‘If I Go Will They Miss Me’ review: ‘The Odyssey’ in Watts

A boy from Watts stares at the ocean, imagining ancient Greek boats sailing across the Pacific and his father in a toga and sneakers, proudly hoisting a trident. This image of hero worship anchors Walter Thompson-Hernandez’s staggeringly lovely “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” an indie take on the perennial saga of lost men struggling to return home.

The dad, paroled inmate Big Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), has just come back after ages away from his family. “Kinda like Odysseus,” 12-year-old Lil Ant (Bodhi Dell) says, although the kid prefers to view his distant father as Poseidon and himself as Pegasus. The movie’s metaphors are mixed; its sense of purpose is poetic and assured.

The plot, expanded from Thompson-Hernandez’s Sundance-winning 2022 short of the same name, is more like a gesture toward the family’s unspoken drama. First incarcerated as a teenager, Big Ant has spent so much of his life locked up that his high school sweetheart, Lozita (a forceful Danielle Brooks), stays with him out of loyalty, not love. Lozita, a nurse, knows she deserves better than this man, but she doesn’t know what to do about getting it.

“Your daddy is a work in progress, I’m a work in progress,” she sighs. Torn as Lozita is, Brooks plays her with such conviction that whenever she’s not onscreen, you could believe the character is off starring in her own movie.

Their oldest, Acacia (Zaria Kelley), is a straight-A nerd who spends a scene modeling old lady prom outfits that belong on her grandmother (J.J. Boone). The baby (Mark Lane III) is an unquestioning sponge. Little Ant is the middle child — and the source of Big Ant’s stress. The father keeps trying to avoid the sweet-natured dreamer who spends the movie doodling idealized pictures of his dad, along with sketches of boys in neat rows, arms outstretched like paper planes waiting to be whisked away by the state. Big Ant has those nightmares, too. Only he sees Lil Ant lined up with the others.

The reason why the father shuns his son is in those images. Not only is Big Ant afraid he doesn’t measure up to the boy’s fantasies; he’s scared that his son will copy his mistakes and get snatched by the system. But Big Ant can’t even control his reactions, let alone his child’s, toggling between scolding Lil Ant for losing a fist fight (“How you think that makes me look?” the dad complains) to getting mad when the kid tries to impress him by starting another brawl.

The characters’ few real conversations are vastly outnumbered by quiet, powerful shots of them going about their lives. Big Ant, who sweeps stalls for the Compton Cowboys, shares his emotions only with his pony. (Thompson-Hernandez, a former journalist, wrote a book on the horse club.) Occasionally, he opens up to his best friend JJ (Myles Bullock), a charmer who doubles as the movie’s conscience. Meanwhile, Dell’s Lil Ant waxes on unconvincingly about Greek mythology like he’s not sure what the analogy is trying to say as the soundtrack spins attention-grabbingly eclectic songs: a George Frideric Handel opera, a Dinah Washington cover by Jon Batiste, a classic Too Short banger.

So be it. “If I Go” is pure visual storytelling. We’re meant to guess that Lil Ant wants to be a pilot, a point that feels wobbly even though the kid spends a dozen scenes running around with a toy plane. Still, the child’s fanciful point of view overlaps snugly with the director’s, whether peering down a lime green pool noodle like a telescope or layering the kid’s descriptions of a thunderbolt-wielding Zeus over footage of Big Ant setting off street fireworks.

Rising cinematographer Michael Fernandez, who also shot the marvelous prison prom documentary “Daughters,” is part of that burgeoning school that’s neither neo-realist nor magical-realist, but passionate-realist — he insists on finding wonder in places where others see only poverty and despair. (See also Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” and RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys.”)

Grim facts don’t go ignored, say when the camera pans past a strung-out sex worker seeking a fix. But the film glances at her neutrally, the way a child would before they learn how outsiders see their block. She isn’t a figure of pity or depravity, just a woman with the unsteadiness of a fawn.

The camera offers its God’s eye perspective. Sometimes it soars up to the clouds as if escaping Nickerson Gardens for a breath of air. More often, it simply observes the family tensions that go unsaid. You can see a decade of disappointments in a shot of Lozita going slack-faced as her mother reminisces about how nice she and Big Ant looked at their wedding. Co-editors Daysha Broadway and Thompson-Hernandez nimbly leap back in time to that day so we can see her optimism for ourselves — and, yes, her smile is painfully pretty.

Another flashback starts with a stroke of ingenuity: Big Ant’s younger self, played by Kameron J. Meadows, struts toward the lens framed by an old wooden television cabinet, the TV set’s electronics and screen busted out so we can see straight through it. (It’s being lugged by two junk dealers who’ve ever so perfectly placed it down for a breather.)

I wouldn’t trade that image for anything. Still, Nicholson’s poignant performance nearly makes it unnecessary. Like that gutted TV cabinet, his sad eyes are a window into the sensitive boy inside the grown man. Costume designer Maya Edmond dresses Big Ant thematically: white tees when he’s trying to be good, black duds when his demons are winning and comic book-y jailbird stripes during his pivotal teenage arrest. A phone headset in his ear keeps Big Ant from being present even when he’s technically home.

The film doesn’t make excuses for Big Ant’s behavior. Judge him only by his sins — cheating, drinking, drug dealing, violence — and he is a bad influence. Yet, Thompson-Hernandez gives us a full, fair look at the entire man, noting Big Ant’s moments of tenderness toward everyone including (yikes) his mistress, Vanessa (Nandi Nfr Ka), the Calypso of Watts distracting him from his marriage.

The plot’s engine sputters as the film contentedly wafts just out of reach. Repetitive imagery of freeways, streetcar tracks, even horses seem to torture the main characters for feeling stuck. Look up and you’ll see as many LAPD helicopters as birds. Listen closely to the sound design and hear jets continually rumbling to and from LAX. You may also pick up on local news reports about a 747 dumping fuel on several South-Central elementary schools, inspired by a true story from January 2020.

Likewise, Hernandez-Thompson grounds “If I Go” with powerful montages of real residents shot with seemingly no other direction than to pose however they want. Many hug their own loved ones. Most grin. Joy lives here, too — of course it does, even though few movies ever show it. But the young men prove the soft-spoken themes about the pressure to act tough. They rarely smile. And that’s what finally breaks your heart.