"Life During Wartime"

Writer and director Todd Solondz is many things, but up until seeing this film I did not necessarily believe that "master of suspense" was one of those things. And yet, as Life During Wartime began—with a reprise of sorts of the opening scene of Happiness, the 1998 film that the new picture is a kind of sequel to/variation on—I felt a sense of cringing dread that honestly did not let up for the entire film, which runs a very tight 98 minutes. There was some disturbance in the cinematic air that went well beyond the anguish of the characters. And as this is a Solondz film, all the characters are anguished, deeply so, even, no, make that especially, in their most ostensibly euphoric states. The film's opening scene takes place at a restaurant, and Allen (played in Happiness by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and here portrayed by Michael Kenneth Williams, and African-American actor; I mention this difference because it does register sharply in both the dynamic of the scene and of the newly conceived old character) is presenting Joy (Shirley Henderson) with the same engraved ashtray that was given to her by the appalling Andy in Happiness' opening scene. The film is replete with all these interesting corresponding dovetails with the earlier film, including the kinds of actors Solondz here chooses to take the "places" of the actors in the first film; and whole scholaraly studies may well be written about all these links, for in the space of five features, Solondz has managed to create a postmodern "omniverse" of which Quentin Tarantino perhaps could not even conceive. Going into a lot of detail about it here is only going to diverge too much from the point I'm most interested in making at the moment, so I'll put aside that theme for now. 

Anyway. Allen is giving this stupid ashtray to Joy, and I keep focusing in the scar that's creasing the character's forehead, and waiting for it to explode, like something out of an early Cronenberg movie. It does not, of course, but that's not because Life During Wartime is a particularly realistic movie; if it were, it would not be able to spin the effect I was so put under. Things do occur in the lives of the characters, the main ones being, of course, three sisters at various but equally unsatisfactory levels of personal achievement/fulfillment: Joy, the talentless hippie-dippie folksinger-songwriter who works with convicts and has now married Allen, the former phone-sex  pervert; Trish (Allison Janney), the now-single mom who has allowed her soon-to-be-bar-mitzvahed son Tim (Dylan Riley Snyder) believe that his child-raping father Bill (Cierán Hinds, seen in the above still) is dead; and Helen (Ally Sheedy), the impossibly pretentious and self-centered onetime poet who's now not at all enjoying a successful screenwriting career (and a relationship with someone named "Keanu") in Hollywood.  But Solondz's seemingly rudimentary structure—almost the entire film subsists of scenes in which only two characters interact with each other; hence the bar mitzvah scene, which might serve as the climax to almost any other such film, is pretty much dispensed with in an establishing shot, and later further distinguished by young Tim's absence from it—and slyly minimalist mise-en-scene and editing (the shot/reverse shot constructions of all the two-handers have a halting, fearful rhythm, almost as if the very film itself is reluctant to go on) create a sense of constant unease, perpetual nervousness if you will, that also put me in mind of another Feelies concept/lyric: "You must be waiting for things to happen/expecting something to happen/but nothing ever happens." The truly awful thing in Solondz's world is that after all the pain and squalor, life really does go on. And on.

For me this uncanny cinematic dread is a more salient feature of Life During Wartime than its actual content, which, I should say, I don't have any particular problem with. Yes, as with almost all his works, this one does feature extremely frank sex talk coming out of the mouth of an underage character, but I don't see this as Solondz being unduly or meretriciously provocative; childhood anxiety about/comprehension of "adult" issues is one of his main themes, after all, and there's no reason for him to discontinue exploring it just because he's done so before. I also don't think it's anti-semitic, or self-hating-Jew-like, or any such thing, for him to make fun of a character who's not yet even visited Israel expressing a commitment to be buried there. And so on. In fact, I think the writing here is some of the deepest Solondz's done, particularly with respect to the solipsism that all of us are in some ways inescapable heirs of and victims to, and its relation to what goes on in the larger world. "The enemy's within," a sinister character (Charlotte Rampling, superb, as are all the actors) who winds up a peculiar benefactor to the just-released-from-prison Bill observes pointedly in the middle of a sex negotiation; and this truth relates in a disturbingly oblique way with Tim's heartfelt and necessarily callow reflections on the notion of forgiveness as it relates to "terrorists"—who in his cosmology range from pedophiles to, of course, the 9/11 hijackers. 

