User Reviews

Welcome to another indie dramedy of quirky characters, this time courtesy of quirky indie director, Todd Solondz. Part black comedy, part drama with a message, I think Solondz wants it both ways. I saw the film at the IFC cinema in NYC and the two friends I was with found the blend of comedy and tragedy to be highly effective. Except for a few bits here and there and decent acting, I couldn't agree with my friends at all.

Life During Wartime begins with an intense conversation at a restaurant between Joy (Shirley Henderson) and her husband Alan (Michael Kenneth Williams). Joy, an underweight vegetarian who enjoys playing folk songs on her guitar, works with ex-cons and Alan is apparently a reformed crack addict. Joy is suddenly disappointed when a waitress recognizes Alan, who is still making obscene phone calls, and curses him out. It's supposed to be amusing as Alan blubbers inside the restaurant about how hard he's been trying to reform himself. Joy has had enough, so she heads to Florida to visit her sister, Trish (Allison Janney). Joy is plagued by visions of her first boyfriend Andy (Paul Reubens aka Pee Wee Herman) who committed suicide. Another unfunny bit is Joy castigating the phantom Andy about trying to kill himself with a paper bag, as he might not actually die and end up as a 'vegetable'. The same discussion happens later on between husband Alan, who also eventually kills himself, and ends up as Phantom #2 in Joy's disturbed mind.

Trish, another dysfunctional family member, is divorced from Bill who is now just getting out of prison for molesting young boys. There's more unfunny black comedy when Trish confides in her 12 year old son, Timmy (about to be Bar Mitzvahed) about how wet she gets thinking about her new boyfriend Harvey (Michel Lerner). Solondz juxtaposes the kooky but attractive Trish with the overweight Harvey and clearly is mocking his characters as we see Trish (towering over Harvey), passionately kissing him in a parking garage. Later, there's a joke about how Harvey voted for Bush and McCain but only because they supported Israel (Harvey makes it clear that he will eventually return to Israel when he's about to die).

Things get more serious when Timmy returns home after a kid at school mocks him about his pedophile father (information about the father is readily available over the internet). Trish comforts Timmy as he expresses his fears about being victimized by pedophiles. Unfortunately, Solodnz seems to enjoy putting in suggestions of anal penetration into the mouth of Timmy which doesn't ring true for a 12 year old.

Joy decides to visit the third sister, Helen, a former poet turned screenwriter in California. Helen is neurotic as the rest of her sisters and can't seem to take the pressure of success. She has a melt down in front of Joy complaining about the difficulties of being Keanu Reeves' girlfriend and being the victim of a stalker. Joy eventually calls husband Alan who has already killed himself with a gun in their apartment. We don't actually see the return to New York but we know she's found Alan's body after she has visions once again of him, after returning to Florida.

There are two final scenes leading to the film's climax. First Bill returns to the family home where he locates older son's Billy's address at college. Bill visits the older son at his dorm room where he admits that despite therapy in prison, his demons have not gone away and he's still a pedophile. When Bill asks his son what's his major in school, Billy replies 'anthropology'. It seems he's studying (of all things) the homosexual orientation of bonobo monkeys (Billy finds that incest between the monkeys is a natural thing!). Maybe I'm reading too much into this scene but perhaps Billy has a thing for his father (he does make it clear that he wants his father to be back in the family's lives but the father, a broken man, walks out forever). Why does Solondz keep undercutting our sympathies for the characters? The bit about the father's love for gum drops, just seems nonsensical.

Finally, there's Timmy's adult-like conversation with Harvey where his mother's suitor tries to comfort the boy over his fear of pedophilia. Again, the way in which Timmy's verbalizes his fears, doesn't seem like it could come from the mouth of a 12 year old. Timmy mistakes Harvey's comforting moves as an advance by someone about to molest him. As a result, Trish believes Harvey to be an actual pedophile and sends him home packing. Later, Timmy apologizes to Harvey's son Mark who informs him that his father is moving to Israel (presumably to die).

Life During Wartime features one laugh-out-loud character and that's Harvey's son, the nerdy computer specialist who believes China will take over the world. All the actors acquit themselves well here, especially Dylan Riley Snyder as Timmy, who despite the inappropriate language, manages to effect an aura of maturity, well beyond his chronological age.

