Watching this film, I was reminded of Jane Austen's comment about her novel Emma: "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." Diablo Cody is very mean to her creation, but she is not mean-spirited -- a sympathy lingers around Mavis. Her neuroses are sufficiently forgrounded (to borrow a term from Harold Bloom) for the audience to understand why this person is who she is.
Jake Cole notes that the set-up of the film looks like romantic comedy, something along the lines of My Best Friend's Wedding. But Young Adult is aware of such genre conventions. It measures up fantasies of love and success against reality (family, babies, work), and portrays the damage caused by the inability to distinguish one from the other.
It's a slow build, a lot of random encounters and bitter jokes, until all the shit comes pouring out at the end. But just as the possibility for reform, resolution and companionship dawns, another conversation with a starry-eyed fan reasserts all those myths again. Cody is determined to shirk Hollywood narratives, and in the process crafts a pungent fable about how prevalent they are, how we end up leaning on them, and how they in turn end up ruining our lives.
Showing posts with label Diablo Cody. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diablo Cody. Show all posts
16.3.12
3.6.10
Juno
Not a film about teenage pregnancy, doofus. Those tripping that it is all quirk and no reality, listen up -- the film works as fable. No srsly, listen! Mark and Vanessa are avatars for Juno's warring natures. The film is about growing up, which is defined as figuring out what you want. Everything else is comedy.
Point underlined by the look of the thing. Note the cartoony opening credits sequence, and the fact that the film radiates colour. Even its bleakest scene looks warm. And speaking of, that extreme long shot of Juno pulling her van back onto the motorway, a train moving slowly on one side, a river flowing on the other. What a frame! A visual symbol, surely, of Juno being wrecked by the pull of opposing forces: passion, reason; innocence, experience; Mark, Vanessa. May we have some applause for Mr. Jason Reitman, please?
And isn't Diablo Cody amazing as well? Let's look at the name she picks for her heroine: Juno, the Roman queen goddess. Beautiful, mean, and envious of her husband's infidelities. Juno lives up to her namesake in her attack on Bleeker for asking the much ridiculed Katrina De Voort to the prom. For me, this layering signals that we need to read the film as myth. Stop it, listen! The dance between Vanessa, Mark, Juno and Bleeker serves to furnish the audience with a timeless moral -- the importance of understanding who you are, and who other people are. At the beginning of the film, Juno cannot see herself clearly. She doesn't know what kind of girl she is, she tells her parents, although she acts like she does. Mark has the same problem. Vanessa and Blinker don't have that problem, they know exactly what they want. But Vanessa cannot see her significant other clearly. Bleeker can, and loves Juno anyway. He's the constant. The three other characters have their respective fantasies (of perfect families or Rolling Stone careers) dismantled. They have to face up to reality, in all its wonderful imperfections. That's what being a grown up is about.
That make sense? No? To me it does. I should say, there's nothing of the above in the commentary on the DVD, although Cody did stay pretty quiet. My reading is influenced by the attempt to pick out connections with Cody's second film, Jennifer's Body (worshipped over here). But it all serves to stress that Diablo Cody isn't just some poser with a knack for slangy dialogue. There is a sharp intelligence here, and it'll be fascinating to see where and how it next manifests.
Point underlined by the look of the thing. Note the cartoony opening credits sequence, and the fact that the film radiates colour. Even its bleakest scene looks warm. And speaking of, that extreme long shot of Juno pulling her van back onto the motorway, a train moving slowly on one side, a river flowing on the other. What a frame! A visual symbol, surely, of Juno being wrecked by the pull of opposing forces: passion, reason; innocence, experience; Mark, Vanessa. May we have some applause for Mr. Jason Reitman, please?
And isn't Diablo Cody amazing as well? Let's look at the name she picks for her heroine: Juno, the Roman queen goddess. Beautiful, mean, and envious of her husband's infidelities. Juno lives up to her namesake in her attack on Bleeker for asking the much ridiculed Katrina De Voort to the prom. For me, this layering signals that we need to read the film as myth. Stop it, listen! The dance between Vanessa, Mark, Juno and Bleeker serves to furnish the audience with a timeless moral -- the importance of understanding who you are, and who other people are. At the beginning of the film, Juno cannot see herself clearly. She doesn't know what kind of girl she is, she tells her parents, although she acts like she does. Mark has the same problem. Vanessa and Blinker don't have that problem, they know exactly what they want. But Vanessa cannot see her significant other clearly. Bleeker can, and loves Juno anyway. He's the constant. The three other characters have their respective fantasies (of perfect families or Rolling Stone careers) dismantled. They have to face up to reality, in all its wonderful imperfections. That's what being a grown up is about.
That make sense? No? To me it does. I should say, there's nothing of the above in the commentary on the DVD, although Cody did stay pretty quiet. My reading is influenced by the attempt to pick out connections with Cody's second film, Jennifer's Body (worshipped over here). But it all serves to stress that Diablo Cody isn't just some poser with a knack for slangy dialogue. There is a sharp intelligence here, and it'll be fascinating to see where and how it next manifests.
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