Bear in mind, of course, that I am the critic who, when rhapsodically reviewing Happiness for Premiere, suggested that Solondz could well become New Jersey's answer to Luis Buñuel, a proposition that should have earned any critic a lengthy stretch in Fulsome Prison. Yes, Solondz is, like Buñuel, a satirist and a boundary-pusher, but on the one hand he lacks Buñuel's detachment and at the same time has too much of a different kind of detachment. The detachment he lacks is the sort that gives Buñuel's films, particularly the later ones, their lovely, eccentrically charming wry and dry quality; and the detachment Solondz does possess places him at such a remove that his perspective on his characters can be read as contempt by those who aren't paying close enough attention. I'd say that Ben Gazzara furiously sprinkling salt on his dinner at the end of Happiness is a genuinely Buñuelian moment, while Dylan Baker's Bill's too-often-celebrated final admission to Billy in that film is a pertinent example of Solondz hitting things too squarely on the nose. (Incidentally, at the reception following the film's premiere in New York last night, I was shamefully admitting my print indiscretion to some friends, one of whom pointed out that I did at least make the Buñuel comparison before Solondz shot Palindromes, which features various actors playing the female lead, in a trope that could conceivably be said to have been influenced by Buñuel's final film That Obscure Object Of Desire. One friend suggested that I thus could, in the manner of Armond White's demented fulminations about Noah Baumbach and Greenberg, announce that Solondz had gotten the idea as a result of my review, which might help make me look less silly. I don't know about that.) The bits in Life During Wartime are similarly hit-or-miss, but in a way that doesn't quite matter as much as the shroud of mordantly funny terror that enwraps the film entire. A true black comedy, to be sure.

Comments

[bill]

I was very glad to read this review. I actually really like Solondz, which is an opinion I've found doesn't meet with too much sympathy these days. The reaction to news that LIFE DURING WARTIME was filming/was finished/is screening has tended to be "Oh great, another depressing movie!" As if that's all that's being offered. I think he's a really unique talent -- still raw, in a lot of ways, but because of that, also kind of appealingly reckless. I'm looking forward to this.

Off topic, but speaking of Hinds: Glenn, have you seen THE ECLIPSE (not that one, the other one)? I'd be really interested to know your take on it, especially as a horror film, of which I think it as a very unusual kind.

[Tony Dayoub]

Glenn, I had a problem with LIFE DURING WARTIME, and I wanted to get your take on it.

With this movie being so focused on the theme of forgiveness, it really irks me that Solondz stacked the deck in his favor by casting new actors, prodding one to emotionally detach from the original "crimes" each character commits in HAPPINESS.

One could apply this to any of the characters, but using Ciarán Hinds' Bill as the most obvious example, it becomes far easier to feel neutral (as far as one can with this kind of thing) about his perversion here, where it's simply spoken of anecdotally and with some distance, than in HAPPINESS where one experiences the repulsive crime along with Dylan Baker.

Would anyone feel so open to even addressing this theme in LIFE DURING WARTIME if it was Baker we'd be seeing up there asking for forgiveness instead of Hinds? Isn't this a cheat?

[Fuzzy Bastard]

I'm constantly impressed by Solondz's cinematic intelligence, even as I'm frustrated by the limits of his movies. He so relentlessly allows in only the very worst of human behavior that his films are something much worse than depressing---they're *unconvincing*. But he remains one hell of a director of actors, and I'm not sorry that he seems to have set aside some of the trickery of Palindromes, so... I'll have to check it out.

[Matt Dutto]

Haven't seen HAPPINESS in years, but wasn't that Jon Lovitz playing the ashtray-giver in the opening scene?

[Glenn Kenny]

@ Matt D. : Yes, that character was played by Lovitz. Here, he's played, in a quite inspired turn, by Paul Reubens.

@ Tony: No, I don't think it's a cheat, because I don't think the film is asking the audience to forgive Bill. It's more about looking at his desire to be forgiven than about "sympathizing" with him. At least that's how I saw it. I really didn't ever get the sense of the film trying to solicit any judgment of that sort from the viewer.

@Bill: Haven't seen "Eclipse" yet, just got the Blu-ray, look forward to checking it out this weekend.

[C]

Solondz is a severely underappreciated filmmaker, and for my money, the best writer of all current American auteurs.

[Stephen Whitty]

Glenn, thanks for this and your (unsurprisingly) very thoughtful reactions.

I thought there were some very interesting things in this film, one of the reasons I found a lot of the critical reaction when it showed in Toronto -- the usual sort of "But there's nobody LIKABLE here!" -- a little distressing.

As you point out, a great deal of the film is about forgetting and forgiveness (and how they differ). I wonder if that isn't part of Solondz' intention in casting different actors; not as Tony D. suggests, to make their past crimes seem less, but just to play tricks with our memory.