Solodnz can't make up his mind whether he sympathizes with his characters or has contempt for them. Somehow all the quirkiness didn't endear me to any of them. In the end, Life During Wartime, with its theme of forgiveness, falls short of being effective drama, precisely because its characters are so one-dimensional. And as a comedy, much of the humor is designed to titillate, but unfortunately produces few laughs.

Movies directed like this should be injected with a small dosage of depth and purpose, so as to let viewers find the meaning of the movie themselves as supposed to being hit in the face with the same "meaningful" messages time after time.

Pretending, becoming a man, forgiving and forgetting, these are all points of interest thrown about the film with all the subtly and grace of a blunt axe. These concepts are deep and could have been put of as so if done differently but alas, they were not and so you are now looking at a weak, watered down, and pretentious version of the Coen brothers movie "A Serious Man" which, while odd and somewhat awkward, understands subtly.

The acting was not "bad", I actually think the whole cast did quite well considering what they had to do. How can a little boy swearing at random and speaking about forgiveness in such a tone as he did be considered believable? How can a mother talk about "getting wet" to her son seem like a real mother? Granted, mothers have moments of being inappropriate, but come now, let's not push it.

Perhaps I am missing something and this is a good film, but I left this movie thinking nothing but, "Shocking and forward, but not artistic and certainly not deep."

Todd Solondz might be the most polarizing comedy director no one's ever heard of. The reputation of his films proceed them; a shroud of controversy seems to surround his work, which frequently depicts explicit sexuality, including pedophilia and rape, not to mention murder, exploitation, and ridicule channeled through a pitch-black misanthropic irony. And yet you might as well be speaking another language bringing up his name and filmography with a mainstream crowd. Even in the circles in which he's known, his sense of humor is a decidedly acquired taste. So specific, in fact, that his latest film, "Life During Wartime," may come as a shock to his fans. And not the sort of shock they're used to.

A direct follow up to probably his most well known film, 1998's "Happiness," "Life During Wartime" provides a notably more contemplative take on the lives of Solondz's characters, who have been deliberately and entirely recast for this sequel. Yes, it has its moments of biting humor, dark caricatures, and discomfort, but this time around, he approaches them with a subtler, more refined eye. "Happiness" is a busy, sprawling movie—"Wartime" is a brief string of conversations reactive to the action of that film.

It has the tendency to come off initially disappointing, perhaps because it is his least funny film. But if it is his least funny film, then it is intentionally so; for a director who has tirelessly redefined the term 'mature content,' Solondz finally feels as though he himself is maturing. The result may be less fun, but it's probably more valuable.

And his characters breathe that maturation. In "Happiness," Bill Maplewood (then Dylan Baker, now Ciarán Hinds) is a struggling pedophile; he is defined and condemned by the things he does. His reintroduction in "Life During Wartime" is upon release from prison, where his sole motive is to track down his son and conduct an amateur psychoanalysis on the damage his behavior caused. Hinds is solemn and introverted in the role; Baker was oily, narcissistic, and well—Childish, if you'll forgive the phrase.

Maplewood's recurring dream is a perfect visual metaphor for not only the changes he has undergone between films, but the tones of the films themselves. In "Happiness," he dreams of an unspoiled park, complete with picnickers and strolling couples enjoying absolute tranquility—Before he loads an assault rifle and lays them all to waste. In "Wartime," Maplewood revisits the park, where a single elusive individual, scrubbed and out of focus, turns to him with a rose in hand.

What I find most interesting, however, is not the way Solondz reconsiders these characters, but how he reconsiders the idea of the sequel. He's dabbled before in casting multiple performers in a single role—His last film, "Palindromes," had eight actresses portraying its protagonist. But with "Life During Wartime" he commits entirely, while at the same time creating a film purposefully asimilar to the existing work.

It may not be as exciting or as groundbreaking a film as "Happiness" is and was, but it's more interesting for its reservations. The converse, 'Hollywood' approach would have been to outdo the original, to push the envelope even further, and the result would be infinitely less genuine. Instead, Solondz throws a curveball: treating his characters with unprecedented compassion (though only by comparison to his other films), and challenging our preconceived notions of both what a sequel is, and what a Todd Solondz film is.

