HAPPINESS: Worst of the Year (SPOILERS)
Peace Electric
There’s a scene in ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ where some small kid has
just been beaten up and humiliated by his peers. The heroine of the
film, another equally awkward teenager, comes up to help him. The kid
basically insults her, laughs at her, and then runs off.
That scene, to me, concisely sums up the Todd Solondz aesthetic. He
takes miserable, depressed, pitiful people, and then he spends the
film’s entire running time not only laughing at them, but mocking them
for being miserable, depressed, and pitiful. I have nothing against a
film that depresses its audience; however, I *do* have something
against a film that depresses its audience and then laughs at them for
being depressed -- for having taken it all so seriously. Throughout
this entire thing I kept waiting for one scene -- just *one* scene --
where Solondz *didn’t* belittle his characters, where he threw away his
detached ironic tone, where he actually gave us a genuine emotion.
Needless to say, I never got that. Instead, you have scenes of a raped
boy throwing up semen at the breakfast table, an obese woman ordering
ice cream in the middle of relating her rape/murder story, a man
murdering a dozen people in a park, and so on. And it’s not so much the
content that annoys me, it’s the way the content is treated -- it’s the
way the characters are being treated. You’d think Solondz -- himself so
clearly miserable, depressed, and pitiful -- would have some empathy
for these characters he’s created and their tragic situations, but
apparently not; apparently he likes to make people up only to bring
them down. (He’s like the anti-Tim Burton.)
That’s the biggest problem with the film, but it's not the only one.
Ignoring its offensiveness, the film just isn’t funny. Now, perhaps I
simply don’t get the whole “poking people in the eye with a cold,
unemotional stick” thing. I suppose that some people find that stuff
uproariously hysterical (the crowd sure was whooping it up), but to me
it doesn’t have the structure of humour, it doesn’t have the set-up of
a joke. These terrible things happen, and unless the audience is
laughing because they’re so uncomfortable (which I doubt), I really
don’t understand what’s supposed to be funny about it. I don’t know,
maybe I invest too much in movies. Maybe I shouldn’t care. Maybe I
should hate a character as soon as they walk on screen so that I can
later revel in their embarrassment.
Actually, maybe not. Bad idea.
--
peacel
pea...@sk.sympatico.ca
“The world and its characters materialize out of the abyss of the
imagination, and in their impossibility, they seem more real than
the characters in many realistic movies.”
-Roger Ebert on ‘Babe: Pig in the City’
MuseMalade
>
> (Spoilers.)
>
> Throughout
> this entire thing I kept waiting for one scene -- just *one* scene --
> where Solondz *didn’t* belittle his characters, where he threw away his
> detached ironic tone, where he actually gave us a genuine emotion.
How about Joy finding out that her new Russian friend Vlad has been
swiping her stuff? Or Dylan Baker's confession to Rufus Read?
> You’d think Solondz -- himself so
> clearly miserable, depressed, and pitiful -- would have some empathy
> for these characters he’s created and their tragic situations, but
> apparently not; apparently he likes to make people up only to bring
> them down. (He’s like the anti-Tim Burton.)
I think the anti-HAPPINESS contingent (which you've just been admitted
to) exaggerate Solondz's contempt, just as the pro-HAPPINESS folks tend
to overstate his empathy. The film's wildly uneven. I found the
Hoffman-Manheim storyline almost completely botched; I'd shelf Manheim's
confession in the ice cream parlor next to PRIVATE RYAN's frame story in
the Hall of Shame. But Jane Adams' storyline was full of lovely
moments; there's no doubt in my mind that Solondz's sympathy lies with
her. Dylan Baker's thread was also remarkable, if somewhat uneven. I
couldn't detect any moment where Solondz displays unadulterated contempt
for Dylan Baker's character.
> Ignoring its offensiveness, the film just isn’t funny.
Maybe I should seek help, but I found it the funniest live-action movie
of the year. I found Hoffman's wallpaper a hell of a lot more funny
than Mary's hairgel. It's more creative, too.
MuseMalade
Peace Electric
(Spoilers: 'Happiness', 'There's Something About Mary'.)
> > Throughout this entire thing I kept waiting for one scene -- just
> > *one* scene -- where Solondz *didn’t* belittle his characters,
> > where he threw away his detached ironic tone, where he actually
> > gave us a genuine emotion.
>
> How about Joy finding out that her new Russian friend Vlad has been
> swiping her stuff?