If, for example, Dylan Baker had returned, well then when Solondz referenced his crime we'd have very specific images to draw on. But with Hinds as the character now, I don't think it lessens our reactions so much as complicates them; what, exactly, were the precise facts, the exact feelings? Can we really reconstruct them a decade later?

And I think that goes back to Solondz' musings on what, precisely, real forgiveness is -- a willed acceptance, or a willful ignorance.

Not that, I hasten to add, I think Mr. Maplewood should be happily welcomed back into society -- or that Solondz is a particularly happy fellow -- just that I think this is part of the question the filmmaker is asking.

[Tony Dayoub]

Thanks for responding, Glenn. And Stephen, that's an interesting way of putting it.

I found this "complication" too distracting to appreciate what Solondz was going for. While I think Glenn is right to say Solondz doesn't want the audience to forgive Bill, I do think the director wants to reset one's feelings on the matter back to zero, in effect equalizing the feelings of viewers familiar with these characters with those who are coming to them for the first time.

I found the Hinds and Williams characters much more sympathetic in this film than when they were played by Baker and Hoffman in HAPPINESS. Inversely, Henderson and Janney seemed so much more whiny and shrewish than in their previous incarnations as played by Jane Adams and Cynthia Stevenson. I'm not sure this wasn't a deliberate intention on Solondz's part, and it felt more than a bit manipulative.

[Dan Coyle]

"The detachment he lacks is the sort that gives Buñuel's films, particularly the later ones, their lovely, eccentrically charming wry and dry quality; and the detachment Solondz does possess places him at such a remove that his perspective on his characters can be read as contempt by those who aren't paying close enough attention."

That's a apt descriptor as any for why I was never able to get on the Solondz train, though I don't despise him like some. I just... kind of sit there with his work, admiring it but unable to connect with it.

As for Bunuel comparisons, I used to call Alex Cox's Walker "The Bunuel of the Reagan Era", so, you know, at least you never did that Glenn. ;-)

[Tom Russell]

I really liked HAPPINESS and STORYTELLING, but found PALINDROMES really unrewarding, mostly because of the multi-casting tic. But LIFE DURING WARTIME sounds more appealing to me, and its casting seems to be less of an affectation and more of a new perspective on his characters-- like the casting of Michael Williams (fucking Omar!) in place of Hoffman that you mention.

Hoping to see it soon.

[DUH]

Dan Coyle: Wait a minute, what's wrong with calling Alex Cox's Walker "The Bunuel of the Reagan Era"??

[Jeff McMahon]

And to bring it full-circle, I was never able to get into Solondz's films until Palindromes, which I found touching and graceful in a very odd, somewhat bitter way.

[Fuzzy Bastard]

@ Dan Coyle: WALKER is totally "the Bunuel of the Reagan era", except maybe sharper in his political critique. I can't begin to summarize how happy I am that this movie, which I've loved in solitude since the 80s, is finally getting its due!

[James Keepnews]

Fuzz -- I think for the first time hereabouts I must beg to differ with your opinion. I think Walker is a borderline bomb, and this from someone who adores Cox and pretty much bows five times daily in the direction of Rudy Wurlitzer (Candy Mountain...mmmm, mm mm). As satire, it's threadbare, undercooked and, although I haven't seen it in some time and can't recall specific moments, seemed to strain uncomfortably for resonance with our undeclared war on the Sandanistas. But worse, the characters seem to be all straw men -- I felt like I got a deeper, truer portrait of William Walker from Pontecorvo's Burn! than I did from Walker. So much else by Cox deserves the due Walker is receiving lately -- anyone else see The Winner?

Yes, Solondz is a great writer, albeit an undistinguished director. Yet, as much as I liked Storytelling, I didn't fall all over myself to see Palindromes and, accordingly, missed it. I still feel like Welcome to the Dollhouse is his best work, but based on the buzz, perhaps that status will be challenged by This Ain't No Disco.

[Dan Coyle]

Well, I love Walker with all my heart, but I kinda got shouted down the last time I associated it with Bunuel. ;-)

James Keepnews: The Winner? Seriously? Excepting Frank Whaley, that film was a mess and Cox himself regrets making it, though mainly because his original score by Pray For Rain was thrown out by the producers.

[nrh]

Candy Mountain!

[Keith Uhlich]

Damn straight "Walker" is the Bunuel of the Reagan era. And Anthology Film Archives has it in their upcoming "Anti-Biopics" series. Good time for a big-screen view.

[James Keepnews]

I guess between one Candy Mountain cheer and one Winner jeer I'm batting .500, which is great for the majors.

