A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Showing posts with label Todd Solondz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Todd Solondz. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2026

Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, 2009)D

Dylan Riley Snyder in Life During Wartime

Cast: Shirley Henderson, Ciarán Hinds, Allison Janney, Michael Lerner, Dylan Riley Snyder, Chris Marquette, Rich Pecci, Charlotte Rampling, Paul Reubens, Ally Sheedy, Michael K. Williams, Renée Taylor, Gaby Hoffman. Screenplay: Todd Solondz. Cinematography: Edward Lachman. Production design: Roshelle Berliner. Film editing: Kevin Messman. 

Todd Solondz's itchy, dark Life During Wartime draws more winces than laughs from its look at middle-class American lives. Pedophilia and suicide are among the topics it deals with in its depiction of the veneer of civilized behavior maintained by its characters, whom Solondz has introduced in earlier films. It centers on the three Jordan sisters, Trish (Allison Janney), Joy (Shirley Henderson), and Helen (Ally Sheedy), whom Solondz introduced in Happiness (1998) and Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), where they were played by other actresses. The film begins with Joy's breakup with her husband, Allen (Michael K. Williams), then moves to the Florida home that Trish shares with her children, the college-age Billy (Chris Marquette), 13-year-old Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder), and the younger Chloe (Emma Hinz). Trish has divorced her husband, Bill (Ciarán Hinds), who has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for molesting a child, and she is now dating Harvey (Michael Lerner). All of them are teetering on the brink. Trish self-medicates, Chloe is on Klonopin for panic attacks, and Timmy is being bullied at school because of his father's crimes. Joy sees the ghost of her former lover, Andy (Paul Reubens), who killed himself after their breakup. Bill leads a furtive life trying to re-enter society, picking up (or being picked up by) a woman (Charlotte Rampling) in a bar. In short, everyone's a mess. Solondz's straight-faced but twisty account of these lives on the edge depends on skillful performances that bring a measure of credibility to characters that are really just puppets in his hands. You may find yourself laughing when you feel you shouldn't. 

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