LIFE DURING WARTIME - On DemandJuly 23, 2010
IFC Films
On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of hot movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: LIFE DURING WARTIME. Tell us what you think here.
All the way back in 1998, along came a film so dark (and original) that NY-based Good Machine had to self-distribute because even credible mini-majors were too terrified to touch it. It was from the guy who gave us WELCME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, but even Sundance, who made the director a star when they screened that film, rejected this one. It had a kick-ass poster illustrated by Daniel Clowes (of Ghost World fame) that became the standard for any film hoping to suggest a quirky and intellectual but pop-friendly tone to audiences (it’s now a flat-out style and not an exception – I know because I used a variant of it for one of my own short film posters.)
Word was this new film took suburban alienation to another level with prescription drug abuse, excessive voyeuristic masturbation, rape and even (yikes! third rail! third rail!!) pedophilia. This movie was ironically titled HAPPINESS and it was tagged with the dread NC-17 rating, virtually killing it’s chances of crossing over. It was ultimately released unrated.
Everyone I know (who knew what was what) had to see this film. And when we did, we felt intimidated because it was so sharp, so new, so fearless and dynamic. Sure, you had to take a shower afterward, but HAPPINESS represented directorial confidence as strong as did the masterworks of the other 90’s revolutionaries like Tarantino and the Andersons. Even as rife with genius as the indie film world was at the time, for a certain period in 1998 all hailed Todd Solondz.
HAPPINESS introduced us to the three Jordan sisters -- happy mother Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), married to therapist and pedophile Bill (brave Dylan Baker), literary star Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle) and vulnerable misfit Joy (Jane Adams) who ends up dating phone-call masturbator Allen (Philip Seymour Hoffman).
Thirteen years later, Solondz returns with something akin to a sequel called LIFE DURING WARTIME. The film takes place ten years after the events of HAPPINESS but recasts all of the characters differently, sometimes changing race and age – physics doesn’t mean much to Solondz (as he proved in his 2004 curio PALINDROMES where multiple actors were cast to play the same central character – similarly to Todd Haynes’ I'M NOT THERE, that used the same device years later.)
Trish, now played by Allison Janney (The West Wing), has told her children that their father (Bill) is dead and plans to marry bloated, older Harvey (Michael Lerner) because he typifies “normal.” Joy (now Shirley Henderson, TOPSY-TURVY, with the most entertaining performance) breaks up with husband Allen (now Michael K. Williams - playing very different from his iconic Omar Little of The Wire) and has delusional visions of the return of her dead ex (Paul Reubens). Bill (now Ciaran Hinds, Rome) is out of prison and searches for his college-age son. Hilariously self-obsessed Helen (now Ally Sheedy) has cut ties to the family for the most part and now is living rich, involved in selling screenplays.
No one is happy, unless they are delusional, as expected. But when word of Bill’s release reaches Trish’s youngest, most excruciating child, Timmy (first-timer Dylan Riley Snyder) the floodgates open and a deluge of darkly funny misery ensues.
The eponymous “Wartime” would normally suggest citizens finding a way to exist while surrounded by an armed conflict. In Solondz’ hands, it’s something different. It seems the mania of post 9-11 fear-mongering has reached a dull, distant, vuvuzela-like drone. “Terrorists” and “child molestors” have become common buzzwords or bogeymen, peppered through boring conversation by non-introspective people.
Nowadays, while our boys are away in two wars, the “evil” they’re keeping at bay in Afghanistan is the same (and sometimes pales by comparison) to the evils in our own neighborhoods, houses and minds – and maybe it was always that way.
If the film suggests, like Roger Ebert said way back, that these suffering characters are more the norm than the exceptions, it also wonders aloud if forgiving and forgetting is ever truly possible – and if the former isn’t, will the latter suffice?
While HAPPINESS viscerally assaulted the viewer with originality, WARTIME suffers from the law of diminishing returns. It contains many great darkly humorous moments that, again, make the intended intelligent audience laugh and feel awkward simultaneously, but it can’t compare to its progenitor – partially because the former is insurmountable and perhaps also because one can only go back to the suburban alienation pool so many times before it starts to feel rote, even in the hands of an iconoclast like Solondz. Judging the film against HAPPINESS might not be fair but it’s as inevitable as the despair of its characters.
That said, you’ll never hear me recommend not watching a Todd Solondz movie (I really hope). Curl up in bed and feel the chill on demand.
- Sean McPhillps
Sean McPhillips is a new contributing writer to On Demand Weekly. He is a former vice president of acquisitions for Miramax Films (During Harvey's reign) and currently writes/directs for NY-based Secret Hideout Films (with two consecutive shorts in Tribeca and upcoming new material) and works as Senior Programmer, Coordinator for the brand new Gold Coast International Film Festival (to make its debut in June, 2011)
www.secrethideoutfilms.com
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