Mavis Gary returns to her hometown in search of an ending in "Young Adult."
(Jason Reitman, 2011)
January 2, 2012
by Joel Crary
I haven’t been going to the movies much lately, trading off my usual weekend ritual for work and other proclivities including travel. Lately I’ve been on holiday, visiting old haunts. Whenever I return to my hometown, the little changes that have arisen in my absence stick out like scar tissue. There’s a scene in “Young Adult” in which Charlize Theron’s character drives by a “KenTacoHut” (a combination KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut) in Mercury, Minnesota, and she raises an eyebrow. I knew how she felt precisely. Hometowns can make such lame attempts at catching up with big cities.
On my way back east for Christmas I made a stop to visit an ex-girlfriend hat I hadn’t seen in six and a half years. Our conversation was spotted with long silences. It took me aback. I don’t know why I suggested the meetup in the first place. Chronic nostalgia, maybe. I romanticize the past and search out its influence on the future. I look hard for three-act structures in daily life, and I do it because I’m in love with stories. That’s part of the reason why I love film, too, and why I love to write about it. Films tie things together neatly, even the ones that are about giant messes. And you can always go back to them, and you know they’ll always be the same, even if you’ve changed.
In “Young Adult,” Theron is Mavis Gary, a writer of the kinds of books in which everybody peaks at 17. Mavis is 37, divorced, nearly unemployed, an alcoholic who’s resigned herself to a life of Kardashian marathons and vapid conversations that are supposed to be important because they take place in Minneapolis rather than the hick town she grew up in. An email brings a spark to her bleary eyes – the attachment is a picture of a new baby, fathered by Buddy (Patrick Wilson), an old flame. For most of us, there’s a moment of strange humility when an ex starts building a family with someone else. For Mavis, getting Buddy back becomes a twisted life objective. She climbs out from under her latest one-night stand and heads back to Mercury, blasting a mix tape Buddy made for her 20 years ago.
“You can’t go back” is a lesson I refuse to learn pretty consistently, but I wouldn’t say it crosses over into mental illness. When Mavis arrives back home, she takes every opportunity she can to inject herself back into Buddy’s life, confident that a slinky dress will make him forget all about his marriage and baby. At the local bar, she slugs back hard liquor like water before driving home, coasting on brashness. Theron is so good in Mavis’ darker, bitchier moments that we momentarily forget how absolutely stunning she is. She makes us believe in her budding friendship with Matt (Patton Oswalt), a former loser classmate she never gave the time of day, even after jocks had beaten him mercilessly with a crowbar, crippling him for life. It’s not so much that Matt’s sage tolerance of Mavis’ insanity grounds her; it’s that it slowly affords her the opportunity to grow up a bit.
I imagine there’s a lot of screenwriter Diablo Cody in Mavis. Cody’s typically playful language is dialled back a tad here; she delivers a deceptively dark script, relying on a general atmosphere of pathos that doesn’t require much dialogue. Her characters are as dead as the town they come from, and none of them are altogether bright, and that makes sense. Mavis saves most of her words for the page as she tries to write her own story – a pretty shallow metaphor, but it’s exactly the kind she would make. Cody, appropriately, knows how to write writers. This is her second effort with Jason Reitman after “Juno,” and the two maintain one of modern cinema’s more complementary relationships. Reitman has a knack for examining gestures and shows a terrific interest in actors’ faces. He knows that Theron can communicate a paragraph with one glance and lets her.
Now, about this growing-up business: my generation often gets a lot of flack for holding on too tightly to childhood, even if we’ve moved miles away from home. There’s safety in not moving on, because it creates the illusion that you’re always perfectly aware of where you are. It may very well be a condition in certain thirtysomethings, and I was surprised at how often “Young Adult” refused to diagnose it for laughs. I related with Mavis’ plight even as it horrified me. She’s a exaggeration of a three-act disciple’s unwillingness to let go. But the nice thing about the movies is that you can go back, as often as you like. And you might find something incredibly valuable.
“Theron is so good in Mavis’ darker, bitchier moments that we momentarily forget how absolutely stunning she is.”
Good god, yes. We kept whispering to one another, “Has Charlize aged REALLY badly, or is this makeup artist a genius??” And then there’s the scene where she’s readying herself for a night out at a “concert” with Buddy, and we’re reminded of her beauty with just a few brushes to her eyes, lips and cheeks. They did a truly great job showing us “Mavis on the inside” by putting on the outside as well, and Theron deserves credit for managing to capture every, single. facial expression. that we know people like Mavis have as a chronic condition.
I think a lot of the audience in our theatre were (was?) expecting a comedy. I’m not even sure how I feel about calling this a “black” comedy, because aside from a few great lines here and there (many from Oswalt), there was really not much funny about the film…and that’s a good thing. It’s getting knocked in reviews by people who, I guess, were expecting a grown-up “Juno.”
That’s why I like your reviews better.