The Duplass brothers, mumblecore auteurs, put a twist on the classic rom com tropes with “Cyrus” (2010). Divorced guy, John (John C. Reilly), meets a hot, interested woman, Molly (Marisa Tomei). They hit it off. The catch: her titular adult son (Jonah Hill) has mental issues and is part of the package.
“Cyrus” is one of the Duplass brothers’ best films, and it improves with repeat viewings. The style is mumblecore: regular people in ordinary situations. The camera’s scrutiny imbues the quotidian with significance. If you have seen television series such as “Veep” or “The Office,” their aesthetic may seem familiar even though this movie is not a fake documentary. The camera movement—swinging, closing in, staying focused on a person’s face a beat longer than expected—reflect the characters’ emotions. It creates a false sense of intimacy as if we are seeing someone’s thoughts instead of consuming what professionals are giving us.
Duplass brothers are moving up if they can afford to hire Reilly, Tomei, Hill, Catherine Keener and Matt Walsh for their latest improvisational feature. “Cyrus” casts well known faces so the viewer feels comfortable and assigns certain assumptions to the characters. Even if the character behaves in a way that would alienate viewers, as long as a recognizable, affable actor plays a character, a viewer will give more leeway to that character because they expect that the inappropriate conduct is an aberration, and the character is special. A viewer may give more grace to the protagonist, John, for getting drunk and oversharing with strangers because Reilly, a versatile character actor, is playing him.
Because we are used to the trope of a hot woman falling for a less attractive guy with issues, we don’t initially question why Molly would find John’s behavior endearing when the average woman runs the other way. The Duplass brothers are like psychological martial artists using our expectations that women rescue men to catapult us into the next act, which makes John ask, “What is she hiding?”
The Duplass brothers invite us to see how all three characters are similarly “messed up,” which is why they are drawn to each other. Molly is not rescuing John. She is charmed by John’s openness and inappropriateness, his love for music, and his enthusiasm because John is like her son. The Duplass brothers show Molly’s engrained response to music lovers like John and Cyrus. Molly joins John at a party and dances to Cyrus performing for John at home. Whereas other people may look at these men’s enthusiasm over music as childish, pathetic, or off-putting, she unironically loves it because she is weird too. Because she is hot, no one notices how strange she is.
As we learn more about Molly, Tomei acts less like herself and begins to change her mannerisms more. I would love an arm-chair psychoanalysis of all the characters. Maybe I am projecting, but I read her as autistic, especially when she thinks that she is alone with Cyrus, who acts as her photographer assistant by repeatedly throwing rocks high into a pond while she takes shot after shot. They do this every morning. Like John, she does not act appropriately in public or private and is emotionally expressive. Unlike John, she gets fixated on her routines and special interests, does not pick up on red flags and does not respect social mores, expectations, or currency. When she is at home, she shows less expression. Her face is less animated and flatter. She expects John to fit into her life, which is contrary to most gendered expectations that women move in with men. Her mental framework explains why she enjoys John’s authenticity when she could get any guy that she wants.
John may even be less mature than Cyrus because the second act of the movie asks, “Is Cyrus messing with John or sincere?” I also read John as autistic because he needs others to analyze social situations, discern other characters’ intent and has no innate ability to psychologically navigate the world unassisted. He does not trust his judgment, so he relies on his ex to interpret situations. Cyrus and John seem more like each other than John consciously knows. John looks at Molly’s son like a weirdo when Cyrus and Molly interact, but to his ex’s fiancé, John is Cyrus. Her fiancé’s growing impatience and exasperation with the divorced couple become more visible as the movie unfolds. My favorite Duplass editing style is to depict how John sees the world when he is perseverating. Hours after his last exchange with his ex, John resumes a conversation with her. Visually the Duplass brothers show the scenes within seconds of each other so we will understand how John feels, but the edit completely changes the characters’ location, dress and position. John has no sense of time or place, but his ex does and humors him because she knows that he is oblivious.
Both Cyrus and John have inappropriate relationships with women in their lives, suffer from arrested development and cannot move to the next stage of their life without having someone else to aid in the transition. John has been stuck for seven years, if not longer, and understandably holds tight to the first option that comes around, but he moves faster into a relationship than the average person and is willing to share his deepest pain with anyone. He moves from his ex to Molly. Molly reciprocates and rewards Cyrus’ behavior.
John and Cyrus’ conflict fuels the film’s momentum. There are very few situations in real life where the average person roots for a mother to side with a significant other over her child, but “Cyrus” manages to succeed. The Duplass brothers takes Cyrus’ dilemma seriously without minimizing the threat that he poses. It would make sense if detractors critiqued the Duplass brothers for creating a character who is faking some of his symptoms to manipulate others because it reinforces the public’s hostility to people with mental health issues who claim that those people are faking it for attention. While manipulative, Cyrus admits, “I’m a dysfunctional and messed up person.”
The Duplass brothers excel in the denouement by presenting an unlikely solution to Cyrus’s sincere dilemma. Without his mother, he is alone, but he loves his mother and wants her to be happy. Like John, Cyrus needs a transition person to mature to the next stage of his life. Who will that be and how will he do it? They turn the movie into a multilevel love story. To be happy, the characters must accept messiness, change their habits, be vulnerable with each other and honest with themselves.
If you shied away from “Cyrus” because you were worried that Reilly was stuck in a rut, especially since it was released a few years after “Step Brothers” (2008), don’t be. It is so much better, far more relatable, and realistic. It teeters on the edge of pathos especially when Reilly covers an eighties classic with equal parts cri de coeur and genuine curiosity. It is not a routine comedy. Things can go bad, which is why it is so good.