Indie enfante terrible Todd Solondz has been talking about his quasi-sequel variation to 1999’s “Happiness” for several years now.
At one point circa 2006/07 it was supposed to star Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, Hope Davis, Paul Dano and Faye Dunaway several other name actors, but obviously that one never happened.
It went from being titled “Life During Wartime,” to untitled, to “Forgiveness,” and then back to the original (based of a famous Talking Heads song).
What took so long? Script? Funding? The provocative miserablist’s last film was “Palindromes” in 2004, so it’s been five years since his last feature-film. Does the filmmaker still have his touch? As you’ve likely heard ‘Wartime’ features several of the same characters from “Happiness” and “Welcome To The Dollhouse,” but in this new iteration, they’re all played by entirely different actors (if you want to know who plays who, we’ve mapped it all out nicely for you). A bold and daring conceit.
Yet certain pictures at a film festival don’t age well and by that we mean, they seem fine at the time but are quickly forgotten in the shuffle of thing. Or maybe it was just that memorable in the scheme of things, but ‘Wartime’ is easily one of the more semi-uneventful films we saw at TIFF.
That’s not to say its bad either, but a bit of an inspired mess, and we wonder just how confused those who hadn’t seen “Happiness” before must have felt.
Picking up a few years after “Happiness” left off — though some characters have aged more than a decade while others have not, there’s a real happenstance to the characterization — as you’ve heard, new actors play old characters which is slightly odd considering none of them aside from maybe Philip Seymour Hoffman’s pervert phone-caller Allen and Jane Adams’ light-headed hippie nave Joy are very distinct and or super classic or memorable to begin with.
Thematically exploring the idea of forgiveness for hideous acts and unforgivable people, its a very Solondz conceit to confront the audience with this question — can you forgive the indefensible? — however much of it is handled with all of the subtlety of a barreling mack truck and the theme is repeated ad nauseum and shoved down our throats (the words “forgiveness” — is delivered like 30 times, dude we get it — this earns a writing award?).
So ‘Wartime’ begins as Joy (now played by a irony-free Shirley Henderson not on par with Jane Adams) and Allen (now played by Michael K. Williams, yes Omar from “The Wire”) are married in New Jersey, but the husband’s seemingly “cured” perversion tendencies are revealed to still be ongoing (“Only on Sunday’s!” he weeps and pathetically protests at a dinner).
Distraught and estranged from her husband, Joy leaves Allen and temporarily moves to Florida to be closer to her mother and sisters. In her encounters in sunny Miami beach, she comes across the ghost of Andy Kornbluth (originally played by John Lovitz, now played by Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman). Evidently he killed himself in “Happiness” (we honestly barely remember this) and now his apparition begins to haunt joy, beg for forgiveness (he railed into her for being “shallow” in the first film), and then encourages to cheat on her husband on him. Once rebuked he flies into a pathetic rage once again and hails her with epithets.
This ghost conceit is odd, doesn’t quite work and yet is still largely entertaining and funny taking it for what it is.
Then we slowly interconnect with the rest of the family members that tied the smiley suburban-hell milieu of “Happiness”: An excellent Allison Janney as Trish Maplewood (originally played by Cynthia Stevenson), the wife of the pedophile dad Bill Maplewood, (originally played by, Dylan Baker, now the role is empathetically rendered by Ciarán Hinds); Ally Sheedy plays Helen, the ice queen sister and actress once played by Lara Flynn Boyle, but she doesn’t have much to do here, other than play a one-note bitch; and two “Welcome To The Dollhouse” characters return, Mr. Weiner (now Michael Lerner you probably wouldn’t even remember the first actor) and Mark Weiner (Rich Pecci) all grown up now and become a socially-odd systems analyst who believes all in the world is futile because China will soon take over (And note Paris Hilton was announced in the trades as being part of the picture, but either she was cut out or her role was never shot, because she’s nowhere to be seen here).
Mr. Weiner begins to date Trish Maplewood, trying to put the past of her sick husband behind here and the two connect instantly — intentionally comically so. They’re practically off to the chapel minutes later, but both their families (her two kids including the uber-nerdy, freckle-faced Timmy played by Dylan Riley Snyder) and the awkward Mark have to approve. There’s a pretty hilarious sequence early on in the picture where an enchanted and smitten Trish naively tells Timmy that just thinking about Mr. Weiner makes her “wet,” which adds to a lot of confusion on the boy’s part and shows that Solondz hasn’t lost his bite; it’s inappropriate, wrong and pitch-black like much of the film’s humor (even 9/11 isn’t spared and there’s a few pretty scathingly funny terrorist jokes).
While the Maplewood/Weiner story provides the most laughs and mature moments, it’s the story of Bill Maplewood (Ciarán Hinds) as the pitiful pedophile trying to rehabilitate himself back into society after doing a decade-long stint in jail that is the most trenchant and moving. Desperate, broke and without a family, Bill goes from the New Jersey penitentiary to Florida in pursuit of his family. Initially we don’t know what his intentions are, especially after a break-in into their suburban pastel-happy home, but eventually we realize he’s trying to track down his grown-up son Billy who has moved out to attend college (Chris Marquette from “Fanboys” and “The Girl Next Door”).
After contemptibly trying to steal from an older woman he hooks up with (a venomous and bitter as coal Charlotte Rampling), the wretched, unshaven and worthless shell of a man tracks down his son at his college-room dorm. The pitiable scene — the father all but begs for water and jujubes he’s so broke and starving — is heartwrenching, penetrating and brutal and it might just be the most powerful and mature moment Solondz has ever presented on screen.
But as a whole, “Life During Wartime,” doesn’t quite coalesce and instead closes out in the end as a collection of mordantly funny, and corrosive to mildly engaging family moments testing the capacity for absolution and conciliation strewn together.
It does boast a killer ending, haunting and ambiguous that ends abruptly in jarringly striking manner, which does do a lot for its overall impact (closing well is always memorable), but it doesn’t condone the fact, that what has transpired before is uneven. Not quite the return to form as promised (though better than “Palindromes”) and not quite the mature effort professed by Venice critics (yes, he is much more sage and less outrageously shocking, but he still thankfully has an acidic tongue and an acerbic black heart), “Life During Wartime,” is a noble examination of empathy for heinous acts, if one, that’s partially too on-the-nose in moments and not always entirely successful. Essentially, it’s a new chapter in Todd Solondz’s career and one that will be interesting to watch once it’s fully fine-tuned. [B-]
