Easier Said Than Done

I’m still here. I swear that I am. One thing I never got to do was interview Blake Edwards. Sure, I shook his hand once or twice and got to see the man in person at screenings on a few occasions but that was really it. I wish I’d gotten the chance. Although, to be honest, if given the choice I probably would have preferred the opportunity to simply sit down for a meal with him--Julie Andrews would have been more than welcome to join us, of course. Maybe that way I would have learned even more about the man than simply asking him boilerplate questions, find out his feelings about the finer things in life and in the end possibly would have gleaned more about why his movies are the way they are. I’ve written about my fondness for some of them here before and recently when I posted some photos of him on my Facebook page during what would have been his 90th birthday, I was surprised when his daughter Jennifer (who I’m FB friends with but don’t actually know in real life) left a comment under one of them saying how it wasn’t an easy day. I certainly wasn’t going to click ‘like’ on that so I wrote her a brief note, she wrote back a thank you and that was really it, nothing much at all. But it was something.

Such a connection, however minor, compelled me to watch a film of his that night and for whatever reason I pulled out a VHS (purchased at the Rocket Video closing sale) of one that Jennifer Edwards is actually in, namely THAT’S LIFE! It’s a particularly personal comedy-drama made by the director under unusual circumstances during a period of heavy activity (released in 1986 two months after A FINE MESS, five months before BLIND DATE) but it seems to have disappeared in recent years—even the one DVD release it ever got, now out of print, was full-frame which as anyone familiar with Edwards Scope compositions would know is particularly unfortunate. It had been a while since I’d seen the film—spring of ’94, actually, at a LACMA event that paired it with THE GREAT RACE and featuring a Q&A with none other than Jack Lemmon beforehand. I guess that was a long time ago now, an appropriate thought to have about a movie in which one of the main characters comments at one point on how it all goes by so fast. Looking at the film again with quite a few more years behind me—the fear of mortality that the lead character dotes on actually feels a little tangible to me now, for one thing—I feel all the more aware how this film wasn’t just personal or even autobiographical for Blake Edwards but almost surprisingly private, laying bear his greatest fears and insecurities for anyone to see more than all the pratfalls Dudley Moore took in “10” ever revealed. I’m not sure it ever gets under the skin as some of his more bitingly comical films do maybe because he’s intentionally holding back on certain elements that he does best but, if anything, it feels honest and sincere.

As successful architect Harvey Fairchild (Jack Lemmon) begins the weekend that is to be spent celebrating his 60th birthday longtime wife, famous singer Gillian Fairchild (Julie Andrews), is undergoing her own crisis as she waits for the results of a biopsy in her throat that she has chosen to keep secret from Harvey for the time being. As the countdown to his birthday party progresses he can’t stop acting feverish about his fear of death, fear that he’s a failure and even fear of intimacy but as family and friends converge all around at their Malibu home, some with their own personal romantic issues going on, he’s not sure how he’ll even make it to the end of the weekend while Gillian silently awaits word of her own crisis even as the party begins.

THAT’S LIFE is an unusual film not only because it was shot almost entirely in the actual Malibu residence of its director with various offspring playing onscreen family members but in how it wasn't made with a typical screenplay (Edwards and Milton Wexler, his own psychoanalyst, are credited). “Returning to the Scene: Blake Edwards Volume 2” by William Luhr and Peter Lehman reports that the closest it had to a shooting script was a thirteen page outline followed by thirty-six pages of character analysis and expanded upon through improvisation during rehearsal—the unorthodox production setup of the non-union shoot resulted in problems with the teamsters but the independently financed film still only wound up costing $1.5 million. The approach almost feels all the more out of the ordinary considering how the final film plays--although a few moments seem to linger on what’s being said between the characters a beat or two longer than you might expect there isn’t really anything about it that comes off in a loose, improv style. Except for how it’s clearly made on a small scale with over half the running time taking place in one location the basic look still has the same sort of glossy feel similar to other Edwards films made right around this period.

Using the actual residence of the family in the plush environs of Malibu far away from many of the real troubles of the world and even making Andrews’ character a singer it’s hard not to think that this film looking at mortality is set in a world totally alien to about 99% of the people who would ever see it and it’s hard not to wonder that there is some validity to the criticism that it’s just about rich people’s problems even if this is the reality that Blake Edwards clearly knew. Maybe the one real concession towards trying to make it somewhat relatable is in not only casting one of the most beloved movie stars of all time in a lead role that pushes the boundaries of likability but also how Harvey Fairchild is not a film director but an architect, at least a somewhat down to earth profession. Edwards certainly had set his films within the film industry a few times in the past—if Judd Apatow ever remade this I doubt he would hesitate—so maybe he just wanted to avoid that angle this time out. Still, anything Harvey says in his “Success Breeds Failure” theory could apply to trying to make films in Hollywood as well and when he’s going on endlessly to his wife in all his desperation about how he could have been another Frank Lloyd Wright it’s easy to imagine Edwards himself at a similar low point saying the same things to the very same woman playing this man’s wife about how he never became the next Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder, take your pick.

THAT’S LIFE! is very obviously wrenchingly personal in terms of what he wants to get across about himself, his wife, his family, his fears, his life done with maybe a tone that comes off as a little scattershot in how it observes everyone. Some of it is completely earnest, some of it makes stabs at being more comedic but as it goes on the best moments are those that feel surprisingly human in an offhand way that I would imagine grew out of the improv approach--Harvey insisting on the correct way a lobster should be cooked, the talkative neighbor played by Sally Kellerman going on about her own kind of sixth sense or when Gillian finally lays into her husband at the party with everything that’s been building up insider her for the entire film in a way that pierces him right at his core. And even in this decidedly loose structure are touches that feel truly like Blake Edwards in how they’re allowed to build—a minor runner about Harvey not shaving results in a joke turns out to be not only funny but also thematically pertinent. If anything, the emotion holds even if much of the film feels ‘nice’ as opposed to particularly funny but while it’s tempting to wish that the film had been made using just a little more of the acidic nature found in the director’s best darkly comic moments it turns out that the weakest section occurs when it does try to broaden things—an extended stretch dealing with Harvey’s, um, virility problem as he visits a Malibu psychic played by Felicia Farr (Lemmon’s own wife, also in films like Wilder’s KISS ME STUPID) followed by a prolonged sequence where he attends Sunday mass presided over by a priest who turns out to be Harvey’s college roommate played by Robert Loggia feels a little too separate from the rest of the film (that said, I like the way the old tensions between the two of them are shown to build up again without making a big deal about it). All this connected to the ambivalent take on (possible) adultery diminishes the more serious stretches as well as the inevitable happy ending.

