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Directed by Todd Solondz
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Life During
Wartime
Todd
Solondz’s new film “Life During
Wartime” is a sequel of sorts to his 1998 film “Happiness,”
which was, deliberately and ironically, about a group of the most unhappy people on earth. They were lonely, they were
pedophiles, they tried to contact others by making
obscene phone calls at random, and so on. “Life During Wartime” sees
them, or a version of them, some years later. In fact Solondz
has cast totally different actors for the parts, though keeping the same
names, and their previous life is not necessarily a match for the earlier
film. What
is it that happens? Well, Solondz has moved the action from New Jersey to Miami,
and made it more about the three sisters, Joy, Trish and Helen. Joy (Shirley Henderson in a very bad
wig, has left her husband (who happens here to be black and who quickly kills
himself, though Joy does not know that) and come for comfort to her mother
and sisters. Bill, the pedophile
psychiatrist from “Happiness” (played here by Ciaran
Hinds), has just been let out of prison; his children have been told that he
is dead. One of his children,
Timmy, is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, and finally breaks the silence
regarding his father. Not that it
is therapeutic for him; his mother (Allison Janney)
has found love with an older man (Michael Lerner, and those of us who
remember him as Louis B. Mayer in the Coen
Brothers’ “Barton Fink” will be glad that he has finally
been cast as a romantic lead, though not necessarily for long). And
so the film winds on, by turns amusing and terrifying; Todd Solondz is the only filmmaker I know who can do this and
pull it off, because his people are both caricatures and unnervingly
real. I haven’t yet
mentioned Paul Reubens or Charlotte Rampling. Reubens is a ghost and Rampling
is an older woman who picks up Hinds at a bar for a one-night stand. Hinds finally has
an encounter with his older son at his college dorm room. I
think no one has the ability to convey such lost souls as does Solondz. His
films are exquisite tortures (think of “Palindromes”) and yet to
me they are essential viewing.
“Life During Wartime” is one of the great titles of all
time; the lives of his people are torn to shreds, by war both internal and
external. What will become of
them? We’ll have to see
what his next film brings us. |