Solondz uses the entire film to mock, insult, and degrade the Joy
character. He has the Russian take advantage of her before stealing her
stuff *and* asking to borrow some cash. He has the wife spit in her
face and drag her down to the ground by the hair. He has a surprisingly
good Jon Lovitz cuss her out in the very first scene (and even commit
suicide afterwards, as if it weren't enough!). He has all of her
friends and relatives make subtly derogatory comments every chance they
get. He has protesters berate her with insults and soggy tomatoes. He
has her walk in on a new teaching job only to be reamed out by the
entire classroom. And Solondz was most certainly laughing at the
character as she quietly strolled down the sidewalk, vaguely happy
after her one night stand.
Anyway, it seemed obvious to me that Solondz was getting off on
treating Joy like shit.
> Or Dylan Baker's confession to Rufus Read?
If Rufus Read is the son, then I've already covered this scene. Solondz
tricks you into thinking he's being genuine (or at least tries to trick
you), and then laughs at everyone he's tricked with that final
punchline: "No, I'd jerk off instead." That line received one of the
biggest laughs in the entire film.
> [...] Dylan Baker's thread was also remarkable, if somewhat uneven.
> I couldn't detect any moment where Solondz displays unadulterated
> contempt for Dylan Baker's character.
The scene where he receives the threatening phone call is all right,
and the scene where he tries to confess to his wife isn't bad, but
aside from those two, I think the character is receiving some scorn as
well. Surely Solondz was laughing at him as he clumsily masturbated to
the kiddie magazine, or when he talked to his kid about erections and
such. (If not, then he has no skill at conveying anything to the
audience, since they were laughing quite a bit during these scenes.)
Oh, and isn't it telling that the character most deserving of scorn
actually receives the least? Perhaps Solondz intended that as the final
fuck you to both his characters ("this fat pig over here is worse than
a pedophile," "this moronic, confused little boy is worse than a
pedophile," etc.), as well as the audience (Solondz won't allow us the
satisfaction of seeing this monster get what he deserves).
> > Ignoring its offensiveness, the film just isn’t funny.
>
> Maybe I should seek help, but I found it the funniest live-action
> movie of the year. I found Hoffman's wallpaper a hell of a lot more
> funny than Mary's hairgel. It's more creative, too.
Wow, I can't even see what's funny about the wallpaper scene. So he
jerks off onto the wall and then covers it up with paper. So where's
the humour in that? What's the joke?
'Mary's semen scene, on the other hand, has the structure of comedy.
The sequence builds and builds, going farther and farther than you
thought it would. It's like a comedy sequence from a silent film in
the way that one problem leads to another problem that leads to another
problem, each one consecutively more over-the-top and unbelievable.
It's not the funniest bit in the film, but it is very funny.
Steve Erickson
> Peace Electric wrote:
> >
> > (Spoilers.)
> >
> > Throughout
> > this entire thing I kept waiting for one scene -- just *one* scene --
> > where Solondz *didn’t* belittle his characters, where he threw away his
> > detached ironic tone, where he actually gave us a genuine emotion.
>
> How about Joy finding out that her new Russian friend Vlad has been
> swiping her stuff? Or Dylan Baker's confession to Rufus Read?
>
>
> > You’d think Solondz -- himself so
> > clearly miserable, depressed, and pitiful -- would have some empathy
> > for these characters he’s created and their tragic situations, but
> > apparently not; apparently he likes to make people up only to bring
> > them down. (He’s like the anti-Tim Burton.)
>
> I think the anti-HAPPINESS contingent (which you've just been admitted
> to) exaggerate Solondz's contempt, just as the pro-HAPPINESS folks tend
> to overstate his empathy. The film's wildly uneven. I found the
> Hoffman-Manheim storyline almost completely botched; I'd shelf Manheim's
> confession in the ice cream parlor next to PRIVATE RYAN's frame story in
> the Hall of Shame. But Jane Adams' storyline was full of lovely
> moments; there's no doubt in my mind that Solondz's sympathy lies with
> her. Dylan Baker's thread was also remarkable, if somewhat uneven. I
> couldn't detect any moment where Solondz displays unadulterated contempt
> for Dylan Baker's character.
I agree. More than any other 1998 release, HAPPINESS really demonstrates
the extent to which films work a Rohrsach test. I'm equally baffled by
people who claim that the film demonstrates total contempt for its
characters (especially since many of them had no problem with a truly
hateful film like WILD THINGS) and people who claim that it holds no
contempt towards them.