Instead of a pungent cocktail with the sort of kick that his best films have THAT’S LIFE! winds up feeling more like a pleasant cup of tea. Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with a cup of tea, of course, it just needs to be said. Instead of the undeniable anger at all the madness around him conveyed in something like S.O.B. this film has a feeling of genuine desperation as it searches for some kind of acceptance of the way things really are. Maybe it’s appropriate to call it an old man’s movie even if that does sound pretty condescending and it goes down easy enough but the full result never feels as memorable as its best individual moments. Some of these display the razor thin line between comedy and drama that occurs when the Lemmon is portraying his character in near-hysterics over whatever pain he’s in, done in such a way where you could almost imagine an audience not sure how to respond and this isn’t even the only one of Edwards’ films where that happens either (Burt Reynolds plays a very similar scene in THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN) but in this case maybe it needed a little more punch. Once Gillian has her blow up at Harvey and things get resolved the final moments seem to drift away providing final glimpses of the various characters as if Edwards is somehow striving to lend just a shade more meaning to all this but it almost feels like the film’s own attention is wandering when suddenly the credits begin to roll. There is emotion felt, but it’s all maybe a little too neat and tidy since it’s hard not to wonder if Harvey really will be totally changed for the better on Monday morning. After all, that sort of anger and desperation never entirely goes away, at least not that quickly so it feels like something is missing in how the film doesn’t take a moment to acknowledge this. THAT’S LIFE is a nice movie which considering how personal it clearly was for Blake Edwards that may be the cruelest thing to say about it but looking at it again now I feel exposed to the depths of his own psyche in a way that doesn’t happen with his other films. I just wish there was a little more to it than the feel of a pleasant home movie, as valuable as it may be to understanding him both as an artist and a person even a little better. After all, watching it is probably the closest I’ll ever get to sitting down for a meal with him. As a film, it’s far from perfect. But it does remind me that he was human.

As for his onscreen surrogate, there’s not a moment Jack Lemmon has here that isn’t real in some way (“I just sat back and let Jack be me, to some extent,” the director once said) and there’s something brave in how unflinching it is. But as much as the actor’s usual tics feel more grounded than they sometimes do in depicting a character which is essentially the film’s director showing himself as being self-obsessed in the most aggravating way possible it’s a problem that almost every single one of those moments has to be drenched in such flop sweat that it winds up enveloping the whole film a little too much. As a result his strongest moments are when he’s doing something else—I find the climactic close-up of him after Andrews’ big speech almost unbearably moving but there’s also the various lighter moments sprinkled throughout where the character is suddenly finding a way to come to life and forget about all the pain briefly. Presumably playing herself at least to a certain extent Julie Andrews has to spend much of her performance simply listening, gazing at him with all the love in the world, while we know inside she’s agonizing over what she’s keeping secret and she’s wonderful, able to come right to the point when necessary. She’s the heart of the film and clearly a display of how for Edwards she was the heart of his own life as well. Using actual family members of those involved (including Jennifer Edwards, Andrews’ daughter Emma Walton and Chris Lemmon as the Fairchild’s three children) certainly adds to the intimate feel so there’s an undeniable feel of intimacy always present but the entire supporting cast, also including Sally Kellerman, Robert Loggia, Theodore Wilson, Cynthia Sikes and Dana Sparks all do excellent work.

To this day I associate Blake Edwards films and the mood they often capture with summertime. But here I am looking at THAT’S LIFE! which is decidedly autumnal, if not approaching winter, and I think about how this hasn’t been much of a summer at all. Am I more depressed these days when I wake up or when I go to sleep? Am I complaining as much as Harvey Fairchild does? I also think about the film’s plea to cherish the time that is left, how it all goes by so fast and I recall that at the Academy tribute to Blake Edwards just a few months before his death in 2010 he told the crowd how he wasn’t much in the mood for celebrating since his old friend Tony Curtis had just died the day before. That’s life, I suppose, forever trying to celebrate the good while reminders of mortality are always there, even if you are fortunate enough to live in a place like Malibu where the waves crash up to your doorstep all day long. It’s a film that is about insisting on literally stopping and smelling the roses, even giving us a shot where Julie Andrews does just that. “It all goes by so fast,” she tells her daughter (both onscreen and real-life) at one point in THAT’S LIFE! which not only reminds me how both Edwards and Lemmon have now left us but also how the depiction of Gillian’s health crisis in this film managed to predict Andrews’ own later real-life problems as well. It makes me wonder about what I’ve done, why I haven’t accomplished some of the things I wanted to in life. There’s no good reason why I haven’t updated this blog lately. Maybe I’ve just been looking for a reason to keep doing it. Looking for a life. Looking for the inspiration to write something on one of those long and lonely nights in the middle of summer. Sometimes I think that I’ve found it, but it’s easier said than done.