"Life During Wartime" won't win over many detractors (they probably haven't heard of it anyway), and it even runs the risk of aliening fans expecting more vitriol—Leave it to Solondz to polarize audiences even when his shroud of controversy dissipates. The man has an absolutely uncompromising vision, and he's still one of the greatest comedy directors working today, whether you've heard of him or not.

I haven't reviewed a movie before, but after seeing this tonight, and seeing the reviews posted here, I felt it was necessary. I haven't seen the other movies referred to here (Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness), so take that into account.

This post may contain spoilers, as I think it's important to discuss the themes of the movie in context of its effectiveness, but I haven't, in my mind, given away important information that would spoil the ending or reveal a twist, as the guidelines suggest.

Positives: I thought the movie was visually engaging and there were interesting camera angles that added to the content of the scene. It seemed very thoughtfully directed and kept the viewers attention through lots of dialog and very little actual movement.

Negatives: This movie seemed overtly saturated and fixated on pedophilia and subtle shockery. Like an 8 year old cussing out grandma at Thanksgiving, once you step out of the moment you realize that there is some truly bizarre stuff in here. A mom telling her 12 year old son about getting "wet" on a date with a "real" man. There are tons of places where the line gets crossed between mother/son, and implied between father/son. Overtly sexual, pedophilic, and implicitly incestuous, there aren't many redeeming qualities to the themes of this movie. I've enjoyed dark movies, but I do not see the point of this one. It's as conflicted as it is shocking and, subtle as it is disturbing.

The movie is thought provoking along the lines of forgiveness and has some merit there. It provides ironic wit by adding lines like "an eye for an eye" (Jewish family). But overall this theme is dirtied, grimed, rusted and nearly lost in the overtness of it's otherwise perverse obsessions.

There is not a whole lot of depth to the characters. In some parts the dialog was excessively cheesy. Overall the characters seemed convincing, but utterly lost and dim in the light of changed perspective or growth (partly due to a very abrupt ending). Awkward is a very nice way to describe a lot of the interactions here--it is that at best. Hugely uncomfortable (mother-in-law sitting right next to me) with age- inappropriate interactions happening left and right. I did, however, find excellent ironic humor including Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) in a role as a ghost and ex-lover of a relationally confused character. There were other dark ironies that did make me kind of chuckle, but mixed between moments of shock and queasiness.

I'd argue that the dilemma of forgiveness developed in this movie could be much more easily related in an Aesop's fable, or from somewhere in the Torah, but if you prefer to wade through sexually perverse, disturbingly inappropriate movies to get your 'moral of the story' then this movie may be for you, otherwise I'm not sure what you'd get from it.

I saw Life During Wartime today at the Toronto International Film Festival. This definitely will be a film to divide audiences--like Solondz's other works from what I've heard. I'm definitely on the side of having enjoyed and appreciate it as an intelligent, thought- provoking, and well-written dark comedy/drama (it certainly defies classification!).

Admittedly the pace is slow and the film drags occasionally. Most of the scenes consist of conversations between just two characters, that alternate between depressing and unintentionally hilarious (owing largely to self-absorbed or tactless exchanges).

LDW is a smart film, it's true-to-life, and it has a lot to say about the nature of forgiveness. You'll see a lot of crying and people apologizing to each other. All of the characters are victims, in a one way or another, and are at with with themselves or with demons from their past. And each character has a different stance on forgiveness. The audience is left to wonder whether it's best to forgive and forget, forgive but never forget, forget but never forgive, or neither forget nor forgive)...

Confused? So was I, but it's fun to discuss afterwards, and put the various characters views on forgiveness into place after the film--and how factors like religion and age interact with these views. Solondz also prompts us to consider the role of forgiveness in 9/11 and the war in the Middle East.

In the end the only real complaint I had was that the film ended so suddenly. I hope we get to revisit these characters one last time. For now, I'm going back and watching Happiness (which I haven't seen in 10 years, and will certain help fill in some gaps given that it focuses on the same family).

