Thumbsucker
"Every adult in the house is faking it too, and the film is generous enough to say so out loud."
Curator's Note
Mills refuses the two easy exits — melodrama and suburban satire — and keeps the camera on Justin after the change instead of treating the change as the ending. Watch how much room D'Onofrio and Swinton get: the parents are written as unfinished people, not scenery, and Swinton plays forty as another adolescence. Listen for the three Elliott Smith songs that outlived the soundtrack he didn't live to finish, set against Tim DeLaughter's score for The Polyphonic Spree.
Synopsis
Justin Cobb is a shy high-school senior who still sucks his thumb, calls his parents by their first names, and can't get a sentence out around the girl on his debate team. When his orthodontist hypnotises the habit away, the fear underneath it has nowhere to go, and an ADHD diagnosis hands him a new one in pill form. Mike Mills adapts Walter Kirn's novel as a family portrait in which the forty-year-olds are no further along than the teenager.
Genre
Drama
Member
Guest