Jason Reitman, a young talent who has been nominated for two best director Oscars at a young age, and Diablo Cody, a screenwriter who has become legendary for his dual identities as a stripper and an Oscar winner at a young age, once gave the film in 2007. The "Juno", which has both aura and charm, has not only conquered the judges and film critics who are sitting upright, but also captured the hearts of a new generation of young people who believe in small freshness. Four years later, the two collaborated again and produced a work called "Youth", but the protagonist is a middle-aged reserve soldier in his thirties. Although this role is played by the glamorous Charlize Theron, she is not. He wore a pair of eye-catching dark circles all the time, and half the time he was drunk and sloppy. Like "Juno", the theme of "Youth" is also the history of a person's growth, and also spends a lot of space to show how the protagonist gradually recognizes himself and the environment in the interaction and communication with the characters around him. Perfect and evolved. The difference is that Juno is a high school student with an unplanned pregnancy, while Mavis is an inspired teenage writer who, in short, is an immature child and an adult who still needs to grow up.
If the growth of teenagers can be summarized as a process of combining understanding of the world and self-knowledge, then the growth of adults is often a deep exploration and re-understanding of themselves. Unlike children who are always curious and eager to know everything in the growing stage, adults' growth is often not driven by initiative, but forced by unbearable and disappointing life and environment. This unbearable and disappointing life and environment Disappointment can come from a tedious job, a family that has lost its passion, or the emptiness that comes after the milestones of life goals have been achieved. For Mewes, her life before she began to grow up again was like this: living alone after a divorce, her creative ideas dried up and her ghostwriting children's books were not selling well, and she started writing the last book in the series. At the same time, the boyfriend Buddy, who once cared about most, sent a photo of his newborn daughter. This newly born baby never imagined that before she really entered the growth track, she first started a woman's road of self-reconstruction and repair. Buddy's youngest daughter prompted Mavis to embark on her way home. She wants to return to her hometown of Mercury Town, and she wants to regain the love she once had.
When the ex-boyfriend's daughter was just born, he decided to go back to his hometown to snatch back his old lover. This is obviously an immature idea for an adult who is no longer young. The implementation shows that after falling into the predicament of life, Mavis lost not only his writing talent, but also his basic judgment on the direction of life. From the lying prone position without the quilt when waking up every morning, to the act of taking out a large bottle of Coke from the refrigerator after waking up, it can be seen that she is powerless and powerless in coping with the challenges of life, and she is always hanging on to her. The tired look on his face was full of everything. For many people, when life is in trouble, the will is eroded along with the daily living habits, and when the house becomes more and more messy and dirty clothes accumulate, the power of the will also shrinks, until the refrigerator There is absolutely no food to eat, and it is on the verge of critical, and change often brings some messages at such moments. After waking up one morning, Mavis made the decision to grab his ex-boyfriend, and resolutely took his dog Dorsey on the road.
For Mavis, who is used to living in Minneapolis, the long-lost hometown is not a comfortable place for her, although her parents, ex-boyfriends, high school classmates and many acquaintances live here, But apart from her ex-boyfriend, she didn't plan to have too much contact with other people. Years of immersion in the big city have given Mavis a sense of superiority and arrogance that is not so solid, but this sense of superiority and arrogance is shaky. In fact, in the eyes of the old people in the town, Mavis is indeed worthy of envy and jealousy, because they feel that this is a former high school flower who used to be very beautiful and is still as beautiful as ever, although the title of the school flower It already belongs to the distant past, but the envy of the hometown people has been processed by time and brewed by distance, and now it is more vivid and palpable. Moreover, this woman is also a writer and lives in a big city like Minneapolis. . However, for Mavis, who knew her situation, this sense of pride and arrogance was just a gesture she tried to put on. When she put on a well-prepared wig and a sexy and beautiful dress, only She herself knew how ugly she looked when she woke up from a hangover in the morning. The film repeatedly shows the scene of Mevis doing manicures and applying nail polish before going to meet Buddy, which shows how much she hopes she can look radiant in front of her old lover. In fact, she did. It's just that although Buddy noticed his ex-girlfriend's deliberate embellishment, and couldn't stand Mavis' offensive for a while when he was drunk, he didn't give him anything except the kiss that represented nothing. Get the answer Mavis wanted.