The last words of this film for me were absolute perfection. While this film did have its flaws, the things it got right made up for all of them. There are some profound ideas in this film that can be overlooked if you're too focused on the bizarre storyline. But perhaps ideas like this can only be accurately portrayed with content as explicit as this. Solondz's films are exactly what they appear to be. They hide nothing, and I think that's what turns people off. People want a fantasy. They don't want to see backdrops of Taco Bell parking lots and they certainly don't want to hear about pedophilia or about the sort of unhappy talk they hear in their own families hoisted up on the big screen. I admit I didn't really care for the 'ghost' sequences but they were certainly entertaining. The timing and subtlety really shines here, every actor was excellent. I really didn't know what would happen next-one of the big reasons I am a Solondz fan. That facet alone makes his films true to life. People call this a bad 'vanity project' but I disagree.

I laughed out loud, I was shocked, amazed, and at the end of the last scene I was literally breathless.

If you are familiar with Todd Solondz' work, his latest film follows up on the fractured families we previously encountered in Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, but with entirely re-cast characters, which is thematically related to his previous film, Palindromes. Actually, these films all take place within the same bleak universe. The film is set several years after the events of Happiness, although in Solondz' fractured universe, the timeline doesn't quite make sense if you think about it too hard. However, the characters' development is as beautiful as they themselves are grotesque.

Ciaran Hinds' portrayal of Bill Maplewood, the pedophile father originally played by Dylan Baker is superb, as is the rest of the cast. Of particular note is Paul Reubens as Jon Lovitz's ghost who appears to Joy Henderson (played by Shirley Henderson): casting Pee-Wee Herman as a not-so tortured soul (or possibly a manifestation of Joy's neurosis) is an absolute stroke of genius on the director's part. Another standout is the always amazing Allison Janney, it is completely believable that the oh so perky Cynthia Stevenson would turn into this love-starved small-minded medicated woman after the events of "Happiness." This is not an easy, date movie. This director's films never are.

Pedophilia, Solondz's lifelong obsession, strikes again. Pedophilia peppered with hot lashes of steamy incestuous insinuations? Even better, as far as he is concerned; that REALLY gets Todd's blood going. I can half-picture him (not that I want to) masturbating while he writes these pervy "artistic" indie screenplays. Could it be that this weak, ugly little delta male has been tortured by wet-dreams and lonely man-on-boy illegal porn films his whole adult life? Perhaps not; he insists he only uses the subject "as a metaphor". Solondz is a talented film-maker, highly original, and funny – when he wants to be. I'd prefer not to think of him as a pervert asking society to show more kindness toward child-molesters, as if Western society hasn't already lost itself in its futile/laughable attempts to deny the existence of inherent evil. (You know those bewildered Marxists: society causes evil, not individuals themselves.)

Did Todd want LDW to be funny? I hope not, for our sake; because if this is what his humour has developed into, there's little to expect from his next movies. In that sense he reminds me of Mike Leigh, whose themes and style are similar. Leigh used to make funny comedy/dramas (a difficult feat), but eventually got too serious, far too pretentious, eventually dropping comedy altogether in favour of dreary, preachy drama.

Or did I mean to say lazy? Drama is easier to write than comedy; any putz can invent characters that weep on each other's shoulders and expect the same from the luckless viewers. LDW doesn't have any moments that will have you laughing, or even chuckling. "Happiness", for which this is intended as a sequel (?), was both hilarious and original, a refreshing film when it came out. In hindsight, "Happiness" was Solondz at his creative high, much like Leigh with "Naked". LDW simply re-hashes the same themes, sans the humour. So pedophiles are people too? Who the hell cares. Quoting one of Billy's daft college pals: "child-molestation is so passé"; a troubling line that might just reflect some of Solondz's own devious attitudes.

What's even more troubling, Todd might even be attempting to open our minds to the vague (and cretinous) notion/possibility that even terrorists might be as misunderstood and overly victimized, just like pedophiles. Certainly the posters of Che Guevara (a mass murderer: a fact 99% of the people reading this text are unaware of) and of a Palestinian kid standing in front of an Israeli tank, plus the retarded ramblings of the highly moronic pre-Bar-Mitzvah kid about 9/11 and forgiveness all seem to point in this direction; not nearly as rabidly and in-your-face blatantly/aggressively as a certain greedy buffoon by the name of Michael Moore, but it's there. Again, I hope I am wrong. If not, Solondz's decaying mind is enveloped in an even steeper moral and intellectual decline than I'd previously suspected. Still, it would be hardly surprising; the majority of society's more extreme misfits, outcasts and "freaks" are naturally – i.e. logically - drawn toward political extremism, and extremism in general. Just look at the higher echelons of Nazi Germany: as many sexual deviants there as the sick heart desires. Certainly most zit-faced, overweight film-buff nerds, riddled with self-loathing due to their sexual inadequacy and the shame of still living with their parents, are drawn toward Marxism, the other side of the lunatic coin. Perhaps Solondz got beaten up often as a child.