>
> > Ignoring its offensiveness, the film just isn’t funny.
>
> Maybe I should seek help, but I found it the funniest live-action movie
> of the year. I found Hoffman's wallpaper a hell of a lot more funny
> than Mary's hairgel. It's more creative, too.
I did too. It's the kind of film that I found enormously entertaining while
I was watching it but that seems worse the more I think about it.
--
Steve Erickson
Remove "nospam" to reply.
http://home.earthlink.net/~steevee
MuseMalade
>
> MuseMalade wrote:
>
> (Spoilers: 'Happiness', 'There's Something About Mary'.)
>
> > > *one* scene -- where Solondz *didn’t* belittle his characters,
> > > where he threw away his detached ironic tone, where he actually
> > > gave us a genuine emotion.
> >
> > How about Joy finding out that her new Russian friend Vlad has been
> > swiping her stuff?
>
> character. He has the Russian take advantage of her before stealing her
> stuff *and* asking to borrow some cash. He has the wife spit in her
> face and drag her down to the ground by the hair. He has a surprisingly
> good Jon Lovitz cuss her out in the very first scene (and even commit
> suicide afterwards, as if it weren't enough!). He has all of her
> friends and relatives make subtly derogatory comments every chance they
> get. He has protesters berate her with insults and soggy tomatoes. He
> has her walk in on a new teaching job only to be reamed out by the
> entire classroom. And Solondz was most certainly laughing at the
> character as she quietly strolled down the sidewalk, vaguely happy
> after her one night stand. Anyway, it seemed obvious to me that > Solondz was getting off on treating Joy like shit
I'm sorry, but it seems to me that you're inclined to make this reading.
It may be obvious to you, but it's not necessarily a fair reading, IMO.
Joy goes through a lot of shit, but at every moment, I had pity for her.
The key here is Solondz's use of close-ups. The tightly framed
close-ups of Manheim, Hoffman, Lovitz, and Gazarra always appeared
distorted in some way; these actors are shot to look uglier than they
actually are. Lovitz sweats, Hoffman has a wince that looks like he's
constantly repulsed by his own b.o., Manheim is given bad lighting, etc.
Boyle, if I recall correctly, isn't given many close-ups, but she looks
perpetually bitchy. All of these characters, I think, are mocked
relentlessly. However, the close-ups of the befuddled Joy always showed
a pitiful, but lovable loser. Jane Adams has a sympathetic face, and
Solondz milks it. (She never looks worse than she does in other films.)
And let me tell you, Adams' rendition of the title song almost brought
tears to my eyes.
> > Or Dylan Baker's confession to Rufus Read?
>
> If Rufus Read is the son, then I've already covered this scene. Solondz
> tricks you into thinking he's being genuine (or at least tries to trick
> you), and then laughs at everyone he's tricked with that final
> punchline: "No, I'd jerk off instead." That line received one of the
> biggest laughs in the entire film.
But this line seems consistent with the shockingly frank exchanges that
the pair had earlier. You may think these exchanges are unrealistic,
but that doesn't amount to outright contempt.
> > [...] Dylan Baker's thread was also remarkable, if somewhat uneven.
> > I couldn't detect any moment where Solondz displays unadulterated
> > contempt for Dylan Baker's character.
>
> The scene where he receives the threatening phone call is all right,
> and the scene where he tries to confess to his wife isn't bad, but
> aside from those two, I think the character is receiving some scorn as
> well. Surely Solondz was laughing at him as he clumsily masturbated to
> the kiddie magazine, or when he talked to his kid about erections and
> such. (If not, then he has no skill at conveying anything to the
> audience, since they were laughing quite a bit during these scenes.)
I'll give you the kiddie magazine, but let me say that HAPPINESS'
accomplishment is precisely the balance it struck between the humor of
ridicule and empathy (at least with the two storylines I cared for).
Sure, you laugh *at* Dr. Littlefield and Joy, but in the end, *I* was
absorbed in their dilemmas caused by their sick or fragile psyches. I
laughed at De Niro in KING OF COMEDY and Ben Stiller in THERE'S
SOMETHING ABOUT MARY as well. Does this mean the respective directors
only wants to mock these characters?
>
> > > Ignoring its offensiveness, the film just isn’t funny.
> >
> > Maybe I should seek help, but I found it the funniest live-action
> > movie of the year. I found Hoffman's wallpaper a hell of a lot more
> > funny than Mary's hairgel. It's more creative, too.