Even The Intolerable

Whether we like it or not, some films exist. That’s just the way it is. I mention this simply because there are no doubt some people out there still pissed about the whole killing of Hicks and Newt thing at the start of ALIEN 3. What with them being fictional characters and all I’ve sort of gotten over it by now. And particularly in these days when it feels like every franchise is processed through a CGI filter to make it as crowd pleasing as humanly possible for all I’ve come to flat out admire the willingness of a summer tentpole to be as unrelentingly bleak as possible. You could make the argument that any film set within the ALIEN universe of Weyland-Yutani is supposed to be a horror film anyway so a certain amount of darkness should really be allowed but there is something to be said for how dangerous it can be to pretty much disregard the previous entry in a series during the opening moments of the next sequel as much as this film does. And if those who made the film didn’t know how people were going to react, if they didn’t know how strongly people really had responded to the characters in ALIENS, it’s a little surprising that no one ever bothered to speak up (an early teaser trailer that implied the film would be set on Earth probably didn’t help matters). The tortuous gestation that the film went through following the smash success of the previous film in 1986 involving multiple screenwriters and directors in different iterations has been reported elsewhere so I won’t go into all that now. The film was of course finally helmed by David Fincher making his feature directorial debut and considering how one alternative would have been to produce a more-of-the-same followup from a journey man director just following orders in a ‘Further Adventures of Ripley and her Friends’ vein at least the resulting film goes down a few paths that really no one would have expected during all those years in between but one thing I’ve long said is that it’s not enough for a film to be dark. It’s an admirable quality, yes, and when done just right the final result can be like a punch to the gut, sticking with you for a long time afterwards whether you want it to or not. But ALIEN 3, for all its sound and fury and doom and gloom and noise and clanging and death and more death, never manages to achieve such resonance maybe because through the clusterfuck of trying to simply get the film made the script was never hammered down into the right form in order to find a reason for its own existence beyond the fact that it’s a sequel. This first look at Fincher as director remains an undeniable glimpse at his potential, particularly now that he’s made a few films where the end result of all that bleakness did have its considerable rewards. And as bad as the initial response was even then there were a few dissenting voices to ponder the thematic implications that came across as Manohla Dargis did in a Village Voice article (which unfortunately can’t be found online) a few weeks after the release entitled “ALIEN 3 and its Metaphors” which delved into the connections to the AIDS crisis amid the politics of the time. But such discussions don’t automatically make something good. It just means there’s more to discuss. As some may know an extended cut (145 min. vs. 115 min.) was released on DVD a number of years ago but I’ve only ever seen pieces of it—I suppose my auteurist leanings make me less interested since Fincher who has nothing good to say about the film to this day (“No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me,” was the quote in a 2009 interview) declined involvement and has apparently never even seen that version. So in writing this I’m focusing on the theatrical cut of ALIEN 3 not only because it’s what I have close at hand but because it’s the movie I’ve known since opening night in Times Square way back on 5/22/92 (Happy 20th Anniversary!) and have seen more than a few times through the years as I’ve tried to reconcile this film with my own expectations as well as my own perceptions of what it’s trying to be. As far as I’m concerned, this is the ALIEN 3 the world has to contend with, the one with a trailer that trumpeted “The Bitch Is Back” maybe the best and worse tagline ever. I even had an ALIEN 3 t-shirt at the time which had that slogan on the back. Still can’t believe I actually wore it. If there’s a great film in there, one we’ll never see, it still feels miscalibrated—it's a film with an onscreen title which makes it look like it should really be called ALIEN CUBED but it doesn’t really mean anything, just a piece of design that has nothing to do with actual film and I suppose the entire film has the feel of an art project that doesn’t quite feel molded to completion which based on what’s been reported about the production appears to be exactly the case. As films that are hated go, at least it feels totally committed to the tone it strives for even though all these years later I still don’t think it ever becomes good enough to defend very much beyond its intentions. Soon after the events of ALIENS, an alien egg hatches on the Sulaco where Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the young girl Newt, Corporal Hicks and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) are in hypersleep traveling back to earth from the events on LV-426. As emergency procedures are activated the ship releases their pod and it crash lands on Fiorina “Fury” 161, a former prison colony populated by a group made of of double Y chromosome murderers and rapists once inmates, now custodians who have taken vows in an environment so treacherous that everyone on the planet has to shave their heads due to prevalent lice. Ripley is the only survivor of the crash but even though she insists on the bodies of her friends be cremated she still suspects that an alien has followed along with them which she conceals from all including inmate leader Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), Warden Andrews (Brian Glover) and the facility doctor Clemons (Charles Dance) which she gradually begins to form a bond with. But as they wait for the rescue team that’s been sent for her, strange happenings appear to confirm that there is in fact an alien on the planet which for Ripley leads to the most horrifying discovery of all… Exactly when the alien queen was supposed to have laid an egg on the Sulaco during the climax of ALIENS is a question that goes unanswered but, really, the best answer to be found of course is that it was decided that an egg had been laid so that this film could be made. In terms of narrative ALIEN 3 (Story by Vincent Ward, Screenplay by David Giler & Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson) is a direct continuation of the previous film even more than ALIENS was to ALIEN but it seems not only uninterested in continuing the threads that people found so satisfying in the James Cameron film the way it plays right from the Twentieth Century Fox logo is as if in making his own film David Fincher wanted to reveal that quintessential product of the eighties to be a lie, a breaking apart of the Reagan-era family unit borne out of the ashes of Vietnam that all those marines represent, to lay bare the feel good rollercoaster and essentially punish the audience for getting even a little enjoyment out of this. Looking at ALIEN 3 as the ignominious death of the eighties—as well the eighties blockbusters I grew up seeing—and blowing what came before to smithereens isn’t all that unappealing and the apocalyptic tone is both undeniable and unrelenting but regardless of what the film’s subtext is the text is never strong enough to support it. A things wind up playing out that subtext doesn’t feel fully thought out on its own either. In a way the film begins in such a place of total darkness there’s nowhere else to go in terms of drama beyond simple nihilism and even watching the film now when the bodies are dug out in the first minutes it’s hard not to wonder what’s the point of going on with the actual movie, what’s the point of Ripley going on and when she makes a few wisecracks to prove to the prisoners how tough she is it’s almost like, who cares? Why does she even care anymore? With no sign of relief the film is nihilistic to the point that it feels as if it’s being made by somebody who just discovered the word in a dictionary and wants to make it all as punk as absolutely possible. The approach is so dark it’s hard not to admire what it’s going for through all its apocalyptic imagery and it isn’t every day a summer blockbuster contains a sequence depicting the (mostly off-camera) autopsy of a little girl leading to Charles Dance as Clemons announcing the cause of Newt’s death, hammering it home with the statement, “Lungs flooded with fluid. Ergo, she drowned,” the sorrow heard in Elliot Goldenthal’s score seems intent on shattering the dreams of anyone who had spent the six long years between entries wondering what could come next. It’s not even a cool science fiction movie death, it’s just sad. For simple drama it’s almost as if the film should end right there and even the ceremonial funeral of Newt and Hicks as their bodies are dropped into Fury 161’s furnace never surpasses this moment of hopelessness, maybe because the insistence of intercutting Charles Dutton’s speech of death in the shadow of new life with the newest alien at last being born is just a heavy handedness that plays as wrong, a first year philosophy student that thinks they’re being deep in trying to provide an APOCALYPSE NOW sort of frisson. And these reaches for meaning intermingle with a narrative that always feels in search of an actual story to frame amidst the elements. Ripley takes up a sort of companionship with Clemons but as good as Weaver and Dance are in their scenes together—the way they play off each other with both of them withholding certain secrets feels refreshingly adult unlike any other relationship she has in the series—but her presumed distrust in telling anyone about what’s going on feels like too much of a contrivance, an attempt to keep some drama going where there just isn’t enough of any, one of the most crippling elements of the entire film. The story never feels solidified to the point that when several minutes are taken up by a plan to catch the alien that ultimately goes nowhere maybe it’s meant to represent the futility of it all as these characters get stripped away of any possible chance of survival but instead it feels like the movie is just treading water for several minutes, waiting