Dan: seriously, and I'm well aware that Cox washed his hands over it. I knew none of that when I saw The Winner, in a period when I thought Vincent D'Onofrio -- albeit from day one at Parris Island so very much ham on wry -- could do no wrong. Naturally, I've since learned otherwise. I generally don't like Whaley and have little feeling for him in that film, whereas I think VO, co-producer Rebecca De Mornay and most especially Delroy Lindo are all superb, and the existential/surrealist sensibility brought to the subject of gambling felt like a less-coked-out, smarter older sister to the similar vibe in Repo Man. In that respect, even though it's not without the kind of major flaws that prevent it from being great, I think it's a better "gambling film" than either the overpraised, nearly contemporaneous Hard Eight or, ditto, The Cooler.

I guess I'm also longing for a bit more of Buneul in Solondz, whose nihilism, though transfixing when literally embodied by great actors like Dylan Baker or Jane Adams, seems to me to run a little glib, as do his social critiques; we could never say the same about Luis. TS' work plays like the love -- or is that "hatefuck"? -- child of Woody Allen and E.M. Cioran

[The Siren]

"...Solondz, whose nihilism, though transfixing when literally embodied by great actors like Dylan Baker or Jane Adams, seems to me to run a little glib, as do his social critiques; we could never say the same about Luis."

This.

[Fuzzy Bastard]

@ James: I haven't seen The Winnd]er yet, but yeah, Walker. Love it. Love Ed Harris, in particular---his portrait of an Army man who's so tightly controlled that you don't realize that he's batshit insane is compelling and still relevant. And I love the Herzogian device of having the film slowly but surely lose its mind alongside the character. And I love the accompanying move from a relatively realistic period epic to Leone spaghetti Western to some kind of strange Brechtian theatricality, and back again---it's like a whole history of the American war movie along with a critique of same.

But yes on Solondz's glibness. This is what I mean about finding him unconvincing---I would find his nihilism more resonant if we could see it overcoming kindness and optimism, rather than the relentless deck-stacking he engages in as a writer. He's a potent filmmaker---the editing in Happiness is underrated and effective---but rather like Trent Reznor, his technical skill can't quite make up for his adolescent attitudinizing.

[James Keepnews]

"This."

That?

[Zach]

Ditto on Solondz being too deterministic and glib. It would be nice if he had more of the depth and nuance of Bunuel, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards. Although his films are usually worth a look, and this review has certainly piqued my interest.

As far as Walker goes...while I appreciate its intentions (as best I understand them) I think the film is a shambles. The absence of recognizable psychology would be forgivable if it had any formal coherence, precision, or potent political critique. I had high hopes for that film, especially being a fan of Ed Harris, but it played like an adolescent attempt at agitprop, made all the more frustrating by the fact that its heart was, essentially, in the right place.

Hearing it compared to Bunuel, who could be amazingly nuanced and incisive - not to mention way more technically accomplished than Cox, is bizarre.

[The Siren]

@James Keepnews: Means I agree. :)

[Jake]

Damn straight "Walker" is the Bunuel of the Reagan era. And Anthology Film Archives has it in their upcoming "Anti-Biopics" series. Good time for a big-screen view.

Saw the Criterion disc recently. It reminded me a lot of Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Great soundtrack, but a little slow and uninteresting.

Sir Kenny, is your review of Happiness available?

[James Keepnews]

Siren: Thought so, but feel doubly validated now. :}

The one good thing I can say about Walker are the two words which often account for the best thing in most of Cox's films I've seen: Sy Richardson. Cox has a great feel for this extremely underused character actor who occasionally pops up in the damnedest places, like My Brother's Wedding -- near as I can tell, his finest work has been for Alex C. Any humanity obtaining among the agitproper straw wo/men in Walker comes from Richardson, and sadly not from the otherwise brilliant Harris' untenably broad caricature. I hear tell Richardson remains in excellent form in Cox's most recent post-Western, Searchers 2.0. The title itself seems kinda glib these many years past the freshness date of software-versioning-as-title, but I further hear tell this has more than a little of Cox trademark knowing punk absurdity, so who among us could miss it?

[Jake]

James Keepnews: "TS' work plays like the love -- or is that "hatefuck"? -- child of Woody Allen and E.M. Cioran"

I liked this bit in this column David Auerbach wrote on Cioran (URL at the bottom):

"Cioran paints himself into a nihilist's corner, offering no solutions, no hope, no happiness, and above all, no certainty. After tidily demolishing most major religions in a few pages, all he can do for an encore is attack materialists. After a while, Cioran's particular beef becomes less important than the overriding truth that it is wrong. More specifically, you are wrong, no matter what you believe. He picks himself as the first example, repeatedly looking in the mirror and going into conniptions over what he sees.