>
> Wow, I can't even see what's funny about the wallpaper scene. So he
> jerks off onto the wall and then covers it up with paper. So where's
> the humour in that? What's the joke?
Hoffman's clumsy face as he fumbles for one of those magazine
subscription cutouts was hilarious. Actually making use of those
annoying cutouts that everyone hates was doubly hilarious.
> 'Mary's semen scene, on the other hand, has the structure of comedy.
> The sequence builds and builds, going farther and farther than you
> thought it would. It's like a comedy sequence from a silent film in
> the way that one problem leads to another problem that leads to another
> problem, each one consecutively more over-the-top and unbelievable.
> It's not the funniest bit in the film, but it is very funny.
It was pretty funny, but I saw this gag somewhere before (it may have
been in a comic book). As for the structure of comedy, maybe it was
precisely because the Farrelly Brothers structured their movie as a
series of set-pieces that I kept waiting for a big belly laugh payoff in
that scene. I got a good laugh, but I'm not sure it made up for long
stretches of sitcom idiocy.
MuseMalade
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> Solondz uses the entire film to mock, insult, and degrade the Joy
> character. He has the Russian take advantage of her before stealing her
> stuff *and* asking to borrow some cash. He has the wife spit in her
> face and drag her down to the ground by the hair. He has a surprisingly
> good Jon Lovitz cuss her out in the very first scene (and even commit
> suicide afterwards, as if it weren't enough!). He has all of her
> friends and relatives make subtly derogatory comments every chance they
> get. He has protesters berate her with insults and soggy tomatoes. He
> has her walk in on a new teaching job only to be reamed out by the
> entire classroom. And Solondz was most certainly laughing at the
> character as she quietly strolled down the sidewalk, vaguely happy
> after her one night stand.
Most certainly? What evidence? I wasn't laughing. Did the camera do
something funny?
>
> Anyway, it seemed obvious to me that Solondz was getting off on
> treating Joy like shit.
>
Solondz isn't treating Joy like shit. The other characters are. This may
seem like a silly distinction, but I think it's quite crucial. Luigi's
Pirandello's seminal play SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR, puts
forth the very convincing theory that writers don't "make" characters do
anything, they merely figure out what it is that the characters who come
to them would do, and then have them do it. I don't understand this
inistence upon seeing Solondz as a mad puppeteer who spends his days and
nights devising more and more horrible tortures for fictional people. If
he identifies with Joy--and I think she's the obvious alter-ego--why would
he "get off" and hurting her? Maybe he honestly feels like this kind of
mistreatment has happened to him, and he's just being blatantly honest.
Solondz
> tricks you into thinking he's being genuine (or at least tries to trick
> you), and then laughs at everyone he's tricked with that final
> punchline: "No, I'd jerk off instead." That line received one of the
> biggest laughs in the entire film.
It is silly to judge a filmmaker's intentions by the reaction of
audiences. People are known to laugh hysterically at things that are not
funny in the least, because they are immature. No one in my theater
laughed at that line. I didn't feel like laughing. I felt like vomiting.
But for the father to respond that way seemed inevitable, because the core
of their relationship throughout the film was that Dad always answered
son's questons honestly.
> The scene where he receives the threatening phone call is all right,
> and the scene where he tries to confess to his wife isn't bad, but
> aside from those two, I think the character is receiving some scorn as
> well. Surely Solondz was laughing at him as he clumsily masturbated to
> the kiddie magazine, or when he talked to his kid about erections and
> such. (If not, then he has no skill at conveying anything to the
> audience, since they were laughing quite a bit during these scenes.)
Again, see above about audiences being morons from time to time. I saw a
play in which black South African teenagers were being shot at point blank
range with machine guns, and the audience laughed at the way bodies flop
around when being riddled with bullets. Sometimes real life is
silly-looking. Is it the actors' fault? The director's?
> > Oh, and isn't it telling that the character most deserving of scorn
> actually receives the least? Perhaps Solondz intended that as the final
> fuck you to both his characters ("this fat pig over here is worse than
> a pedophile," "this moronic, confused little boy is worse than a
> pedophile," etc.), as well as the audience (Solondz won't allow us the
> satisfaction of seeing this monster get what he deserves).
Maybe because he refuses facile labels like "monster." Child molesters,
as much as they may disgust us, were someone's baby too. They usually
have pretty good reasons for doing what they do--not excuses, mind you,
but they don't just wake up one day and say, "Guess I'll rape some kids."