for new script pages to come in so they’ll know which way the plot is going. Through this muddle you can feel the roots of how strong Fincher would be in just a few years’ time once the world got a look at SEVEN—there are specific shots in almost every scene so haunting it feels like even more a shame that it all never comes together and there’s a certain energy he brings to the rhythm of dialogue scenes between characters that plays very much as how he would shoot such things even now with a casual realism to certain offhand moments that at least helps with the verisimilitude. Photographed by Alex Thomson, who replaced Jordan Cronenweth after a few weeks of shooting, the craft is certainly strong--the camerawork couldn’t be better and the desolation of this look is undeniable, stripping this future world down to as little technology as possible with the confidence of Fincher’s visual style feeling completely present even at this early stage. As director he always seems interested in both the environment and the actors in it, clearly taken with the sets he gets to shoot on but for all the atmosphere continually present in any given scene but as dark as the aesthetic is it’s never particularly scary and I never get the feeling he has much interest in science fiction as a genre or in the alien itself beyond its metaphorical implications—born of a dog it may be slightly different than the creature in Ridley Scott’s original but the same level of mystery and intrigue paid attention to it is never there. It just feels like a monster, that’s it, period, and ultimately is the least interesting incarnation of the creature during the four films in the series Weaver starred in. The AIDS metaphor feels more blatant now than ever and with so much attention paid to all the snarling bald dudes in this grunge environment (part prison movie/part convent movie, if you will) it’s a reminder of when this was made in the early nineties, almost as if the film was striving to be the first big-budget piece of queer science fiction, maybe shown on a double bill alongside Derek Jarman’s EDWARD II with a woman (one of “the intolerable” as Dutton calls her to her face early on) who has invaded this holy sanctuary eventually accepted by this tribe of men who come to realize that in the eyes of those in charge she’s no different than they are. But the details of the community never feel all that clarified and don’t really matter anyway with the film paying more attention to the attempted rape of Ripley by some of the prisoners as heavy metal riffs play on the soundtrack (this one scene aside, the score by Elliot Goldenthal remains one of the best things about the film, providing just the right fateful tone and giving the film whatever soul it manages to have). And the fact that they all seem to be a bunch of bald Brits--Pete Postlewaithe is one--who we can never keep track has long since become the most clichéd thing to say about the movie but it’s also true. And if there’s a thematic reason why we can’t tell them apart—just wondering if there is must mean I’m really trying to give this film the benefit of the doubt—that doesn’t play either any more than the protracted climax where we never know where anyone is in relation to each other, just playing as a lot of running and yelling while the rescue team takes an eternity to finally reach them. Considering how one commonality the two stylistically dissimilar films by Ridley Scott and James Cameron share are characters that remain beloved to this day makes it all the more clear how much the film fails on this point and it’s interesting to consider how in recent years few directors have provided solid roles for familiar character actors as David Fincher, so lesson learned I suppose. Forget about not being able to care about these convicts—but it could be asked that compared with the working stiffs of ALIEN and the marines of ALIENS exactly why should we give a shit about a bunch of convicts?—there’s never a good reason to maintain even a slight interest in them so with much of the focus on how hopeless things are and Ripley shouting “They don’t give a fuck about you or any of your friends that died!” to drive the thematic point home even further he doesn’t seem to be putting much thought into actually making it scary. There are small touches of offhand humor or bits of business (because, in spite of its reputation, there is some humor in the film) very much in the vein of moments in later Fincher films alongside moments where you can feel him wrenching a genuine feel of loss from it all. The film’s best moment may be its simplest with Charles Dance’s Clemons finally sharing the dark secret of his past with Ripley who offers him salvation in the form of her trust immediately before the inevitable happens. This is shortly followed by the most iconic image of the film and as the tension rapidly builds with Ripley racing to the mess hall it culminates in what feels like it’s meant to be one of the big jumps of the film but the way things are staged it feels like Fincher didn’t have the time to get things right although letting a certain squeezey ball dropping to the floor certainly helps. The controversial ending (spoiler alert? Does it matter?) involving the newborn alien growing inside Ripley finally bursting through her chest right at the moment of her dive into the prison facility’s furnace is both ridiculous and memorable at the same time, not only an appropriate punchline to it all but also containing the sort of HEAVY METAL-like imagery that hasn’t really been seen in the series since the Ridley Scott film. The assembly cut omits this key moment, simply having her fall in to her death which, like any number of conceptual elements even in the theatrical cut of the film feels somewhat lacking. Maybe there’s no way for there to be a version of the film that could somehow be right for all sorts of reasons. I admire things about ALIEN 3. I admire the sense of doom. I admire the bravery in how much of a downer it wants to be and how it carries it through to a brave conclusion. But it’s not enough. If Fincher ever had a concept that could have won over the people who were going to be pissed off—or even if there was a strong enough concept regardless—it’s like he never got to follow it through to its conclusion. Or maybe it was just a bad concept to begin with, even if his talent as shown here is already very much in evidence. As frustrating as the material often is Sigourney Weaver delivers a powerful performance, maybe even better than her Oscar nominated work in ALIENS, and she finds the right pitch of grim desperation in her plight as she continually sizes up what she’s up against. Charles Dance does strong work as well particularly during his final moments and the low key nature of how the character has resigned himself to this place is an ideal balance with the much more dynamic Charles S. Dutton (“It’s Roc!” someone called out on opening night in Times Square) whose character gradually builds in prominence and while the role may be underwritten the film’s energy shoots up each time he’s around with glasses attached to his face that seem at times like a permanent fixture. Lance Henriksen is in for just a few scenes—half his performance is as Bishop from ALIENS though done with a (very impressive pre-CGI) puppet head and the other half as a Bishop lookalike who may or may not be human feels like the actor going for a certain ambiguous menace…but it’s still kind of a gimmicky cameo. As for all those Brits the several who get to interact directly with Weaver seem to up their game whenever she’s around, particularly Brian Glover as Warden Andrews (I like his “This is Rumor Control” patter), Ralph Brown (like Paul McGann who plays Golic, also in WITHNAIL & I) as Mr. Aaron and a pre-fame Postlethwaite but most of them are, well, bald Brits who blend together. One point of the film that does deserve unreserved praise is the score by Elliott Goldenthal, which completely earns every ounce of apocalyptic flavor it’s clearly going for and giving the film whatever soul it actually manages to achieve. The way the closing moment of ALIEN 3 contains the echo of a certain past log recording indicates how much regard David Fincher had for the Ridley Scott original and maybe also how the James Cameron sequel didn’t rank quite so highly for him. I was just a few years too young for ALIEN at the time but have come to regard it as a masterwork along with everyone else. When ALIENS came out I was just the right age and absolutely loved it but the film hasn’t stuck with me in quite the same way maybe partly because it seems so much a part of that decade—really, it’s set in a future where the 80s never ended—and partly because the Syd Field perfection of James Cameron’s structure in his storytelling reveals just how schematic some of it is. With David Fincher’s ALIEN 3 I was one of those who had spent years wondering what the followup could be and was maybe a little puzzled by what I got on opening night but maybe its messiness as well as its refusal to contain even an ounce of catering to the audience has kept it stuck in my brain all this time through further sequels and spinoffs that had nowhere near as much on their mind. Even if it is fatally, irrevocably flawed from frame one. I don’t like the film but as it is sometimes I feel compelled to confront it, not dismiss it, to see it again to study it, not to let my eyes glaze over. And its horrors do feel more internal, more lasting. It’s not about marshaling your forces to kick the alien’s ass as you scream, “Get away from her, you bitch!” It’s a statement that we’re all fucked, especially when ‘the company’ is in charge, a sentiment which has more resonance now in this age of ‘Corporations are people too’ and will probably continue to be more relevant as time goes on. And it’s about the question of if you are fucked, with none of the plasma rifles of ALIENS to defend you, are you going to go out on your feet or on your knees. Maybe there was no way to make a valid continuation to the story told in ALIEN and ALIENS that would satisfy anyone so the film had to die in order for it to be anything at all, but at least it goes out fighting. I still can’t call ALIEN 3 good but maybe sometimes what really matters is that a film which exists is able to express a desire to simply be alive before the credits roll in order to get into our heads, even if it’s for only a few short moments before we go back to dreaming of those happy endings we still hope to someday find.

