‘Janet Planet’: how Annie Baker became the best film director you’ve never heard of

Posted On January 28, 2025January 28, 2025

Janet Planet is one of those films that lingers with you for days after watching. It is a gorgeously composed and delicate story that resonates within the deep well of your subconscious, reminding you of the haze of childhood in a way that feels visceral and slightly magical. There are moments of deliberate silence that fill you up, reflecting a quiet that we rarely hear in the cinema, with long takes that highlight the unremarkable moments that lack meaning when we are young but reveal their hidden depths to us much later in life.

It beautifully captures the expansiveness of the world as a child and the desperate longing to understand it, trying to catch glimpses of its meaning through the adults around us. Janet Planet has such a specific and lived-in cinematic language that I assumed it was made by a very experienced director, and I was astonished to learn that it was a debut feature film.

The movie follows a young girl called Lacey, who lives along with her mother, Janet, in rural Massachusetts. She grows up with very few young people and finds her life filled with grown-ups who pass in and out of their secluded corner of the world. She is one of those children who somehow feels too old to be young, with an inherent knowingness or wisdom that doesn’t quite match who she is on the outside. Because of this, she struggles to connect with kids her own age and prefers the company of adults, silently listening in on their conversations and trying to gain snippets of their knowledge.

It’s both odd, refined and deeply empathetic, with a deep respect from Baker for the inner world of this child and trying to see things from her perspective. While she is somewhat living in that state of blissful ignorance that is granted to many of us during childhood, we understand that there is a hidden weight to her experiences that will one day allow her to look back on this time through a different lens, seeing something that was once out of her reach but now adds a new dimension with which to view her mother and herself.

There’s a poetry to the cinematic language of Janet Planet that feels so incredibly intentional and thoughtful, with Baker being able to articulate how the air feels in summer, the bittersweet nature of playing alone and the ulterior meaning behind a long pause or sigh. She is not just able to show silence but rather almost characterise it with quiet images that somehow transcend their visual power and adopt an entirely new meaning through her gaze.

It is poignant and incredibly emotional, invoking an almost overwhelming sense of nostalgia as we revel in the complexities of a young girl who is desperately trying to make sense of a world she is both not ready for and also too aware of. We see her mother’s sadness unravel before us, and while Lacey cannot yet see it, she can sense that something is wrong, trying to grow closer to her in an attempt to understand it.

Few films focus on the lived experiences of children, and Baker manages to do so by fleshing out textures, sounds and glances that encapsulate the true isolation and uncertainty of being an old soul as a young person, knowing that you cannot make sense of what’s going on in your mind, but happily choosing to orbit around those who do in the hope that you will gain some insight into figuring it out.

It feels as though Baker has adopted this very sentiment in her directorial style, with a rare cinematic language that feels reminiscent of someone who is fluent within the medium of film and has spent decades working within its framework. But, rather miraculously, Baker has infused her theatrical voice onto the screen, creating an assured, introspective and masterful work that is drenched in the wisdom of someone who has ten features under their belt. Annie Baker is here to stay, and I cannot wait to hear more from this exciting new cinematic voice.