This line of argument is turning very reactionary--Solondz is first
lambasted for having too little sympathy for his characters, then for
having too much--or rather, for having sympathy for the "wrong"
characters. Perhaps his way of thinking is that at least Dylan Baker is
actually mentally ill or seriously twisted, as opposed to his wife or his
sister-in-law the poet, who are just morally bankrupt.
>
> Wow, I can't even see what's funny about the wallpaper scene. So he
> jerks off onto the wall and then covers it up with paper. So where's
> the humour in that? What's the joke?
It's not funny, it's absurd. At least to me.
RAR.
Bryant Frazer
: (Spoilers.)
: There’s a scene in ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ where some small kid has
: just been beaten up and humiliated by his peers. The heroine of the
: film, another equally awkward teenager, comes up to help him. The kid
: basically insults her, laughs at her, and then runs off.
: That scene, to me, concisely sums up the Todd Solondz aesthetic. He
: takes miserable, depressed, pitiful people, and then he spends the
: film’s entire running time not only laughing at them, but mocking them
: for being miserable, depressed, and pitiful. I have nothing against a
: film that depresses its audience; however, I *do* have something
: against a film that depresses its audience and then laughs at them for
: being depressed -- for having taken it all so seriously.
I find it both saddening and astonishing to read all these screeds
against Solondz, alleging that he mocks his characters, his audience, or
both.
So astonishing, in fact, that I dug out my copy of the press notes for
WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, which I was lucky enough to see with no
preconceptions at all, several months before the film's commercial
release. I was hoping it would give me some ammunition in terms of the
director's intentions, and I wasn't disappointed.
I'm going to transcribe the "director's note" here, because I feel certain
that it speaks to Solondz's motivation in making these films, and is not
mere indie hyperbole. Pay particular attention to the very last sentence,
which seems to me even more instructive in the case of HAPPINESS than it
was to DOLLHOUSE.
"At eleven I was at the peak of my creative powers: I was writing stories
and playlets, putting together poetry projects. I was absorbed by my
'work.' At twelve I was no longer reading or writing, just counting off
days and checking them off. I was interested in survival.
"What is it about seventh grade?
"Is my experience, observation, and memory of this time of life unique? I
don't think so.
"My film attempts to explore some of the realities of the transition into
adulthood that this time in life throws into relief. It is not a 'coming
of age' story, because I do not believe it is possible to come of age in
seventh grade. The film is a comedy because that is the only way I know
how to deal with excruciating torment, and I find something both funny and
poignant in the struggle to endure humiliation."
I vote HAPPINESS most misunderstood film of the year.
-bf-
DEEP FOCUS (Movie Reviews)
http://www.panix.com/~bfrazer/flicker/
"We can't stop here -- this is bat country!"
Mike D'Angelo
: I find it both saddening and astonishing to read all these screeds
: against Solondz, alleging that he mocks his characters, his audience,
: or both.
As a member of the anti-Solondz camp, I want to stress that this is not
my own objection to his work. Unlike Peacel, I don't doubt that
Solondz's feelings towards *certain* characters (Dawn, Joy, Mr. Pedophile
Whose Name Eludes Me) are sincerely tender. What bugs me are a) his
stunted, immature worldview, which makes both of his films to date seem
to me like petty acts of creative revenge ("let me *show* you how
miserable you made my life, you fucking assholes"), and b) his lazy use
of shock tactics and cheap irony to get an emotional rise out of his
audience. Andrew Lewis Conn tackles a) in the current _Film Comment_,
and I agree with him that "in its insistence on continually topping its
own outrageousness, HAPPINESS proves to be as redundant and boring as
SPEED 2 or ARMAGEDDON...offer[ing] cum shots and pedophilia as special
effects for intellectuals." I think that I'm ultimately even more
irritated by b), however; the moment in HAPPINESS that made me angriest
was the one in which Solondz follows Dylan Baker with his dosed sandwich
and the camera pauses to admire a photograph of the character with his
adoring family. "See! I'm burrowing beneath the happy facade! I
acknowledge people's private hells! LOVE ME!!!" Grow up.
: I vote HAPPINESS most misunderstood film of the year.
As do I.
Mike "but for different reasons" D'Angelo
-The Man Who Viewed Too Much-
http://www.panix.com/~dangelo
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> As a member of the anti-Solondz camp, I want to stress that this is not
> my own objection to his work. Unlike Peacel, I don't doubt that
> Solondz's feelings towards *certain* characters (Dawn, Joy, Mr. Pedophile
> Whose Name Eludes Me) are sincerely tender. What bugs me are a) his
> stunted, immature worldview,
Maybe we live in a stunted and immature world.