Closer To Some Greater Design

Some things in life just become more beautiful the longer you gaze at them. Recently I spent about a week in Santa Fe, getting away from it all and trying just to breathe easy for a few days. The place where I was staying has a view of the flatness out onto the horizon where you can see a few of the other properties nearby yet at the same time it feels strangely isolated, as if there isn’t anyone else around for miles. And I found myself staring repeatedly at that view, particularly as the sun would recede further into the horizon painting everything with a golden hue that made it feel like I was being washed with a purity I could only partly understand. I suppose Sam Peckinpah’s PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID has that effect on me. A movie that reaches down into my soul with this feeling of absolute beauty and determination of remaining an individual in what the world is becoming mixed with sheer hopelessness, a feeling of giving up since everything is pre-destined into a bad end anyway is something I can’t shake. It’s not my favorite western and truthfully if I made up a list I don’t even know how high it would rank. Would it even make my top five? My top ten? And yet there may not be another film in this genre that I feel so protective of, a piece of pure visual poetry that I respond to in a way that is difficult for me to fully express. As some already know, PAT GARRETT is a difficult movie to consider partly because there has never really been a definitive version of it. The 106 minute theatrical cut released in 1973 was severely damaged by MGM during struggles Peckinpah had with studio chief James Aubrey (who committed similar acts of creative atrocity on other films including Blake Edwards’ THE CAREY TREATMENT), battles that there was no way the director could win. Although the framing device was lost this version isn’t exactly a ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA-level desecration—Peckinpah’s editors were successful in making sure that at least a few grace notes were allowed to linger but no one would call it representative of what the director was trying to achieve. The 122 minute “director’s cut” screened for years has likewise been considered never completely finished and is also missing some crucial footage while a 115 minute special edition prepared by Peckinpah scholars several years ago was an attempt to rectify some of these issues (both of these last two versions were released on DVD packaged together). Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, who am I to say, but since Peckinpah left us back in 1984 at age 59 a definitive PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID will never be seen, at least not in this world. Not only because the director isn’t around to do it but also because of whatever was going on with the various figures involved during filming, editing and within the director’s head as well. So PAT GARRETT will, in a sense, always be unfinished. Considering what the movie is, maybe that makes sense. Nothing about it is supposed to be satisfying anyway. It’s about the emptiness in life that comes from that feeling. It haunts me. New Mexico, 1881: Pat Garrett (James Coburn) seeks out his friend William Bonney (Kris Kristofferson), more famously known as Billy the Kid, to tell him that he’s been made Sherriff and when he takes over the job he’s going to be forced to make Billy leave. Billy doesn’t really respond to this one way or the other leading to his capture by Pat several days later. Billy is sentenced to be hung for a past crime but circumstances allow him to escape, killing his captors in the process and soon Garrett is sent off by New Mexico Governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards) to either capture Billy or kill him. Garrett, knowing he has to, hating that he does, sets off after Billy who doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to get away from him. Within all their thematic complexities certain Peckinpah films could almost be boiled down to one word or thought. Each of these films have probably been called the director’s most personal film at one time or another and in a sense they all are. RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY is majesty. THE WILD BUNCH is triumph. JUNIOR BONNER is affection. THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE is sweetness. BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, as I’ve observed before, is desolation, a ferocious scream by a drunk as he gets right in your face wondering what the fuck you’re looking at. Another film where by all accounts Peckinpah was drinking heavily during its production, PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID is despair, that same drunk just sitting down in a chair in the corner with no hope, just giving up, no desire to ever try anything else beyond shooting at your own reflection in the mirror. It’s an ugly film in all its sorrow—there’s no glory to any of the shootouts whatsoever starting with the opening sequence of Billy and others shooting the heads off chickens that have been buried in the sand. Everyone in the movie is trapped in a similar way as if they don’t know how to get out of it—the most pathetic killings Billy carries off playing as dirty as he does are only exacerbated by how the ones who are gunned down try to cheat their way out of the inevitable. Billy himself just seems to linger around the landscape after he’s escaped, figuring he’ll go to Mexico but never seeming all that defiant about it, still looking forward to someday giving California a try. Having made the decision that he no longer wants to spend time figuring what comes next Pat Garrett knows he’s trapped in the course he’s set for himself in life but no matter what he can’t escape the self-loathing that builds within him from selling out to the Governor and the Santa Fe Ring by becoming Sheriff, instead just choosing to reach for the nearest bottle and…just…sit there. It’s a world populated by men who have settled in to their meager lives aware of what little men they are, as if content to simply blend into the land around them or just shrink down into their bottles of booze. Pat Garrett is trying to change his course, make it a life where he doesn’t need to wonder what comes next and all it ever does is eat him up from the inside. Many familiar faces turn up throughout the film from the likes of L.Q. Jones, Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Elam’s unforgettable moment when he says, “At least I’ll be remembered,” Chill Wills giving the most unforgettable description of a prostitute you’ve ever heard and even Charles Martin Smith right around the time of AMERICAN GRAFFITI (plus Elisha Cook Jr. and Dub Taylor, though not in some versions) but this cavalcade of personalities never feel like it’s being done in order to tweak or subvert their screen presence, instead in all their grime to provide them with more humanity than they ever have before in the dialogue all through the screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer (the man who wrote TWO-LANE BLACKTOP which by total coincidence I also watched out there in Santa Fe. Something must have put me in the mood), carves into the very soul of these people through what they say and sometimes just in how they say nothing but a quiet acknowledgement before letting the other one pass. Peckinpah clearly loves every single one of these faces he’s putting in his movie, no matter how small the parts are. And what feels like elements of some of his earlier films are placed into this context whether the children playing on the rope set to hang Billy right out of the kids in THE WILD BUNCH (here with the addition of the American flag flapping in the breeze nearby), or R.G. Armstrong’s strict Christian father of RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY reborn here as one of Billy’s tormentors as he’s waiting for the hangman’s noose with those sixteen thin dimes in his shotgun shouting fire and brimstone long after everyone just wants him to shut up, taken to its furthest extreme. Focusing on these moments and others--the framing of Armstrong seated with his shotgun, the glances among the Santa Fe Trail as Garrett sits down with them on that rainy New Mexico night, or just Coburn sitting on that bench outside the house where this all comes to an end--are much of what the film is, providing a cumulative effect of reality into myth, myth back into what needs to have happened for the world to continue. I wouldn’t blame someone for expecting a WILD BUNCH mid-movie heist here pulled off by Billy and his pals while they’re on the run from Garrett—each time I watch it I think I’m a little surprised when it moves into the final section that there hasn’t been more in the way of ‘plot’. “Let’s go!” is the recurring order barked out by William Holden to his crew in THE WILD BUNCH but there is no “Let’s go!” in PAT GARRETT, a movie that instead gives us one lead who instead of running just kind of lingers in the wild chasing after turkeys with his gang (Billy, they don’t like you to be so free…) while the one chasing him just broods, wandering about and sitting down with a bottle trying to put off the inevitable. When Billy hears that Pat is finally coming he doesn’t do much more than say, “Yeah, I reckon.” Within its own drunken haze the film itself almost feels like it possesses as much self-hatred as Garrett does, as if brooding about all its own failures until someone dares to suggest as much. Billy wanders about, speaking of going down to Mexico but when he changes his mind it never feels like his heart was all that in it anyway, building to a climax where we know the inevitable event that is coming and the way Peckinpah stages every single moment in the final section it’s as if the entire world is about to come to an end, that after this night the calendar will reset itself to A.B. (After Bill) with nothing ever able to rectify this act as Bob Dylan’s Alias lingers on the outskirts as a spectral vision, one who a hundred years later is going to write songs about all this based on