning bursting free from within it.
It’s about fantasy versus reality and how the former can allow one to survive in the latter. It’s about the feeling of seeing beyond the world that surrounds you, and the agony of crashing back to Earth when the struggles of life come knocking. Though built around the crushing weight of existence, it’s a moving and measured cinematic portrait with ambitious filmmaking to spare. It’s a film that, even when the end stumbles ever so slightly and steps away from its greatest strength in star Danielle Brooks, proves to be a vibrant vision of a family trying to find their way through the world.
Set in the working-class Watts neighborhood in South Los Angeles, we see that this world is often defined by planes flying overhead. Planes that the aspirational adolescent Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell) dreams of one day being in. Even as his feet remain firmly planted back down on the ground, he’s a kid with his head in the clouds whose imagination unlocks surreal, often haunting visions of other boys wandering through the streets around him.
This centers around the return of Lil Ant’s father, Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson). He was initially sent to prison when he was a kid himself for an act of violence. This altered the course of his life, and he, as well as his family, is still trying to pick up the pieces from what happened. Now back from this most recent stint in prison, both he and his son have changed dramatically in their time apart. Lil Ant is growing up and, potentially, growing apart from his father, though he still wants to draw him when he returns.
These drawings will soon come to life and provide a hero for Lil Ant. But in actuality, Big Ant is a more complicated figure with flaws and deferred dreams of his own. Thus, though the drawings are an expression of his love and admiration for his father, Big Ant tells him to stop doing this. It’s the first revealing moment of many in a drama of gentle wonder and grace.
As Big Ant struggles to acclimate back to family life and make amends with those he’s hurt, holding everything together is his wife, Brooks’ Lozita, who is having to contemplate what it is that she wants for herself. She’s had to do so much for others and continues to do so every day, but when will the moment come when she’ll also get to fly for herself?
As Big Ant begins to fall into fraught familiar patterns and grow distant from the family, it’s Lozita who urgently comes into focus. While there is much that is stunning in the bigger dream-like sequences, it’s her journey that proves to be just as impactful. She is the one who, much like her character, holds the emotional heart of the film together.
Though all the performances in the film are great, it’s the moments where everything slows down, and we just get to see Brooks work that prove to be most breathtaking. Lozita must carry a lot, and we can see the way this has shaped how she moves through the world.
It’s a performance of subtle yet spectacular skill. Even the way her character provides non-answers becomes revealing in the way she moves.
While the more unspoken strengths of Brooks’ performance can come into conflict with the moments where the film spells things out a bit too much, it’s a productive conflict that speaks to the greatest changes that the feature makes. The expansion of the short allows for more dynamics with the matriarch that were not present in the original work. It’s a great addition, but it also means that some of the more free-flowing sense of being unbound from narrative in the short is also lost.
Still, when the film ultimately takes flight, you’re glad to have gotten swept up in it all the same.
