Todd Solondz’s Dystopia in Suburbia

Our most famous indie auteurs each have a pri­ma­ry styl­is­tic tool on their hip that defines them – Wes Anderson’s dead­pan tchotchke charm, Spike Jonze’s meta-movie irony, Nicole Holofcener’s state-of-women-now psy­cho­analy­sis, Kevin Smith’s pro­fane ama­teur­ish­ness, and so on. Todd Solondz, now releas­ing his sixth film, Life Dur­ing Wartime, is a mor­ti­fi­ca­tion­ist. He thinks in terms of appalling embar­rass­ment, often involv­ing chil­dren seri­ous­ly and weep­i­ly dis­cussing whol­ly inap­pro­pri­ate things. Whether he’s exploit­ing our dis­com­fort or pur­su­ing his pecu­liar vision of Amer­i­can life’s soft, rashy under­bel­ly is prob­a­bly a moot ques­tion – the two read­ings may be one and the same.

Pedophil­ia is a com­mon Solondz issue, fig­ur­ing promi­nent­ly in at least four of his films, includ­ing his lat­est, but the land­scape is famous­ly clut­tered with var­i­ous fre­quen­cies of taboo radi­a­tion, from rape to big­otry to com­pul­sive abuse; there are no nor­mal peo­ple in Solondz’s sub­ur­bia. The chil­dren, all at least poten­tial vic­tims, walk blind­ly and with pre­ma­ture con­fi­dence into the patho­log­i­cal pro­pellers around them.

Solondz’s films are also come­dies, which is what nudges them into a mis­fit cor­ner of the dance floor that is tru­ly all their own. At the same time – and this is what I find most endear­ing – the movies roll out with the voice and pos­ture of mod­ern fairy tales, with delib­er­ate­ly stilt­ed act­ing and faux-inno­cent rhythms, as if in this dam­aged Amer­i­ca, hor­ri­ble things will hap­pen but we’ll all be okay in the end – or not. But that’s okay, too. In Life Dur­ing Wartime there are even fat arti­fi­cial Flori­da moons in the sky hov­er­ing over the sleep­walk­ers and child moles­ters and tor­tured neu­rotics, and ghosts of dead lovers and hus­bands lurk around the edges, plain­tive­ly ask­ing for forgiveness.

“For­give­ness” is the issue being picked over – the word is uttered in virtually 

every scene, and whether mer­cy can be attained for the cru­el and per­vert­ed is the idea strug­gled with overt­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly by Tim­my (Dylan Riley Sny­der), a guile­less yet pre­co­cious 12-year-old prep­ping for his bar mitz­vah. Tim­my, like almost every char­ac­ter in the film, is a reimag­ined and/​or sequelized ver­sion of the cast of dis­as­ters from Solondz’s 1998 film Hap­pi­ness, both movies cen­ter­ing on three grown sis­ters. This time Alli­son Jan­ney is the sug­ary sub­ur­ban mom, now divorced from her con­vict­ed pedophile hus­band; Shirley Hen­der­son embod­ies the mousey door­mat, now mar­ried to a help­less perv-junkie; and Ally Sheedy is the nar­cis­sis­tic, high-strung celebri­ty, now hid­ing out in a Bev­er­ly Hills man­sion hav­ing sex with Keanu Reeves (for­ev­er off-screen).

Sev­er­al earth­quakes set the family’s already frag­ile foun­da­tions crum­bling: Henderson’s dreamy frump leaves her hope­less hus­band to vis­it her sis­ter and moth­er in Flori­da, the pater­nal child-rap­er (Cia­rán Hinds) is released from prison intent on con­nect­ing with his fam­i­ly, Janney’s opti­mistic sur­vivor falls in love with an aging divor­cé (Michael Lern­er), a ghost (Paul Reubens) appears demand­ing a sec­ond chance at romance, and Timmy’s loom­ing rite of pas­sage com­pels him to keep ask­ing ques­tions about man­hood, child rape, ​“fag­gots” and for­give­ness that he prob­a­bly shouldn’t.

Solondz’s arch anti­re­al­ism allows a boy to ask his moth­er about the sodomy his own father per­formed on boys his age – ​“Where do the parts go?” – with­out a wink of real angst. In fact, Life Dur­ing Wartime is filthy with sud­den cry­ing fits and shock­ing emo­tion­al ejac­u­la­tions, all of them on the edge of being com­ic but dar­ing you to let a chuck­le loose. (Some moments, like Sheedy’s fiery, delu­sion­al skew­er­ing of Hol­ly­wood self-obses­sion, are safe­ly, bril­liant­ly satir­i­cal, and you’re free to laugh.) Since Solondz’s break­through film Wel­come to the Doll­house (1995), he has posi­tioned him­self as a blow­back against the tide of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and in many ways he’s still spin­ning his wheels in that some­what dat­ed soil, not dri­ving on as he had with, say, his mag­is­te­ri­al­ly weird 2004 mas­ter­piece Palin­dromes. Is it still so shock­ing to con­sid­er the human or even iron­ic side to sex­u­al pre­da­tion? Are chil­dren still as inno­cent as we liked to think they were in the post-Rea­gan years?

Still, there’s a creepy torque to Life Dur­ing Wartime that is unique­ly Solondz, and the high prob­a­bil­i­ty of view­ers’ unease is part of his pro­gram. Cer­tain­ly, some adven­tur­ous film­go­ers may still be hor­ri­fied by his con­fronta­tions and emo­tion­al tox­i­c­i­ty, while oth­ers will look for some­thing new. Sim­i­lar­ly, as with Woody Allen (whose height­ened gab­bi­ness Solondz’s films evoke, plus an acid drip), many will find the film’s open­ly addressed eth­i­cal conun­drum – Can you or should you for­give a self­ish sib­ling or a thought­less lover, much less a pedophile? – to be mov­ing and pro­found, and many will not. Such is the risk of mak­ing moral­i­ty plays, even ones that skirt the absurd.