Young Adult (2011)

Mavis Gary is probably a girl you remember from high school. She was the popular girl with the best looking boyfriend. She was probably too caught up in her own life to even notice you existed unless it was to make fun of you. She probably wasn't the nicest person in the school. You may have wondered what would become of a person like this. Something glamorous? Something depressing? If Young Adult is any indication, the latter is the more probable.

The story follows Mavis (Charlize Theron), an author of a failing book series of "young adult" fiction, the kind you've probably seen in stores but didn't buy (vampires are all the rage these days anyway). This isn't the picture perfect prom queen from back in the day. Far from it. Instead, she's an alcoholic, self-centered, and overall cantankerous person with a perspective on life so skewed that it barely resembles what most people consider reality. One day, Mavis receives a forwarded email from Buddy Slade, her old high school boyfriend announcing the birth of his new baby girl. Of course the news disgusts her, but it also leads her to examine her life (the current state of which is less than ideal). She then gets the idea that she and Buddy were meant to be together and goes back home to a small town in Minnesota to get him back regardless of his current (and happy) circumstances.

Charlize Theron is simply amazing as Mavis. She has the difficult task of carrying the movie as a character who, though initially intriguing, only gets worse as the film goes on. She expresses so much through her looks and reactions, that very little dialogue is needed from her. As a person she's borderline inhuman, serving as a monster of selfishness and anger. The character is an aggressive attitude personified, and when she does speak she delivers some brutal and often humorous lines of dialogue. She's an alcoholic, and that explains a lot about her state of mind, but her outlook and attitude towards herself and others prevents her from seeing the obvious and leads to some cringe inducing scenarios. It's a memorable performance and she's perfect in it.

The rest of the cast is good as well, with Patrick Wilson as the friendly and aloof Buddy Slade, but the heart of the movie comes from the character Matt Freehauf, played by Patton Oswalt. He's the most human and fleshed out of the characters in the film and provides Mavis with an honest perspective. As Matt, a character who suffered crippling injuries from a hate crime back in high school (despite his not being gay), he's very likeable and sympathetic. He's able to talk to Mavis and probably gets to know her better than any other character in the movie. In the role of her confidant and conscience, he gives the movie a moral center and an emotional backbone to counter the dark humor and general bleakness.

Patton Oswalt and Charlize Theron

This marks Jason Reitman's fourth film and second pairing with Diablo Cody (who previously worked with him on Juno), and though some of the humor feels consistent with the comedy from Up in the Air or Thank You for Smoking, Young Adult stands apart as more of a character study. It's isn't as funny as his other films, but what distinguishes it most is how it leans towards much darker and more disheartening material. The movie down right refuses to provide Mavis with any sort of catharsis, forcing her to continue with her bitter and depressing existence. You don't get the sense that things will get better for her and the ending is both surprising and thought provoking in it's defiance of genre conventions and expectations. Diablo Cody wrote an excellent script and in its tone feels much darker and serious than you might expect, but this movie is out to defy many of the expectations you may have, especially when it comes to the direction you think its going. 

Young Adult is interesting and surprising film. Though at times it comes across as dreary and even hopeless in its outlook, it's darkly comical with smart writing, great acting, and ultimately proves to be a powerful character study of a broken woman who never fully grew up.

MirrorMask (2005)

MirrorMask is a surreal dream fantasy from the minds of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Neil Gaiman (whose works include Coraline) had previously collaborated with Dave McKean on his famous Sandman comic series from 1989-1996 in which Dave McKean was responsible for the covers. It was through this series that I became aware of his artwork and also a fan. For those unfamiliar, Dave McKean’s artwork is very abstract and features striking and surreal imagery. The real question is, how would he apply his artistic style while directing his first film? 

MirrorMask follows the formula of most dream fantasies like The Wizard of Oz, Brave Story, or Alice in Wonderland in that there’s a setup in the real world introducing us to the characters, then something crazy happens causing the bulk of the film to be set within the “other world”, and as it ends we find ourselves once again back in reality with all the loose ends tied up nicely. The setup here is that a small family-owned circus is going through some trouble. Helena (Stephanie Leonidas) has been unhappy living her father’s (played by Rob Brydon) dream as part of a circus and arguing with her mother (Gina McKee). Suddenly her mother gets stricken ill with a deadly case of plot contrivance and is hospitalized, putting the future of the entire circus in jeopardy. Helena is worried and feeling guilty about their fight until one night she falls asleep and finds herself in a world of light and shadows, trying to find a princess and save the world. 

The dream world is the main focus of the story and lots of the screen time is spent there. Visually, Mirrormask is something unique to look at. Everything within the dream world is animated, and impressively so (given the budget). Of course the animated world isn’t as convincing as one might be in a movie with a huge studio budget (like Avatar or Sin City), but due to the lighting effects and the consistency of graininess in which the scenes are shot, the animation of the setting is never distracting and the actors blend in reasonably well. Also, this isn’t supposed to look real; it’s a dream world and follows its own dream logic (or lack thereof). It’s at times comparable to something you might expect to find in a Terry Gilliam film, but with a different visual style. There are some great little details to this setting like the way books work or how everyone wears masks. The cities of light and shadows never appear to be places where beings can live and work, but instead serve as bizarre and often highly abstract set pieces that could only come from the mind of Dave McKean. The creativity and imagination that went into bringing this world to life is evident in almost every shot and makes up for many of the film’s shortcomings. 

Our heroes go to a mask shop.

Part of what didn’t work for me in this film is actually similar to the issue I had with Return to Oz, and it’s the way reality serves as the bookends for the story. The illness of Helena’s mother is the only conflict before she enters the dream world, and in the end it’s resolved so quickly that it left me wondering why it was even there to begin with. Did she learn anything in particular during the dream to help her cope with her mother’s sickness? No. Did she learn something about herself? Not really. I felt like she’d already felt sorry for fighting with her mother and patched up their relationship prior to the dream, and nothing that happened during the dream helps her or her mother’s condition. It just seemed like needless setup for the characters. It doesn’t make sense in any meaningful way, and while I could accept that about the dream world, it feels pointless in the real one. The other problem, and I touched on this before, is the animation. While I understand and forgive the budget limitations, some of the effects are just distracting. The backgrounds and designs are the strong points, but some of the animated creatures are the obvious weak points, particularly the sphinxes. These things are ugly and bordering on poorly animated. At times, the human actors don’t appear as though they’re truly part of the scenery, but these things never do. The other CG things work on a case-by-case basis, but the sphinxes stand out like a sore thumb. 

What is convincing however, are the masks, make-up, and costumes. These don’t seem cheap and are often very interesting to look at. In the dream world, everything is divided into light and shadows, something that serves as a visual motif in both the real world and the dream one. The shadows encroach upon everything because of the unbalance of light and dark, but beyond an aesthetic one it doesn’t seem to have any significance. There’s a dark version of Helen, and there’s sort of a hint at the duality of her character but in the end it just comes down to this: Light is light and dark is dark. The movie keeps it simple and the characters are likewise pretty basic, though not unlikeable. Helena and her dream friend Valentine (Jason Barry) spend the most time on screen trying to figure out the world around them and its fun to watch them do it. 

MirrorMask is a strange and visually memorable movie. Does it make a lot of sense? No, but it brings a familiar story to life with the abstract and unique artistic talents of Dave McKean. It’s an impressive first film for him and I would hope he makes another. If getting lost in an abstract dream world sounds like something you might enjoy, then MirrorMask is definitely worth a look.