Happiness (1998) That film was not wretched per se, but its insistent jadedness didn't strike me as any more genuine than Steven Spielberg's indomitable optimism. Solondz does much better with Happiness, which follows a Robert Altman-esque assortment of related characters through various plots delineating the bleakness of each's personal landscape. His point (that happiness is a myth) seems a bit apologetic, like this is a guy who doesn't even want to try to be happy (much less make his viewers feel happy), but at least it's substantiated by the storylines, which are executed pretty well. Still, it's tough to love a movie in which a rampant pedophile (Dylan Baker) is probably the closest character you can find to a sympathetic one, so invariably when I watch this movie I am struck by a smugness factor that I can't seem to shake like the director knows how unpleasant it is to flaunt this shit in front of our faces, and he gets off on it. The writing is arch and predictable, though I definitely admire Solondz's (arguably pathological) commitment to complete misery. Every character in this film exhibits some kind of compulsive behavior—eating, not eating, jerking off, raping kids, infidelity, sexual perversity, seeting rage—the gang's all here. Though most of the situations are not played off for laughs per se, they're not treated with anything like sympathy or, for the most part, insight. The overriding feeling is that the situations are being foisted upon you simply to push your buttons. Still, there is some power here, most of it stemming from the performances, some of which (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker, and Jane Adams in particular ) get at some real pain and revelation, instead of the simple snipery offered by the rest of the cast (Cynthia Stevenson and Lara Flynn Boyle especially, who play this like it's a sitcom). The discomfort level reaches its boiling-over point with a scene between a tearful Dylan Baker and his son, who is simultaneously disturbed by his father's serial fucking of the boy's friends, and hurt that Baker doesn't want to fuck him. Yowza. Hardly easy to watch, but the scene is rather spellbinding. Then, true to form, Solondz goes and ends the film with the same boy ejaculating on a railing and then going inside to triumphantly tell his family: "I came." Sure, I wanted release from Happiness, but not like that.
Review by Hung Downey |