Movie Review: Young Adult

Now, I don't usually go to the movies very often, but for some reason I went a lot this year. I've seen a total of five movies in theatres this year--NEW movies, too. I haven't seen that many new movies in theatres since I was a kid. Maybe not even then: come to think of it, this is probably a new record for me. Anyway, a lot of the movies I saw garnered a lot of hype--Black Swan, Harry Potter, 50/50, and Melancholia were all much-talked-about. I liked them all--with Melancholia being the unequivocally best one of the bunch--but none had surprised me quite like Young Adult did.

Young Adult is the second collaboration between screenwriter Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman, their first being Juno. Juno was cute and quirky, occupying a hyperrealistic world of ultra-hip jargon and unconventional romance. Young Adult, on the other hand, ventures into much more sobering (pun intended) territory. The protagonist of Young Adult, Mavis Gary is a recently divorced (and apparently depressed) thirtysomething woman struggling to write the final novel in the young-adult series that she took over as author. While procrastinating, she comes across an invitation to her high school boyfriend's baby's naming ceremony, and after thinking about it all day, she decides to head back to her hometown to win him back.

It's pretty plain that Mavis is destined for failure early on: in her early encounters with Buddy, he's cheerful and kinda hokey, and while she keeps on discussing the past as if things haven't changed, he clearly has changed, accepting responsibility as a husband and father in what seems to be a pretty solid, egalitarian relationship. As much as the laughingstock nerd-turned-confidante in Patton Oswalt's character warns that she is making a big mistake, Mavis continues down into this marriage-destroying mission until it ends in tears--that being her own.

Mavis' reputation as a Queen Bee is evident through her blindly selfish pursuit of her high school sweetheart, and she's pretty mean to just about everyone but Buddy Slade--unless she's pretending to be nice. Yet she's become a pitiful character, slaving over a YA series that she can't even call her own, drinking heavily almost every night and spending her days watching TV (or else getting done up to see Buddy). It's obvious that she is suffering from depression, alcoholism, or (most likely) both. However, no one but Patton Oswalt's character, even her parents (in a telling scene, Mavis admits outright that she's an alcoholic, with her mother only responding "No you're not"--and not in a nice way), recognizes this. As much of a trainwreck her life becomes, it's hard not to hope that she does learn and grow from the experience. In the end it appears that she gets back on her feet--the novel, at least, is finished--but it's otherwise ambiguous.

Young Adult contrasts sharply with Juno, not only in the darker tone and heightened drama, but also in its realism. Music played a minimal role in creating atmosphere, though one song did serve as a crucial forewarning to Mavis sometime during the film. The dialogue is more natural than clever. Images, which are a large part of the film medium, are repeated and emphasized (such as Mavis lying in bed the morning after with a sleeping shirtless guy, unimpressed). The dialogue was very spot-on for real life, and of course the acting was great--especially by Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt. Buddy and Beth Slade seemed a little too content and cheerful (at least until towards the end), though perhaps they were exaggerating their contentedness on purpose, as some are wont to do in the presence of exes. The scenes leading up to the final one are painful to watch, especially for those sensitive to secondhand embarrassment. Nor does the ending tie itself up nicely. This is not a typical comedy--in fact, it's more of a comedy-drama (or, as I prefer it, a "tragicomedy"). Which was not what I at all expected.

Cody said in an interview with NPR that she had sought to turn several rom-com tropes on their head--and she accomplished just that. For one, it's just a comedy--I did not think of it as a rom-com in the slightest. The romantic arc is more of the subplot to the real story going on, which is Mavis' desperation to return to the time when she was happiest. The possibilities aren't tied up in a neat little knot at the end--instead, they spread out into the imagination of the audience. Naturally, as someone who has filled in the blanks in many a movie in my head countless times, I like ambiguity when it's done right. While I'm generally lukewarm towards Diablo Cody, I think she's outdone herself with Young Adult. Good on all involved, in fact. I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

"Downtown Owl": the Humor of Small-Town Strangeness

I'm back! More or less...

