Best Keanu: “I brought something. We can record our love.”

Best Keanu (honorable mention): “That is one messed up little dude.”

I never saw Joker, but I vividly remember Joaquin Phoenix’s 2020 Oscar speech after winning best actor for that role. Likely I remember it so vividly because I, like many other animal-rights inclined people, would stop to re-watch it every time a vegan blog ran the clip in its social media feed.

Can we say what dairy really is? How can we define what dairy amounts to, in its raw, practical elements? Well, let’s let Joaquin Phoenix tell you:

“We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow, and when she gives birth, we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable, and then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf, and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.”

I’d forgotten Joaquin Phoenix, then known as Leaf, was in Parenthood. So when he showed up in this film, as a typical Phoenix, a.k.a. a charismatic child actor, that Oscar speech started running through my head.

I couldn’t quite remember the year, but like most things these days it took only a quick search to find. As I began to watch the clip, I thought, wait, isn’t this the year Keanu presented with Diane Keaton? When they did a bit of reminiscing about Something’s Gotta Give?

Indeed it was, and if you look at Joaquin accepting his Oscar just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, you can see Keanu in the audience, sitting next to his mother, and looking pretty joyful as Joaquin talks about the great life he got through filmmaking.

Joaquin’s speech ends with a mention of his brother, whom he does not name, but we all know to have been River Phoenix, who died almost 30 years ago now. Right now, it’s July 2022. It’s been a little over two years since Joaquin won an Oscar; nearly 29 years since River Phoenix died in a nightclub; and about 33 years since Joaquin starred alongside River’s one-time girlfriend Martha Plimpton, and a burgeoning actor named Keanu Reeves, as part of a jaw-dropping ensemble cast in Parenthood.

The threads that connect the people involved in Parenthood are numerous; so numerous it’s hard to know where to start.

In this movie you’ve got Steve Martin, then in his mid-40s but playing a character said to be 35. Jason Robards and Tom Hulce — who to me will always be Amadeus — play a father and son with an interesting (and very real) relationship that shows the challenges of parenting when your favorite child has all of your worst qualities. But instead of listing out the cast — which includes Eileen Ryan, Sean Penn’s mother for god’s sake — like an IMDB, let me just stop and say there are few ensembles that could match this one.

That’s in addition to the fact that Parenthood is a wonderful film. Thirty-three years later, its plot points still feel starkly relevant. Sure, there’s no mention of the “issues” that might arise in a similar film today (or may, indeed, have popped up in the subsequent installments of the Parenthood franchise) but the fundamental emotional threads feel unchanging, as if they are what’s beneath every kind of family conflict. Parenthood is at its most real when it acknowledges conflict but doesn’t ask the audience, or its characters, to resolve it. Martin’s character thinks Robards’ was a terrible father, and that assessment doesn’t change — even if they take a few steps towards a common understanding.

Martha Plimpton — who, as it turns out, is the daughter of Keith Carradine, something I had no clue about until a few minutes ago — plays Joaquin’s older sister. In the film she’s dating Keanu, who becomes a bit of a positive influence on Joaquin’s character, Garry, after Garry’s father confirms his abandonment. Martha and Keanu, and Julie and Tod in the film, fit very well together. They have a similar energy and you believe the characters are in love, as much as you can be when you’re young and choosing lust over ambition.

But with Martha, Joaquin, and Keanu all in this film, it’s hard not to think about who isn’t there except through implication — the ex-boyfriend, brother, and best friend, River Phoenix.

More than 30 years on, a part of me still wants to put “best friend” in quotation marks. Because really Keanu has never had as much on-screen chemistry with anyone as he had with River Phoenix. Of course, they were both very beautiful young men. It’s hard not to objectify them separately, let alone together. They both had unique, movie-star names and unusual upbringings. They were a beautiful pair, on-screen and off. But to be frank, they also had an ease and a comfort with one another that’s very soothing to my queer eye, something you can’t just create for the camera.

It didn’t rattle me much when River Phoenix died. I remember learning about it in the common room of my dorm, when someone said the news with a shocked, blank look: “River Phoenix.” River Phoenix died. He died. He was 23. A kid. And he died.

I wonder if the memory of River lives on in the minds of those in generations younger than mine. I suspect not, as his filmography, given his short life, includes only a handful of memorable films. But given how those around him reacted to his passing, I suspect his energy lives on, like in Parenthood, as subtext. He’s an invisible thread those connected to him can still remember, and will keep alive through their own longing.

July 2022