The boy in "Happiness" behaves like a real kid, unlike the artificial Timmy whose reactions and utterances seem forced and absurd nearly all of the time; at one moment speaking/acting like an adult, the other like an imbecile. How predictable that he would eventually heed his mother's "advice" and scream when a man touches him. How utterly corny that his mother would actually end her relationship with Harvey instead of sorting out the ludicrous misunderstanding – which would happen in the real world. In fact, this plot-device was more worthy of a garbage TV-sitcom than a movie with such "lofty" aspirations. "Happiness" wasn't predictable – LDW was. Joy's husband killing himself: also predictable.

"He knows that Bush and McCain are idiots". This, coming from a man who advocates understanding toward pedophiles – while using the "98% gene-pool incest-monkeys" analogy to subliminally justify sexual deviancy – this is practically a badge of honour for both of those politicians. The badge would say: "a deviant Hollywood depressive obsessed with pedophiles hates me". The scene with Joy playing a song on her guitar seems to have had only one purpose: to mention that "Vietnam was a mistake". Jesus H, Todd; that tired old left-wing shtick – in 2009?! That's the political equivalent to the comedic banana-peel fall. You hate war, we get it.

Solondz has stated that the Iraq/Afghanistan wars initiated this script. "Life during wartime": you've got to be kidding me. I'm aware he's using the title to mean two completely separate things, but I can't get around the whiny/deluded suggestion that America-in-war and America-not-in-war are such distinct, separates beasts, as if shopping in K-Mart changes drastically when there's a war on. He ought to visit the Balkans some time. Or Angola. (In a time-machine.) Yet another clueless/naive all-war-is-bad-except-WW2 left-wing Western pacifist who provides no alternatives/solutions, but is quick to criticize all violence, jumping on the highly unoriginal Bush-bashing anti-war bandwagon. In fine company has he thereby placed himself: Madonna, Green Day, Sean Penn, Pink, Paris Hilton, and George Clooney; all intellectuals.

Ally Sheedy (who's overrated) overplays it as if Nicholas Cage and John Travolta had personally coached her in the not-so-fine art of cinematic tom-foolery. Sillier still (though this isn't her fault) her character shifts gears without rhyme or reason. That character made very little sense, serving no purpose in the story except to give Todd a chance to have a go at Hollywood screenwriters (whom he presumably, and justifiably, probably considers sell-outs). Ironically, it seems Todd is heading that way too.

"People can't help it if they're monsters." – Bill (Life During Wartime)

Director Todd Solondz takes the various dysfunctional characters of his earlier film, "Happiness", recasts them, and places them in "Life During Wartime". This facial reshuffling then becomes an enquiry on Solondz's part: have these people changed? Are major personality or life changes even possible? How contingent is human behaviour? Can we reverse the scars left by the unbroken causal chains each human being finds themselves bound to?

"Happiness" was a jet black comedy which jumped from paedophilia to suicide to masturbation to divorce to murder, deftly hopping from taboo to taboo with a kind of soul crushing cruelty. For Solondz, everything is a masquerade, humans are petty, pathetic and cruel, and every good deed merely masks something horrible at worst, hypocritical at best.

With "Wartime" Solondz tries to recapture the cringe comedy and satirical edge of "Happiness", but mostly fails; we're now desensitized to his particular brand of sensationalism. What we're left with, then, is Solondz's clunky message: the past scars the future, Solondz says, but all should be forgiven, lest a cycle of animosity, hate, fear and torment be perpetuated. The film then aligns these themes to the events of September the 11th; America as a nation should forgive those who abuse her, as those upon whom pain is inflicted in the film should forgive their tormentors, or themselves if necessary. It's all very reductive, but far from the misanthropy which critics of Solodnz often accuse him of spouting. If anything, Solondz's a jaded idealist, his characters all looking for a way out of the rut he keeps digging them deeper into.

7/10 – Worth one viewing.