American and Arty

Saw the film Young Adult recently. Enjoyed it; though I was at a loss to understand why it is called a comedy. To my mind, a comedy makes you laugh in pleasure. Or the story has a happy ending. This film fails on both counts. It is not even a black comedy where there is a serious or a sorrowful undercurrent to the outwardly hilarious happenings. For example, Jagte Raho (a Hindi film), in which an innocent peasant enters an urban housing complex to quench his thirst and is hounded as a thief. Or Jane bhi Do Yaron (another Hindi film), in which two novices try to take on a whole corrupt system.

But then, are Chaplin’s films black comedies? They have happy endings all right; but is it a comedy when hunger drives him to cook and eat his shoe? Or when his friend takes him for a giant bird to be quartered, roasted and devoured? Now I am confused!

Coming back to Young Adult, it has a girl (or shall we call her a woman because she is quite grown up? All credit to Charlize Theron that such a question takes shape. And, it is admirable for a mainstream Hollywood actor to present herself as a plain Jane who takes the help of make-up while going for the kill. It could very well be interpreted as factual and could result in deglamourising her.) who wakes up next to a sleeping man, grimaces to reveal that she is far from happy with her last night’s association, downs big gulps of coke and leaves. Well, she leaves the life she is living and goes off to where she came from.

There is a transformation. She doesn’t change, the background changes and the relative valuation of her attributes changes. Back in her school days, she was a prom queen. Then she left for a bigger town and well, made it! She became a writer; no one in that place has been a writer. So, when she had left, it was in the halo of glamour and is now back with another halo. Never mind that she carries the baggage of a failed marriage and a failing career and has become an alcoholic to boot. The small people need not know that. She, in fact, has plans of reclaiming her old flame; which, in her opinion, should be a walkover; his small-town wife cannot be expected to offer any meaningful resistance. 

Of course things do not happen as wished. She is inexorably driven to accepting another old friend, who is now almost a cripple, as her alter ego and ultimately she goes back with a bad dent on her car’s bonnet.

I am a male on the wrong side of sixty and I never identified myself with the travails of Charlize Theron’s Mavis Gray even though her pathetic ordeal drew my sympathies; but the friend, a young female, who gave me the DVD called the ‘small people’ all sorts of names! I am a resident of Mumbai which is a sprawling metropolis where life generally is in the fast lane and success is defined as when you overtake others in your lane. Life laid back, does not count. Yet (or, may be because of that) I went with the small-towners who were more at peace with themselves and to me, that was important. For my friend, on the other hand, trying was far more important than failing. That Mavis tries and the others don’t, decided the race (which, to me, wasn’t there). That she becomes a psychiatric case (obsessively pulls out hair on her head) and they stay normal, did not matter. Rather, that was a great injustice.

The film reminded me of another film I saw during last year’s International Film Festival of India (IFFI) at Goa. The woman in that film (Yellow) is a teacher in a nursery school and she takes quick breaks to go and swallow pills which give her a high. She too goes to her home and meets her mother, her sisters, her ex-fiancé and all of them are abnormal. The film is supposed to be a harsh comment on the materialistic world. I found it obnoxious. The woman takes refuge in fantasies because reality bores her. Everyone is obsessed with their own problems and they are all unhappy in general.

Young Adult is a mainstream Hollywood film with the accompanying mainstream aesthetic sense and a straightforward narrative and smart editing. You could call Young Adult realistic; though I found tendencies to cut corners as in a fable. For example, Mavis goes and sits right next to Matt on her first evening in her hometown. Again, her outburst during the party at Buddy’s place is more theatrical than natural (she is drunk; that is a good excuse though). Both instances serve to speed up the passage of the movie’s message, without compromising on content or credibility. They make the movie crisper.

Yellow depicted a similar content but made out as if it was touching upon something profound; which, to put shortly, is irritating. The boredom of the sharp and the degeneration of the numb among the irresponsible and the callous is of no concern to me. Mavis Grey comes back bruised; but the first thing she does every morning upon waking up, is take huge gulps of Coca Cola! (Which is pretty damning, I should say.) Her idea of relationship is wanting something and expecting it to be delivered. She is arrogant without any basis for the arrogance. The Yellow heroine and her kin too want providence to deliver and they too are as hollow, as incompetent as Mavis; but their short stature is presented as a philosophical issue! Mavis remains an ordinary being.

Perhaps that is why Young Adult is a ‘comedy’ and Yellow is ‘arty’!