As a young literary writer, Mavis is not too young, but his thinking has been following his own works. This is somewhat beneficial to a writer's creation, but it is not necessarily helpful for a more complicated life. . The reason why Mavis decided to go back to his hometown to snatch someone else's husband without careful consideration was that he actually regarded himself as Kendall, the queen of the high school dance in his work. Mavis thought he was still alive at the age of sixteen or seventeen. In the flowery and rainy seasons, in fact, she has long been an old resentful woman. At an age when others have completely compromised with life, this young child clings to her childhood dreams. It can be said that Mavis' immaturity stems from the habit of thinking with the mind of a teenager from many years of creation on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is also the ideological degradation caused by the unsatisfactory life. If she has a perfect marriage and family, can balance. The difference between good creation and reality, I am afraid that it will not be rash to start a "husband" operation that is doomed to fail.
Although Mavis' plan ended up being a joke, the final book in her ghostwriting series was born with the journey. The film adopts a hand-in-hand approach to pave the way for Mavis' growth and the release of her new book, and the two mirror and complement each other. On the one hand, the words she wrote in the book added the most appropriate footnotes to her growth. Kendall, as the protagonist of Mevis' book, is clearly a stand-in for Mevis himself, and from the beginning, Mevis has endowed the high school girl with her own characteristics, writing in the book: "Kendall is The most beautiful girl in Waverly Prep School, and a legend," and many years ago, Mavis was the most beautiful girl in the entire high school. In the middle of the film, when Mavis was carefully grooming and preparing for the appointment, Kendall's inner monologue also sounded: "Too beautiful will make people feel unattainable, some men will choose ordinary women, so how can we ensure that Her beauty won't scare Ryan away, her sweetheart"... Later, when Kendall in the book decides to get back what belongs to him, Mavis is also ready to fight, because they both believe in There is a truth - "sometimes in order to heal, you must let others be hurt".
Creation is a painstaking and long process, and lack of inspiration is often the most painful thing. But for Mevis, the daily life around her is the best source of inspiration, so she’s always on the lookout for conversations around her that can be turned into book plots, such as the “text message love” she heard from the supermarket. ” became the first chapter in her new book. However, not all fragments of daily life are suitable for quoting. If the drunken and alcoholic kiss between Mavis and Buddy can still be described by her as "like electricity and wind", then when Maeve When he told Buddy the "you're my moon, my star, my entire galaxy" that he heard from young children, Buddy's immediate refusal was completely expected, because Buddy was real He loves his wife and baby, and Mavis' words are too sweet. In short, Buddy was an adult, and Mavis was still a teenager at that time.
Mavis thinks love can conquer everything, like in The Graduate and all the other movies, love can pull Buddy back into her dry life, but the reality is cruel, Mavis Everything you do is in vain after all. She thought that Buddy was not living a happy life. She thought that she was Buddy's true destiny. He thought that he and Buddy were still connected, but in fact, those delicate filaments had long been blown by the wind of life. When Mevis heard the song that used to belong to him and Buddy, and was sung to Buddy as a gift by Buddy's wife Beth and her band, Mevis almost knew he had lost his helmet A's defeat, and her so-called persistence was just stubbornness in the wrong direction and in the wrong place, but Mavis was reluctant to give up until a glass of red wine accidentally spilled on her body completely awakened her persistent flame, and then , the real growth has also broken ground.
Mavis finally gave up on her plans and decided to return to Minneapolis, which everyone calls the "Little Apple City", and the writing process of her new book is also coming to an end. Mavis decided to forget about Buddy, so he arranged an unexpected death in the book for his stand-in Ryan, so we know that Mavis really left Buddy in the old nest of memories. In the book, Kendall graduated from high school. After emptying her closet, she felt that the pressure of high school life gradually disappeared, but she would still think of the cheerleading and debate teams of Waverly High School from time to time. Although Mavis didn't really reconcile with the exhausted and frustrated Mercury town, she might remember many people in the town in the future, including Buddy, but life goes on.
The book's Kendall is ready to take on the world, she knows it's time to look to the future, and as she steps on the train to Cambridge, she takes one last look at the town, blows it a kiss, and thinks: " Life, I'm here"... And when the dust of Kendall's story settled, we knew that the best times were also waiting for Mavis ahead, and a new chapter was about to unfold in front of this thirty-seven old girl, Because just when she drove the car that she had hit so badly out of Mercury Town, she was ready, because, she grew up.
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