RAR.
John Harkness
Mike D'Angelo wrote:
> Bryant Frazer <bfr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> : I find it both saddening and astonishing to read all these screeds
> : against Solondz, alleging that he mocks his characters, his audience,
> : or both.
>
> As a member of the anti-Solondz camp, I want to stress that this is not
> my own objection to his work. Unlike Peacel, I don't doubt that
> Solondz's feelings towards *certain* characters (Dawn, Joy, Mr. Pedophile
> Whose Name Eludes Me) are sincerely tender. What bugs me are a) his
> stunted, immature worldview, which makes both of his films to date seem
> to me like petty acts of creative revenge ("let me *show* you how
> miserable you made my life, you fucking assholes"), and b) his lazy use
> of shock tactics and cheap irony to get an emotional rise out of his
> audience.
As opposed to the humane and all embracing worldview of Vincent Gallo.
John
Steve Erickson
wrote:
> Bryant Frazer <bfr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> : I find it both saddening and astonishing to read all these screeds
> : against Solondz, alleging that he mocks his characters, his audience,
> : or both.
>
> As a member of the anti-Solondz camp, I want to stress that this is not
> my own objection to his work. Unlike Peacel, I don't doubt that
> Solondz's feelings towards *certain* characters (Dawn, Joy, Mr. Pedophile
> Whose Name Eludes Me) are sincerely tender. What bugs me are a) his
> stunted, immature worldview, which makes both of his films to date seem
> to me like petty acts of creative revenge ("let me *show* you how
> miserable you made my life, you fucking assholes"), and b) his lazy use
> of shock tactics and cheap irony to get an emotional rise out of his
> audience.
How is the worldview of BUFFALO 66 any more mature? Isn't Gallo using that
film as an act of creative revenge against his real-life family? The
attitudes underlying that film - homophobia, self-pity, narcissism, use of
female characters as male fantasy figures - hardly strike me as more benign
than Solondz' intermittent condescension towards his characters. You might
argue that BUFFALO 66 does achieve a kind of catharsis (and I don't think
HAPPINESS is devoid of catharsis) but that catharsis comes in the context
of a wish-fulfillment fantasy that requires a woman he kidnaps to act out
the roles he sets out for her and then fall genuinely in love with him.
I do happen to like BUFFALO 66 quite a bit but I think it's worth noting
that plenty of artists manage to make good work rooted in the kind of
bitterness you deride. To my mind, Gallo and Solondz do an equally good
job of it.
Dashiell Christopher
> Bryant Frazer <bfr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> : I find it both saddening and astonishing to read all these screeds
> : against Solondz, alleging that he mocks his characters, his audience,
> : or both.
>
> As a member of the anti-Solondz camp, I want to stress that this is not
> my own objection to his work. Unlike Peacel, I don't doubt that
> Solondz's feelings towards *certain* characters (Dawn, Joy, Mr. Pedophile
> Whose Name Eludes Me) are sincerely tender. What bugs me are a) his
> stunted, immature worldview, which makes both of his films to date seem
> to me like petty acts of creative revenge ("let me *show* you how
> miserable you made my life, you fucking assholes"), and b) his lazy use
> of shock tactics and cheap irony to get an emotional rise out of his
> audience. Andrew Lewis Conn tackles a) in the current _Film Comment_,
> and I agree with him that "in its insistence on continually topping its
> own outrageousness, HAPPINESS proves to be as redundant and boring as
> SPEED 2 or ARMAGEDDON...offer[ing] cum shots and pedophilia as special
> effects for intellectuals."
I too found Conn's argument compelling, to a point. The equivalency of
Armageddon's "big explosion" sequences with Happiness' two oneristic
sequences IS easily supportable. As is the overtly paternal or
homosocial/sexual overtones that drive most macho action films -
reconfigured by Solondz as a pedophilic act. That Solondz utilizes these
Freudian operations in an unfettered form CAN be seen as fodder for
intellectuals.
> I think that I'm ultimately even more irritated by b), however; the moment
> in HAPPINESS that made me angriest
> was the one in which Solondz follows Dylan Baker with his dosed sandwich
> and the camera pauses to admire photograph of the character with his
> adoring family. "See! I'm burrowing beneath the happy facade! I
> acknowledge people's private hells! LOVE ME!!!" Grow up.
