Friday, December 21, 2012

Movie Buff: And No One Learned Anything, Forever

Watched another movie.  I watch a lot of movies.  Is this the start of a marathon?  ...Maaaybe.  Anyway, the current film is Young Adult.  Its plot is that lead character, after leaving her home town for mild success in a small city, returns home, with the singular hope to inject some meaning in her life by seducing her old boyfriend, now married with his first child.  Dear God, this is a horrible, horrible film to watch if you're nearly 30, still in school (the mild success of a PhD student), and home for the holidays.  My physique is a little more Patton Oswald than Charlize Theron, though, so I don't have to worry about breaking up any marriages any time soon.

Seriously, it's a good film, although not in a way that can even remotely be described as uplifting.  I classified it as a comedy, and that couldn't be more wrong, in either the sense that comedies make you laugh, or, like the classic Greek version, a comedy is a story where everything is resolved happily in the end.  More than anything else, it's a character study of Mavis Gray, Theron's character, and what it means to define yourself entirely in terms of an escape from where you grew up--and then continue to fall apart, because that's not enough.  The film deals heavy in that "uncomfortable" side of the comic spectrum.  It kind of reminds me of Carnage, with a much tighter focus.

...And it's kind of a downer.  I'm going to watch Adventure Time till I get smiley again.

Later Days.

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