Review of Jason Reitman's Young Adult

 

"Young adult" is a polyvalent description of Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a ghostwriter for a YA series about horrid, privileged high schoolers. She lives in luxury squalor, neglects her Pomeranian (the film could be partially but nevertheless faithfully and fruitfully read as an inversion of Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy), and one day receives a mass email announcement from a high school sweetheart that he and his wife are having a baby. Mavis travels back to her small Minnesota hometown, Mercury, where she attempts to steal Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) away from his domestic entrapment to a life of — well, who knows, that’s not the point.

The casting is perfect: Patton Oswalt as Matt Freehaur plays Pluto to Mavis's Mercury. The writing is good. The structure is repetitive, recursive — a strong reflection of Mavis's interiority and doomed quest.
 

Other than that, I don’t have much to say by way of straightforward commentary (the film speaks for itself, mostly), so I’d like to take this opportunity to parasitize Young Adult in order to illustrate the potency of Michel Serres's The Parasite, a book dedicated to an exploration and articulation of the one-directional arrow that defines relationality as such.

Mavis is a ghostwriter, seemingly in first position as the creator of the series parasites her work. But it becomes obvious (if we couldn’t have guessed from the beginning) that Mavis is not a producer but a reproducer, living from and through her own idealized adolescence. Already a sort of nothing, drinking herself into oblivion in a messy high-rise apartment, Mavis would fall into critical condition if she weaned herself off of the delusions of memory.

Buddy's baby is a rival parasite. Buddy's wife is a rival parasite. For Mavis, the entirety of Mercury steals Buddy's vitality and denies him a life of happiness with Mavis. Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) is a fellow parasite. His past is a crutch no less than Mavis's (and more literally). Mavis parasites Matt because "guys like [him] are born to love girls like [her]." The one moment in which the arrow hesitates to point is when Mavis fucks Matt or Matt fucks Mavis. Abuse value is Serres's brilliant term.

Given the parasite, how do we make a better humanity? Maybe that's the dumbest question ever posed. Maybe that's why Mavis, on the brink of self-awareness and the threshold of growth, is pulled back from her moment of radical vulnerability by another, weaker parasite: Matt's sister, who dreams of following Mavis to the city, where she will finally be able to live a life of — well, who knows, that's not the point.

Response to Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life

[Each paragraph in this piece is a pairing of a sentence from a 5-star critical review listed on Metacritic and a sentence from a 1-star user review in the comments section of the New York Times website.]

The Tree of Life is rooted in human nature but ascends to the infinite mystery. In an effort to be universal, there is nothing.

There is simply nothing like it out there. It’s a collection of bland didactic statements.

Malick doesn’t pretend to have actual answers. But then not one interesting question is posed by The Tree of Life.

Which is kind of transcendent, and kind of Zen, and kind of corny — and definitely something to think about. I am struck by the possibility that with this film Terrence Malick believes he has completed his doctoral dissertation in philosophy and will finally have earned his Ph.D.

That’s daring, mostly because it’s not how Michael Bay does it. Cut out 50% or so and it is a perfect IMAX film.

There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. What would the reviews have been like if the name Malick wasn't attached to the movie?

A sense of reconciliation is Malick’s great accomplishment in The Tree of Life, affording us equal wonder at grace and nature alike. The audience here actually broke out in laughter when there was one too many “light from the heavens” sequences.

And it all happens in this blink of a lifetime, surrounded by the realms of unimaginable time and space. It has much in common with the old advertising campaign for Calvin Klein Obsession — lots of slow motion shots, gossamer fabrics blowing in the wind, and everyone speaking in whispers.

But there’s the throb of poetry in every frame — and, really, when was the last time you could say that at the multiplex? I spent a decent afternoon watching this movie, the whole time thinking is it too late for me to sneak into The Hangover 2.

But by that point it’s clear Malick, after five films over nearly 40 years, hasn’t given up his search for new ways of seeing truth and beauty — in life, or in cinema. It must be deep or there wouldn’t have been classical music in it.

And yet, we’ve shared in something divine. Drivel.

It’s hard to watch, but the pure emotion resonates deeply. Professional wrestling is more entertaining.

Yet The Tree Of Life isn’t despairing about it in the least; it’s a genuine attempt to grasp the transcendent, and the rare religious film that deserves to be called spiritual. Have you ever been seated next to a pompous windbag at a seven-course dinner party?

I suspect, though, that sometime between now and Judgment Day it will all make sense. Please don’t pretend that you found it deep and meaningful and that it effectively made sense.

Still, there is little doubt that The Tree of Life will stand as the cinematic achievement of the year. Worst movie ever made.