IF: John Krasinski's Ode To Storytelling

John Krasinski’s ‘IF’ And The Fantasy Of Feeling

With IF, Krasinski proves that he is more than a moment., writes Rahul Desai

ALONG with sitcoms like Schitt’s Creek and Ted Lasso, John Krasinski became a ‘genre’ the world embraced — and escaped into — during the COVID-19 lockdowns. He transcended the medium by merging his merit as an artist (and possibly, as a person) with a right-time-right-place phenomenon. The actor-filmmaker started a YouTube series called Some Good News, a self-funded and home-shot news broadcast “dedicated entirely to good news”. Each episode featured celebrity cameos on Zoom calls, real-life heroes and feel-good stories from across the country. Krasinski didn’t have to do it, but his crowd-felt project remained a life-affirming reminder that humanity — and time itself — was still alive. It’s almost like the planet had to experience its toughest battle to identify its nicest soldier. It’s why I was worried when I heard of Krasinski’s next film, IF, which sounded like an addendum to his SGN-sized hug. The pandemic is over, normalcy has returned, so would there still be takers — or cravers — for his brand of hope?

But my fears were unfounded. With IF, Krasinski proves that he is more than a moment. The fantasy film is a delightful blend of live-action and animation, a companion piece to child-adult dramas like Where the Wild Things Are, Inside Out, the Toy Story movies, Amelie and even Barbie. It follows the adventures of Bea (Cailey Fleming), a grief-stricken 12-year-old girl who suddenly acquires the ability to see Imaginary Friends (‘IFs’) that have been abandoned by the kids they once healed. Two of them are Blue (voiced by Steve Carell), a furry purple creature, and Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a British human-butterfly. Her mother’s death and father’s hospitalisation puts Bea on the brink of irreversible maturity. Her ‘superpower’ arrives in the nick of time, putting her in contact with new neighbour Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who runs a matchmaking agency for the retired creatures to find new kids that might need them.

The placement, however, proves harder than expected because these creatures are not only personalised, they’re also figments of the imaginations of children from bygone generations. They’re almost too antiquated for a social media generation bred on cutting-edge animation and digital validation. Bea’s brainwave — to reconnect the IFs with their former kids instead — becomes a wonderfully poignant testament to the fact that adulthood and growing up need not mean the same thing. The former need not erase the levity of the latter. It’s the equivalent of Bing Bong waiting patiently in Inside Out, and returning as Riley’s sensory memory whenever she needs a shot of nostalgia.

Stream the latest movies and shows with OTTplay Premium's Jhakaas monthly pack, for only Rs 249.

One might argue that IF — an incurable ode to storytelling — is a reaction to a planet in a more perpetual kind of crisis. Maybe it’s designed as a medicine for a world that’s replete with post-pandemic bitterness, post-truth politics, genocides and fascism. Perhaps it’s so moving because, again, it feels timely. But the film confirms that Krasinski represents creativity in its broadest and most inclusive sense, more synonymous with the Steven Spielberg multiverse of wide-eyed wonder. It exists as an antidote to the act of living itself. The pressure to survive often stifles the agency to dream, and movies like IF — or The BFG, E.T., Jurassic Park or even Martin Scorsese’s Hugo — suggest that there’s no shame in retaining your own fictions. There’s no shame in grinning at a flying crocodile outside the window of a sixth-grade classroom or a corporate boardroom. It is, in essence, a charming plea to hold onto those weird coping mechanisms — and, by extension, savour everything that makes us human and fallible. It’s also why you might forgive the few contrivances — like, for example, the distracting enigma of Calvin. His name — a reference to Bill Waterson’s iconic cartoon strip Calvin & Hobbes — implies that he is the go-to person for imaginary friends. In an effort to not invite suspicion about his identity, Reynolds looks a bit confused, and Cal ends up being a grumpy onlooker in Bea’s journey.

The title, as mentioned within the film, is not limited to an acronym. It conspires to destigmatise the endless aspiration of “What if” — and reclaims it from the conjunctional lament of “If only”. Bea practically goes from ‘if only I had a sibling’ to ‘what if I made my very own companion?’. IF is driven by this desire to normalise the relationship between people and their personalities, between kids and their artful curiosities. The film also got me thinking about how imagination can be a cultural privilege. Bea’s parents nurtured her creativity from the day she was born. Part of her challenge as a sullen pre-teen is to uphold her ailing dad’s wish that, no matter how much she evolves, she cannot lose the courage to be a kid. As a result, the IFs are a default vision in her life. She sees them because, in a way, she was always encouraged to. It’s how she was brought up.