Back at the Boston Book Festival, I picked up one of Chuck Klosterman's books (not the new one... you think I'm made out of money?): his first novel, Downtown Owl. The title and premise were intriguing. I started reading it over Thanksgiving, and went from enjoying it thoroughly to being very annoyed with it--though the annoyance lay with the characters and their disagreeable thoughts and actions. Really, the residents of Owl are quite a pathetic bunch. Not to mention that the typeface got on my nerves--which was the same one as his new book. (the REAL reason I didn't buy it; take note, Simon & Schuster!)

The novel mainly follows three characters in the months leading up to an apocalyptic blizzard in a small town in North Dakota: a high schooler named Mitch, a novice teacher, Julia; and an old man, Horace. The three never cross paths, nor do they all die in the deadly storm (only two of them do). Each has their own foibles--Mitch's is depression, Julia's alcoholism, and Horace, resignation--and through their circles we get a glimpse of the foibles of the other residents of Owl, which seem to be pretty much the same problems. While the story is delicately strung with humor, the overarching tone of the tale is one of hopelessness. Ironically enough, the only one left with any hope at the end is the old man, whose life is filled with real sorrow and regret. Perhaps this is why I liked him the most: even after all he'd been through, he still managed to go about life, and as much as he might like to die, he has the will (and wit) to live. Oh, and it takes place in 1983-84--though I don't think it makes much of a difference.

I didn't find Downtown Owl to be nearly as over-the-top as I expected it to be; for the most part, it was as realistic as you'd expect a small-town novel to be, for someone who has never lived in such an isolated area. The most fantastic thing was the intensity of the storm, and that it seemed to have been summoned by sociopathic high schooler Cubby Candy before a fight that was discussed so much its occurrence became an inevitability. And it had the humor of despair, a dark and desperate humor that rarely prompts one to laugh out loud (I did a few times). I was faintly reminded of David Foster Wallace, only less eloquent. Most of the narration came from the characters' minds, who often projected their ideas onto other people (Mitch being the most prominent example, with his animosity towards the football coach). Of the three, Julia was the most pathetic character, a woman who hadn't bothered trying to direct herself in life, and naturally wound up stuck in the middle of nowhere.

The last 40 pages, beginning with a brief glimpse into Cubby Candy's perspective, are when Klosterman really shines as a storyteller: in short increments, we learn the fates of Mitch, Julia, and Horace the night of the storm. In fact, I would have preferred that the novel's entire time progression crawled along that slowly--aside from football season, there was no reason not to start in the middle of winter. (plus the football could have been flashbacks--which it mostly was anyway). There's not much time for navel-gazing, and the events are jarring and idiosyncratically depicted. The old man is the only one who makes it out alive, in an ironic twist, but predictable. (As in: having the old man die at the end is predictable, as he's old, so to have him not die would not; and considering that most of the other characters are young, it's even ironic; and considering the ironic nature of much of the novel, it is therefore predictable--however, the predictability of plot-advancing events has no bearing on the quality of this novel)

In spite of that, the story ends with what I can only call a punchline--possibly. It ends with a fake news clipping about the death toll of the storm, focusing on the most prominent victim: a football player nicknamed "Grendel," and Cubby Candy's foe in the fight that had been so exhaustingly discussed throughout Mitch's part of the book. While the other victims are not named, so it's possible that Cubby died, too, it's also possible that he lived--and therefore won the hypothetical matchup between him and Grendel. He literally killed him. Needless to say, I cracked a smile upon that realization.

I was also reminded of Annie Proulx, though not so much in the writing than of the setting and that one story about the steer (or was it a deer?). Try as I might, I kept seeing the men in the bars Julia frequented as cowboys, even though they weren't. While Klosterman's prose is not similar to Proulx's, the similar settings makes Downtown Owl somewhat like a townie version of Close Range, focusing on the township part of isolated Midwestern life--and more depressing.  Oddly, though, I wasn't bored, certainly not as much as the other characters were, perhaps because of my spectator role in their suffering. Anyway, I commend Klosterman for presenting the dull and hopeless side of such a life, and injecting humor into it was in fact a necessity, and not a choice. I'd say.... 3 out of 5 stars. I'm pretty neutral on this one.