Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Juno
2007 · Jason Reitman · Juno on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch for the season titles that break the film into chapters. (structure)
Autumn, winter, spring, summer arrive on screen and divide the pregnancy across a year. Each chapter opens with the weather changed and Juno's body further along.
Payoff: The film measures time in seasons rather than in plot events, so you track her growing up by the calendar instead of by incident.
Count how fast Page fires Cody's slang. (performance)
The lines come out at speed, fully formed, with no hesitation. Page keeps the tempo up in every room, including the ones where nobody is laughing with her.
Payoff: The wit is armor worn in public. Watch for the moments the speed drops, because that is where the character actually is.
Look at Juno's clothes and the objects in her room. (setting)
Flannel, oversized sweaters, secondhand layers, the hamburger phone. Nothing she owns is new or coordinated, and none of it is styled to make her look like a girl in a teen movie.
Payoff: Her self-presentation is assembled from cast-offs on purpose, which tells you how she wants to be seen before she says a word about it.
Compare the clutter of the MacGuff house with the Loring house. (staging)
One home has dog figurines, laundry, and worn furniture in every shot. The other is catalog-clean, with matched surfaces and space around every object.
Payoff: Class and character are staged in furniture. The tidier house is the one where less is going right, and the film lets you notice that yourself.
Listen for the unpolished singing and thin guitar. (sound)
Kimya Dawson and the Moldy Peaches supply most of the songs, recorded plainly with audible imperfections, and the mix always keeps dialogue on top of them.
Payoff: The music is put together the way Juno puts herself together, homemade and a little off-key, so the soundtrack characterizes rather than decorates.
Once you have seen it
Watch Garner's hands when Vanessa talks to the belly. (performance)
She has been played as stiff and over-prepared for most of the film. At the mall she kneels, speaks to the bump, and the composure drops out of her completely.
Payoff: The character who looked like the obstacle turns out to be the one person in the film with nothing ironic in her.
Listen to Mark's voice while he plays records for Juno. (performance)
Bateman keeps the charm easy and the enthusiasm boyish. The tone is that of a peer rather than an adult, and it never adjusts for the age of the person he is talking to.
Payoff: The friendliest adult in the film is also the least willing to be one, and the performance plants that before the plot admits it.
Notice which scenes Glauberman lets run without a joke. (cutting)
Most of the film is cut to land punchlines and reactions quickly. The scenes with Vanessa, the clinic, and the conversation with her father hold longer and let air in.
Payoff: The editing decides where the comedy is allowed to protect Juno and where it steps aside, which is how the tone stays steady.
Watch the running track that keeps coming back. (setting)
Bleeker circles it in his gold shorts through every season, in fall leaves and then in snow and then in sun. The film returns to the same lane each time.
Payoff: One boy keeps doing exactly the same thing while everything around him changes, which is the film's quiet case for him.
Carry this in: Watch Juno's jokes. Count how often a wisecrack arrives exactly where a feeling was about to be.