The only thing Cioran positively declares is a war on smugness. Unable to legitimate altruism and egalitarianism any more than fascism, he's happy enough to ensure that no one is ever again led around by their beliefs. Unfortunately, he includes himself in the enemies' list, and so his writings descend into an inextricable Gordian knot. He wants everyone to be as miserable as he, because he's scared of what will happen if everyone isn't. Despite all the intentional pointlessness of his efforts, you can't criticize Cioran for being puerile. With every indulgence into self-pity, Cioran gives a frightening example of what happens when conviction overcomes doubt: collaboration, oppression, and tyranny. The solitary good society is moved to doubt before all else; only then is it placed in check.

The same is true of his writings. Cioran intentionally antagonizes all who would seek to hold him up as thoughtful, mature, or worthwhile, because he does not want that respect. To him, it is poisonous, the seed of self-aggrandizing, self-propelling authority. And for those who have the conviction of their beliefs, and Cioran wants those with conviction in their beliefs accountable for them; that this precludes happiness is coincidental. But he phrases it in such an irritating manner that any such people would disregard him, because if they listened, he could not maintain his air of condescension. So Cioran excludes himself by minimizing himself: he writes a self-negating philosophical screed that will surely be ignored."

URL: http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxiii/3.6.97/opinion/freak.html

[James Keepnews]

"... a self-negating philosophical screed that will surely be ignored."

Huh! Did Cioran fuck David Auerbach's girlfriend, or something?

Wow, well, going deep on Cioran during a discussion of Todd Solondz' latest film is getting JUST A LITTLE off-topic, but that's on me, so...I don't disagree with some of what DA says, but that last sentence strikes me as a consummation devoutly to be wished by Davey and unlikely to be recognized by anyone else who appreciates the abject corrective Cioran's withering critiques have been, and can be in an age whose philosophical discourse is so jargon-laden and fatuously fabulist (I mean, "post-human"? We should live so long, and I'm sorry Cioran didn't so he could take a piece out of so risible a term).

Auerbach is quite right when he observes that the first (maybe, second) person E.M. points his finger at is himself, but wrong when he sees nothing worth elevating. "Unable to legitimate altruism and egalitarianism any more than fascism, he's happy enough to ensure that no one is ever again led around by their beliefs." -- Oh, really? Not St. John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila? Cioran's "Dealing with the Mystics" is a bracing, informed and thorough examination of his admiration of the great mystics true abjection with which he shares.

"After tidily demolishing most major religions in a few pages, all he can do for an encore is attack materialists."-- David is mistaken. As this essay was part of the overture, as it were, of Cioran's writing on the scene (viz. 1956's Temptation to Exist), I suppose he needed no encores with which to impress David Auerbach, very possibly others. Even as someone who has not read Cioran exhaustively, and loath as I am to keep slinging today's modifier-for-the-win here on SCR, Auerbach comes off slightly glib on this subject.

Here's Susan Sontag in her introduction to Temptation, re-published in Styles of Radical Will, resolutely unglib about the very essay discussed above: "Cioran's envy of the mystics, whose enterprise so resembles his — 'to find what escapes or survives the disintegration of his experiences: the residue of intemporality under the ego's vibrations' — is frank and unmistakable. Yet, like his master Nietzsche, Cioran remains nailed to the cross of an atheist spirituality. And his essays are, perhaps, best read as a manual of such an atheist spirituality."

[Fuzzy Bastard]

"abject corrective"?

[James Keepnews]

ab·ject (āb'jěkt', āb-jěkt')
adj.
1. Brought low in condition or status.

cor·rec·tive (kuh-rek-tiv)
–adjective
1.
tending to correct or rectify; remedial: corrective exercises.

–noun
2.
a means of correcting; corrective agent.

[Dan Coyle]

James and Siren: These! Those! The Thing of it Is...

And James, I heartily agree on Sy Richardson. His cry of desperation at the end of Walker as the helicopter arrives is one of the best moments of the film, as his performance is excellent throughout. On the Criterion commentary, Cox cites a wordless scene with Richardson saying goodbye to one of his comrades (in the wake of Walker's decision to introduce slavery) as his favorite shot in the film, though he sheepishly admits Miguel Sandoval and the second unit guys shot it while he was working on another scene. It's also one of the few times on that commentary that Cox isn't insufferably smug (Wurlitzer, by contrast, is very thoughtful when Cox isn't talking over him).

Plus, he's friends with me on Facebook! ;-)