Week 12: Young Adult and Ran

Young Adult: 2011
Ran: 1985

Young Adult follows Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) as she returns to her small Minnesota hometown after spending several years in the big city.  Mavis attempts to break out of her rut by reconnecting with Buddy (Patrick Wilson) and rekindle their high school romance.  Her plan to disrupt Buddy's marriage shows her lack of depth, thought, or consideration for others.  Mavis's growth from high school appears financial rather than emotional or spiritual.  Mavis magnifies her suffering whenever possible, claiming her life is supposed to go a certain direction.

Ran is a retelling of King Lear.  An old warlord passes his kingdom on to his oldest son.  His youngest objects, and the father banishes him.  The newly-empowered son humiliates the father and drives him from the land.  The warlord spends the film watching his kingdom collapse and his sons murder each other.  Nothing in his life survives his past choices and his kingdom collapses.

Ran works as a traditional tragedy, where a life of war ends in death for all involved.  Young Adult is smaller in scale, but the choices Mavis made early in life made her unable to understand life.  The warlord's pursuit of glory through combat sowed the seeds of his destruction.  Mavis' character and narcissism damaged her past relationships and brought her to desperation.  Her life, while not tragic, is shallow and empty.  A sparse apartment and trashy TV were her only companions.  She had no family, no real friends, and a stagnant career.  Rather than help others or act understanding, Mavis cuts people down at any opportunity.

Young Adult ends with Mavis returning to the city in the aftermath of embarrassing herself in front of everyone she knew.  Much like Ran's blind man left alone on the tower, the ending was isolating.  The blind man was doomed to be stuck because his sister and mother were killed, meaning he could not survive alone in the world.  Mavis, by contrast, knows that her old world wouldn't help her and she needs to move back to the city.  Mavis' romantic visions of life were proven false, but Mavis learns other people envy her urbane life.  Mavis returns to the city not in triumph but the same.  The film never states she learns something or grew much because she left with the same attitude (perhaps a little less nostalgia).  Both films deal with the past as something impossible to change, so the character must accept fate.