That's one way to see it. Another, is to look at it like the final sequence
of FATAL ATTRACTION - with its final lingering shot of the family portrait.
It, to my mind, establishes the costs exhibited in order to maintain that
familial bliss (murder and the denial of passion). Rather than
acknowledging people's private hells, and asking for understanding, it is an
indictment of that "ideal family".
Furthermore, I found Solondz's dichotomous pairing of paternal
relationships, between that of Baker and his son and that of Baker and his
victim, important in establishing Baker's duality.
On the one hand:
-with his son, he's actually, in a weird and pathetic sort of way, a
good father. Understanding and sensitive to his son's concerns.
-with the victimized boy, he's a perverted menace, insensitive on all
accounts to the welfare of the boy
All your points are excellent, and certainly supportable, but I don't think
that the shot you describe is an act of contrition.
DC
"I'm crazy about this city. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the
buildings in half. In the top half I see faces and it's not easy to tell
which are people, which are the work of stone masons. Below is shadow where
any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices
of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on
things. Hep. It's the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does
it. When I look over the strips of green grass lining the river, at church
steeples and into cream-and-copper halls of apartment buildings, I'm
strong. Alone, yes, but top notch and indestructible."
Toni Morrison, Jazz, 1992
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> How is the worldview of BUFFALO 66 any more mature? Isn't Gallo using that
> film as an act of creative revenge against his real-life family? The
> attitudes underlying that film - homophobia, self-pity, narcissism, use of
> female characters as male fantasy figures - hardly strike me as more benign
> than Solondz' intermittent condescension towards his characters. You might
> argue that BUFFALO 66 does achieve a kind of catharsis (and I don't think
> HAPPINESS is devoid of catharsis) but that catharsis comes in the context
> of a wish-fulfillment fantasy that requires a woman he kidnaps to act out
> the roles he sets out for her and then fall genuinely in love with him.
Whereas Solondz puts the female at the center of his universe. In WELCOME
TO THE DOLLHOUSE, he *is* the female. Anyone who's ever seen the guy
can't have failed to notice how *very* much Matarazzo as Dawn looks like
Todd looks even today. In HAPPINESS, he makes sure that misery and
humiliation is equally parceled out between male and female, although, if
I had to choose one character as Solondz's double, I'd choose Joy. This
ain't, I'm sure, for some stupid literal reason like he's gay or whatever,
but for the same reason, some have said, that Henry James wrote so many
books about woman protagonists--they're a shortcut symbol for a lack of
freedom, sexual repression, victimization, degradation and--most relevant
to Solondz, I think--invisibility. Pretty ironic considering that 90
percent of art involves men gazing at women that they rarely if ever
actually see them. Unfortunately, suffering is almost an inherent part of
our cultural definition of femaleness. Men act; women endure. Men do and
women are done to. And this is not because feminists believe it;
it's because *men* believe it (where else would the notion of
chivalry have come from?). Joyce Carol Oates said that tragedy is a male
genre, since it is based on the notion that life is made of grand gestures
and dramatic struggles and once-and-for-all showdowns. Is HAPPINESS
unacceptable because it refuses to be a tragedy?
As for BUFFALO 66, I thought C. Ricci did an outstanding job of inventing
a character almost from scratch. A wonderful performance (and I'm not a
Ricci groupie) in what could have been a nothing part.
RAR.
Mr. Spiggy
>
> On Sat, 16 Jan 1999, Steve Erickson wrote:
>
> > How is the worldview of BUFFALO 66 any more mature?
Duh?!
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> You call it "creative revenge" and I call it "catharsis." Maybe it's a
> case of identifying too much with the filmmaker, but as far as films about
> the fucking assholes that are ruining all of our lives, every day, I'll
> take Solondz' allegedly stunted, immature worldview over the smug
> self-importance of Neil LaBute, for example.
In a minute. And why *shouldn't* he want to show the fucking assholes the
extent of what they've done? Not only does he have to suffer, he has to
be a good sport about it? It would seem to me that only people who
identified with the fucking assholes would be made uncomfortable by this.
> And while I might buy the theory that DOLLHOUSE, at least, is Solondz's
> effort to "get back at" some of the folks who hurt him in early childhood,
> perhaps including family and schoolmates, I can't believe that HAPPINESS
> is so rigidly autobiographical. Seems to me he's created a mosaic of
> unhappy people struggling toward happiness. Some of them are doomed, and
> others may yet find their way to it (I'm tempted to read the Rufus Read
> character, like the Heather Matarazzo character in the earlier film, as
> someone for whom endurance may equate to hope for the future; if nothing
> else, facing down your demons at an early age does give you a head start
> on adulthoood). But he's searching, just like artists always are. The
> people in HAPPINESS may be cartoons, but I'm interested in Solondz's
> efforts to invest them with real humanity. What startled me about
> HAPPINESS is that, at least where the three or four key characters are
> concerned, I really felt he succeeded.