what he observed. The trims done for the special edition seem well-considered and reasonably explained on the disc’s audio commentaries but I find myself missing some of what’s been removed anyway. Supposedly this version was seen as a way to tighten up sections that were supposedly allowed to linger too long yet while watching the director’s cut alone late at night in Santa Fe (I was sober at the time—should that be allowed with PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID?) I found myself thinking that if any film should be allowed to slowly drift through certain scenes a little longer than necessary maybe this would be the one because that feeling seems almost essential to allow the movie to seep into the viewer, absorbing the feeling of drunken emptiness in this landscape as stark and as desolate as anything. When compared with the two longer cuts the shorter theatrical version, at least for me, doesn’t seem like a desecration so much as an unfortunate abbreviation--the broad strokes are there but a certain richness to the arc is missing and it just feels incomplete. Still, I wish that it had been included on the DVD since it is, after all, the theatrical version of the film and therefore part of its history. But I’ll watch any version of this film anyway since PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID is defiant, as defiant as Billy standing there arms held up in a cross-like way as the Bob Dylan score plays. With such vivid characterizations by actors who sometimes only appear briefly it feels like we’re only witnessing one part of a greater story of the old west or maybe Peckinpah has etched them so vividly even the smallest roles seem like they deserve their own film. While the episodic nature of the film doesn’t always feel ideal in terms of the pacing it still feels completely appropriate for what it needs to be. Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado have barely been introduced before we see them bid farewell to each other in one of the most heartbreaking moments in cinema history with “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” on the soundtrack (the director’s cut omits the lyrics here, which makes it feel like a rough draft of the sequence, lacking the soul it ultimately achieves) and moments like this allow the film to achieve an undeniable power few others come anywhere near even before it reaches the climactic meeting. I’ve never seen Tarantino mention PAT GARRETT in interviews but it’s hard to imagine that it wasn’t an influence—not just in its episodic fashion and brief, meaty roles for recognizable faces but also in its themes of loyalty and friendship between men. It’s hard to imagine him ever using “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” for his own purposes considering its perfection here but since LETHAL WEAPON 2 already pilfered it long ago maybe that’s never been an issue. Even the most complete cut isn’t without a certain abruptness within a few sequences particularly when Billy discovers Emilio Fernandez’s Paco and his wife being brutalized by some of John Chisum’s men, a scene which plays like the director was barely present on the day it was filmed. And the late stretch of Pat Garrett cavorting with prostitutes feels either handled incorrectly or maybe out of another film altogether, wrong for the elegiac tone where the women, notably Garrett’s own wife (itself a scene restored to the film in the most recent version) are left by the wayside, essentially ignored. And yet as the movie makes its spiral downward I feel like I almost understand the way the scene dives headfirst into its debauchery, into trying to do whatever he can to delay what he’s allowing the world to force him to do. It just feels slightly off. The way the film is flawed feels almost as much a part of its being as sorting through the different cuts (I’d go with the 1988 cut while adding the “Knockin’” lyrics, the scene with Garrett’s wife, the theatrical version of the opening credits and maybe a few other changes. But it’s not up to me). It almost seems coded to allow you to read any number of things into it in terms of how it relates to westerns, to your own life, to Sam Peckinpah’s own life, to whatever alcoholic haze he was swirling through at the time. The director himself makes an onscreen appearance as a coffin maker—building a child’s coffin, no less, imagery that also appeared in ALFREDO GARCIA—who, after turning down Garrett’s offer of his flask, seems to be totally aware of everything that’s going on. Of course he does. There are a few different endings—the theatrical lamely has a freeze frame of Pat and Billy smiling in happier times. One takes us back to the framing device in a way that as it plays out feels a little arbitrary. The final one simply has Pat ride off, a young boy throwing stones at him. Pat doesn’t do anything about it. He just moves on. He knows there’s nothing left. The young don’t want the victors to come back like Shane. They want them to go away, hating that they’ve robbed the world of innocence for their own reward. Same as it ever was, I suppose. And it is a problematic film—I know ‘flawed masterpiece’ is a term that’s been bandied about. But sometimes those flawed films are the ones that seem the most alive, the most beautiful and the more I watch a film like this the more I want to dig into what it is. PAT GARRETT almost feels like it doesn’t even have an ending. Maybe none of our lives have any sort of ending until all we have left is looking back and wondering just where we first went wrong. The friendship of Pat and Billy has to be taken as a given but it’s hard not to imagine Coburn and Kristofferson playing these parts in more of a romp during their glory days as outlaws together and it almost feels like more of the sadness that we don’t get to see that part of the story. Coburn is extraordinary, steely resolve forever there in those eyes with not a trace of the toothy Derk Flint grin Derek that I love so much, carrying all that self-loathing with him through every gesture as it weighs on him more and more. Kristofferson is a little more of a symbol as things ultimately play out but even if this has nothing at all to do with the real Billy the Kid his charisma is absolutely there. There’s never any doubt as he plays it that no one, except for Garrett of course, ever has a chance against William Bonney. Jason Robards etches out a fully-fleshed out portrayal of Governor Wallace in just one scene, a handful of lines, really, and along with the actors I’ve already mentioned are brief, vivid portrayals by Matt Clark, Richard Jaeckel, John Beck, Richard Bright, Rita Coolidge, Gene Evans of Sam Fuller’s PARK ROW and Barry Sullivan as John Chisum. As the enigmatically named Alias (“Alias anything you please,” he answers when someone asks, “Alias what?”) Bob Dylan is more of a spectre than anything and however much he’s around I never remember much that he does beyond an offhand thumbs up he gives Billy and that endless scene of reading off all those labels. Of course, he’s in almost the entire film anyway through his score which helps elevate this myth even more, along with elevating the sadness of it all. I listen to the album often and, like the film itself, it stays with me deep down into the pit of my soul. Just a few days after I returned from New Mexico I discovered that a charming little row of cabana-like apartments in my neighborhood was torn down. I actually know one of the people who lived there but the reason it’s on my mind is because the place is actually on the route of the regular walk I’ll often take several times a day—hey, it’s something to do when I’m avoiding writing. It was part of a nice little end of a quiet street. Now it’s all ripped up with bulldozers preparing to build some kind of big apartment building on the property and it’s about as ugly a sight as I can imagine. So people have been kicked out of their homes and my walk has been screwed with. But the ones in charge will do what they do. Charming buildings get torn down and replaced by something sprawling, 35mm gets tossed away for digital, good things get trashed all in the name of money and power. In its portrayal of hunting down someone free at any cost PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID as directed by Peckinpah is not so much an epitaph for the western but an epitaph for what America meant to its director at the time when the dreams of the sixties were turning to dust—Coburn’s own lead performance in THE CAREY TREATMENT, another troubled MGM production around this time, might go with this film in that sense and toss in Kris Kristofferson’s earlier lead performance in CISCO PIKE as well (it also makes me want to revisit YOUNG GUNS II, which I guess tells this story again and even features James Coburn as John Chisum). And the epitaph that is PAT GARRETT still means something even now—several days later I ran into that woman who, talking about it, speculated on how all those charming cabana-like apartments will soon be razed in favor of giant ugly apartment buildings, with those up in the hills looking down on all the people living in those crowded apartments below. I worry that she isn’t wrong. It’s just one of many things I’ll think about on those days when I feel like listening to nothing but the Bob Dylan soundtrack, particularly the fateful sorrow heard on ‘Final Theme’ as the album calls it, over and over. I know others who feel this way, others who have responded to this film’s sorrow and messiness, letting it get down into their system. In his excellent memoir “Lucking Out” James Wolcott recalls almost getting fired from his job at the Village Voice when he called in sick to see the film on opening day. It’s hard not to respect that. PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID may be a howl of sorrow but within that is a true beauty of every gesture, of the fear of what’s coming next and the question of how you can live with yourself in the world when it happens, a world where when you’re trying to grab onto a winning hand what you want and what you get may always be two different things.