What about the children reared by places that don’t believe? What about the adults trapped in societies that treat dreaming as a sign of insanity? Think India, or more specifically, the hero of Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha, a born storyteller who’s made to feel so crazy for his flights of fancy that he hides behind the mask of 9-to-5 mundanity. The magic of IF, then, lies in its intuitive will to humanise those companions. By turning the camera on them and validating their emotions, the film poses the simple question: If the companionship is real, who’s to say the companion is not?

For instance, I grew up an only child in a home that was dysfunctional at best. My parents struggled with their marriage. As is often the case in middle-class households, art was never an integral part of our lives. My dad read a lot, and he swore by the merits of language, but it wasn’t the same as teaching me to love stories. It wasn’t the same as pushing me to envisage worlds from words. The one time I dared to conjure up an imaginary friend (a dino-crocodile), the optics scared me: I couldn’t fathom the consequences of being seen talking to the air. People would mock me, a good student, for being a space cadet. I had real flesh-and-blood friends in school and my colony, but confiding in anyone about my domestic troubles was a strict no-no — there was already gossip about alcoholism and adultery in my family.

Every time tensions flared at home, my grandparents would almost magically appear out of thin air. We went for drives. We slept in tents on their balcony. I turned their vacuum cleaner into my personal batmobile. My face lit up when they picked me up from school. When I was with them, I forgot about my parents. My trauma would melt away in their summery company. In short, they became my IFs — except they were actual people. At times, they were so perceptive that I literally thought I was imagining them rescue me from a sleepless night. At times, I surprised them during their afternoon naps because it was an excuse to leave my house. Once I entered my teens, the visits lessened. I dropped in to say hi, their faces lit up, they showed me drawings from my childhood, and I never had the heart to tell them that I was no longer that silly child.

Every week — and then, every month — I’d watch as they waved goodbye from the balcony we once made tents on. They always waved until I was out of sight. I once quipped that they probably waved until the next morning. The cruel joke was rooted in my guilt for losing sight of them. They stayed visible for as long as I could see them, but I wondered what they did after they stopped seeing me. I wondered where they went between farewells and my next visit; our meetings soon went from ‘when’ to ‘if’. After moving to a new city, I wondered if they were still waving. I wondered how they could comprehend the fact that I had outgrown my need for them. I wondered if Alzheimer's and cancer could stop them from remembering me. After they passed away, I wondered if they had waited in their final years, hoping that I'd surprise them one more time. I pictured them storing my Batmobile, expecting to see that seven-year-old brat one last time. I could never understand why it felt natural to leave them behind.

These were fleeting thoughts, where I’d rationalise the transient role of grandparents in the linearity of life. Watching IF felt cathartic because it assured me that I’d never be too old to summon them again. That it’s okay to see red ink on paper and visualise my grandfather filling blank notebooks with the name of Lord Ram. That it’s okay to smell a fried snack on the street and hear my grandmother extol the virtues of vegetarianism. That it’s fine to randomly think of them in the middle of my swims and be briefly transported to the safe space they had built for me.

The film also made me feel a little better for having my own version of an IF today. My best friend died last year and now he’s my very real imaginary friend. I have long conversations with him to escape from the void of his own absence. But it doesn’t feel sad or desperate anymore. My adapted fiction is starting to find its groove. There are times I give him that god-awful mohawk from his first year of college. There are times I make him stumble out of our favourite bar just because I can. There are times I out-eat him while dissing his passion for Manchester United. “If only he were alive” is slowly morphing into “What if he can be anywhere I want him to be?”. My grief will ensure that he is not a glorious creature I can outgrow. He is not a story I can abandon, even though I’m the one left behind. All I have to do, like Bea, is close my eyes and be. And for this effect alone, perhaps John Krasinski’s little masterpiece is the only ‘if’ we deserve. It dignifies the language of escapism. And it resurrects the lexicon of possibility.

IF releases on 17 May in theatres across India

Like what you read? Get more of what you like. Visit the OTTplay website, or download the app to stay up-to-date with news, recommendations and special offers on streaming content.

Plus: always get the latest reviews. Sign up for our newsletters.

OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERS

This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead.

Each week, our editors pick one long-form, writerly piece that they think it worthy of your attention, and dice it into easily digestible bits for you to mull over.

In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
hour on this.