The Lone March Of Being Special

We all make our lives into our own personal mythologies. The songs we know by heart, the films we’ve seen countless times, the fond memories we have of a fun night with a friend that years later you discover the other person barely even remembers at all. “The nineties were awesome,” someone says at one point in YOUNG ADULT and, well, they sort of were even if I didn’t always realize it at the time. It was my decade, the one where I was able to set out in life to try to actually do stuff, to discover so many things out there for the first time. As for the present, I still can’t bring myself to think about where the hell this decade is going. But things seemed right in the nineties. There was still hope, misguided as it may have been. I guess that’s the way it always is if you feel like you’re stuck back in a certain place, wishing that you could stay there to get one more shot at a party with a certain girl before the millennium hits and everything gets ruined. YOUNG ADULT, written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman, touches on the whole issue of how fucked up people in the Generation X age bracket can still be but never dwells in it as if aware that people from any era can be fucked up, vicariously still living somewhere in the past. The film was released this past December presumably to give it a prime slot for awards consideration and in spite of some buzz this never really happened maybe because of the response to a lead character that I suspect engendered a greater hatred in people than Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION. And whatever her character did to a rabbit, she never treated a dog this way.

Reaction to the film seems to have been somewhat polarized and it never got much traction at the box office at all but the first time I saw the film I just needed to drive around for a while in silence afterwards as the film stayed with me, thinking about not only my past but my present as well. Because we are all trapped in our own present, whether we like it or not and Jason Reitman seems to be one of the few Hollywood directors actually interested these days in at least trying to make movies about what is happening in the world right now, along with what it all does to people. Exactly one week after seeing George Clooney as a corporate hatchet man in UP IN THE AIR back in 2009 I found myself living my own version of one of the film’s scenes when I was laid off from the entertainment news program I had worked at for several years. With YOUNG ADULT, I was struck not only by how some of it reminded me of certain relationships with women I’ve found myself in but one thing that also nagged at me was how oddly familiar the topography in certain shots seemed. Only later did I discover that much of this Minnesota-set film was actually shot near my old stomping grounds back in Westchester Country in New York, giving me a slight shiver. And trust me, I’ve had periods where two-liter bottles of Diet Coke have stacked up in my apartment so at least part of this is personal. I can’t say I’m completely surprised by the response that YOUNG ADULT got from the world but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it, not if some of it sticks with me right down to the bone.

Depressive, alcoholic and beautiful Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) lives alone in Minneapolis, ghost author of the popular but about to be cancelled Waverly Prep series of young adult books. When she receives an email from old high school flame Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) announcing the baby he’s just had with wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), Mavis becomes consumed with the picture and why he would have sent it in the first place, resulting in the impulsive decision to pack up her tiny dog and travel to her hometown of Mercury where Buddy still lives to get him back, newborn be damned. Going out drinking on her first night at old haunt Woody’s she runs into Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) a former classmate still crippled from a hate crime attack he suffered senior year and Matt quickly becomes the only one who Mavis, shut off from the rest of her life, is able to confide in about why she’s back in town. Their relationship grows even after she meets up with Buddy and begins to put her plan into effect, determined to win him back once and for all.

Mavis Gary lives by her own mythology, consumed solely with what’s going on in her head, into her own journey to recapture her past to a point that she barely seems to understand what that would even mean and blind to the actual reality in front of her as much as Isabelle Adjani in THE STORY OF ADELE H. I can’t say that I have any particular unfinished business with the town I grew up in but I am more than a little aware that there are people in my life who have graduated into the comfort of suburbia in a way that maybe just isn’t a part of my wiring, that separation in the world between people gladly puttering around their kitchen late at night and those who are still out at a bar someplace, maybe a little later than they should be. And there are those women who have looked at me with the sort of piercing stare Mavis has, something that will forever terrify and intrigue me all at once. Maybe that’s what keeps me out there. It’s not quite a miracle that something as dark as YOUNG ADULT got made, not with the talent involved, but it does seem a little surprising that it was able get produced and released by Paramount, a major studio no less. The way things turned out maybe it should have been handled by a boutique label but at least YOUNG ADULT exists, as defiant as it absolutely needs to be, which as far as I’m concerned is all that really matters.

A film with a lead character so locked into her place in life that though she seems to understand at least some of what’s wrong with her she doesn’t seem to have a clue how to correctly change it, instead just choosing instead to sit around eating ice cream and drinking whiskey while watching a pre-teen girl on some reality show singing “We’ve Only Just Begun” (good Christ), falling further into an existence of self-hatred, listening to a certain mixtape from back in the day over and over. Did you know I used to make mixtapes for friends? That was a long time ago. Mavis Gary doesn’t seem to be Diablo Cody, at least not completely, but the film seems to nail something about the process of writing, how much you can just wind up sitting there before you start distracted by anything that comes into your view, going days without actually seeing anyone you know in person and pretending to be on your Blackberry when stuck in public for a few spare moments. At one point someone says, “You sound just like one of your crazy characters,” to her after she makes a crack about the nearby “KenTacoHut” as if she’s expected to be putting every ounce of quirk out there for the world to enjoy, a perceptive little moment of how a writer must feel about being pigeonholed in such a way and Mavis Gary is continually peering at the smiling faces in front of her, wondering if they’re judging her, judging them for even the possibility of judging her.

Essentially the lead character of the reality show in her own head and clearly in denial about the impending end of the Waverly Prep series, watching Mavis deal with the people from her hometown whether she remembers them or not is always fascinating, psychotic prom queen bitch to some, cool local-girl-made-good-in-the-big-city to others. She makes a simple utterance like “Hi, mom” sound like a moment of total defeat and her parents dismissing her statement that she might be an alcoholic with a light dismissive chuckle has to be one of the most dead on accurate, yet still tossed off, moments depicting a family not admitting their child really is an adult (technically, anyway) that I’ve ever seen. But the films’ attitude towards everyone remains grounded even in the most snidely comic moments, with even the sterile plasticness of the Champion O’Malley’s chain restaurant shot in a fairly warm, naturalistic style and Cody’s script stays away from the stylized dialogue that everyone either loved or hated about JUNO, never condescending to anyone with even those characters who only get a few scenes feeling like they have a full life away from this story. Patrick Wilson’s Buddy is in some ways the more settled in version of the Jason Bateman character from the earlier film, once a popular high school jock now totally comfortable with living a normal domestic life in his hometown as if he’s perfectly content to only be cool in someone’s memory. He’s totally fulfilled living in dull suburban glory with Elizabeth Reaser’s Beth, the only character who seems to be able to express any sort of joy as we see in her band playing that Teenage Fanclub song, where she has essentially stolen what Mavis thought was hers, messing with her own mythology but she doesn’t even know it.

Patton Oswalt’s Matt has essentially imploded into living in his childhood home with his sister, drinking at Woody’s and assembling those figurines, never able to move past the horrific beating that crippled him back in high school—it seems like having it be determined that what happened to you actually isn’t a hate crime after all, being told that it essentially didn’t matter, would be just as bad. The chemistry between Theron and Oswalt, not to mention how the scenes between the two of them are written by Cody, makes me wish that there could be another half hour of the film with just the two of them but Reitman admirably has pared his film down to the essentials with not a wasted beat in the entire 93 minutes and none of the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray feel like they need to go back in. Even small moments speak volumes, like that look Mavis and Matt share during the performance by Beth’s band Nipple Confusion--he doesn’t know the exact significance of the song being played but it doesn’t matter and the ultimate connection between these two is what holds through every one of these glances.

The dilemma of Mavis Gary, getting progressively drunker as she proceeds closer to her moment of truth with Buddy, obsessively pulling her hair out, undergoing those repeated makeovers, coming home to that Pomeranian that she barely pays attention to with godawful reality television seeping into her brain at every single moment, is universal but the undercurrent of Generation X getting older is always there, forever prevalent like Matt’s Star Wars-named special bourbon he’s made that Mavis mispronounces. And whether or not the film should be labeled a ‘comedy’ seems to be in the eye of the beholder of whoever’s watching it but for me it is funny, much as some people may not want to admit it--the look she gives Buddy and Beth’s baby, her spitting out ‘whatever, bookMAN,’ to the kid in the bookstore, how she reverts to the mean snark of her old high school self when she talks about Matt with Buddy. But there’s sadness there in terms of where things have gone since the nineties—I was just watching TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and found myself associating how Jason Reitman is clearly trying to make his own version of seventies films with that movie, thinking of how its presentation of Route 66 Americana has turned completely sour in YOUNG ADULT, resulting in a nonstop highway filled with nothing but Kardashians and chain restaurants. Mavis Gary is who she is. But the world isn’t much help either.

It’s not a movie that has resentment towards the people who have been able to find that happiness in their lives but an acknowledgment of the people who feel the other way, who sometimes all they can possibly do is glare at them, knowing nothing but the emptiness that happiness makes them feel. Expressing everything in an internal monologue in the form of the final Waverly Prep book she’s writing Mavis Gary doesn’t grow from her experience and in the end seems relieved that she doesn’t even have to. But she does seem to be able to finally put Mercury in the rearview mirror of her Mini Cooper once and for all. Maybe in her own mind the entire place, not just Buddy and Beth, is just ‘lost at sea’. Beyond that I don’t know because, after all, people don’t really change and, much like the special needs kids taught by Beth, Mavis can never quite form the correct emotions in her own head. She doesn’t seem to express very much about the horrible thing that happened to Matt way back in the past at all, yet her “You’re a piece of shit” to him is meant with total affection, maybe as it should be. And when she puts her hand up to his face near the end, a moment of connection with this person in her life who she never gave a moment’s thought to until just a few days ago, I almost lose it. What does that say about me? What does that say about certain women I’ve been attracted to? What does that say on my feelings about this film, the best work by its writer and director to date? More than once in the past I’ve looked up ex-girlfriends on Facebook, or even some that I wish had been my girlfriend, only to find a profile photo of them smiling and holding a baby. I click away. I don’t go back. Sometimes you really do need to face the future.

Few actresses are as fearless as Charlize Theron is these days and she is one-hundred percent willing to portray Mavis as nasty as possible with not a moment that doesn’t seem genuine. How she downs that first glass of Makers Mark at Woody’s, the absolute defiance she presents in her glare, even the way she walks. She’s so good we can even see how the occasional smile coming out of her is as much a performance Mavis is putting on as anything. And her big scene on the lawn as she finally lays everything out is just extraordinary. She doesn’t care anymore how much anyone hates her and it’s clear Theron doesn’t as well, resulting in one of the strongest lead performances seen in the past several years. Patton Oswalt (“Take that, liver!”) is just amazing as well as someone who has stayed in this town, who can’t let go of the past and freely knows it. Playing Matt as no longer intimidated by Mavis the way he probably was in high school as he takes pride in that bourbon he’s concocted in his garage he doesn’t overdo his big scene, instead spitting it out because what he has to recount is so horrible there’s no need to make a big thing out of it. Oswalt deserved every bit of acclaim he got but he deserved more and hopefully he’ll get a chance to prove that in the coming years. Patrick Wilson brings a quiet genuineness to Buddy, a guy who doesn’t have much to say about his life beyond what he has for lunch but completely ok with that. In every gesture he makes it clear how much he’s gladly moved beyond whatever happened in his past and how comfortable he now is. Elizabeth Reaser brings a relaxed attitude to Beth, a ‘cool mom’ who it seems like spending some time with would actually be an enjoyable experience and she just nails those moments where she needs to stand out, particularly that moment of uninhibited joy while on the drums with her band. Jill Eikenberry and Mary Beth Hurt also make strong impressions as mothers with memories of a great many things never spoken of while Collette Wolfe in the small but crucial role as Matt’s sister nails her big scene near the end. Without what she does here things just wouldn’t be the same.

A defiant slap at anyone who insists that a film’s lead character needs to be even remotely likable, YOUNG ADULT gets to me deep down in a way that new films rarely do anymore. I suspect that many people who watch this film hate Mavis Gary but I don’t. I can’t hate Mavis Gary, as awful a person as she is. Maybe because I often feel stuck the way she does. But hey, I’m not drinking much Diet Coke these days, so maybe that’s something. I only wish Mavis well and even though she’s probably just going to go right back to her apartment I hope she realizes all the possibilities she now has in front of her, now that maybe she’s finally able to move on from the nineties and her past. And even more than the booze, I hope she gives up all that fast food and reality TV. It would really be for the best in the long run. But I know all too well that you should never try to make certain women do anything. Even if they do toss you a little glint of a smile every now and then.