And if he's really so petty, why doesn't he stack the decks against the
people who would--if we accept the notion that Solondz at least minimally
identifies with HAPPINESS' less glamourous, more shat upon characters
(Adams, Read, Hoffman)--be the cinematic equivalents of the real-life
fucking assholes? Why is Lara Flynn Boyle's character revealed to be as
wretched as everyone else? Dylan Baker is the patriarch of a model
suburban family, something Solondz surely views as the enemy. Yet he
takes the time to explore everybody's misery. Against whom, exactly, is
his alleged revenge being wreaked, if winner and loser alike are being
given their due?
>
> Ultimately, I find myself relying on the director's own words as assurance
> that he's not out there trying to mock his characters and his audience.
> Granted, he could be building a fake persona through repeated interviews,
> creating a facade of sensitivity that will allow him to put one over on
> naive viewers such as myself, but, at least for me, the work bears out his
> good intentions. This doesn't prove that the movies are good, but it does
> indicate that they're nowhere near as willfully cruel and/or sadistic as
> at least some viewers believe (not necessarily you, Mike, although you
> have used both the C and the S word in relation to DOLLHOUSE).
>
Solondz made a film in school called SCHATT'S LAST SHOT, in which he
himself plays the lead role. In it, this ugly nerdy kid cannot, for his
life, shoot a basket. If he does not, he will never get the girl he loves
to see him as more than a friend, and he will flunk out of high school,
because the gym teacher is a maniac. If this film, and this performance,
do not earn Solondz the right to put *other* actors in his films and have
*them* play out the nightmares of Americana that has clearly lived
through, I don't know what does.
RAR.
Larry Rosenhein
>
> (Spoilers.)
>
> There’s a scene in ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ where some small kid has
> just been beaten up and humiliated by his peers. The heroine of the
> film, another equally awkward teenager, comes up to help him. The kid
> basically insults her, laughs at her, and then runs off.
>
> That scene, to me, concisely sums up the Todd Solondz aesthetic. He
> takes miserable, depressed, pitiful people, and then he spends the
> film’s entire running time not only laughing at them, but mocking them
> for being miserable, depressed, and pitiful.
I had very different reactions to the two films, "Dollhouse" and
"Happiness." I thought the former was one of the best films of its
year, but the latter is another story. I find it hard to express
why I reacted so differently to the two. I think that Solondz treats
Dawn as a little adult, at the mercy of the conditions and influences
of her life, but also responsible for her own actions, and therefore,
to some extent, for her own unhappiness. That isn't contempt.
To the extent that the film provokes laughter, it's the uncomfortable
laughter of what the audience may recognize in ourselves, or our younger
selves, at least those of us who haven't lived charmed lives, as the
film makes explicit what we may have had the good sense to learn in
less public ways. (Well, you see what I mean about hard to express.)
Happiness is about adults, mostly, and that gave it a different
complexion for me. I see only two possibilities for the intent of the
film: (1) You can't ignore the fact that the characters are all so
dysfunctional (and not even enjoying themselves at it!): this may be
Solondz's view of society. But it isn't mine, and that's makes it seem
like just a misguided (and incidentally unpleasant) film. I write with
some pointedness about this because I think I know something about
loneliness and yet I don't feel miserable about it. I just got
impatient
with these characters and wanted to say, Get a life, or a hobby, or
something. It isn't that hard. I think people in general have a much
greater capacity to make something positive out of the admittedly
difficult problems of existence than Solondz recognizes. . . . Or (2)
the story and characters are some kind of brain scan of Solondz's
subjective view of his own world. That kind of thing can be an
artistically valid form of expression, but even here, I think the
artist has to offer something to the audience besides his own pain.
Anyway, if this is the case, my main reaction is, I hope he gets some
help.
So basically I agree with you about Happiness, but, strangely
enough, not about Dollhouse.
> I suppose that some people find that stuff
> uproariously hysterical (the crowd sure was whooping it up), but to me
> it doesn’t have the structure of humour, it doesn’t have the set-up of
> a joke. These terrible things happen, and unless the audience is
> laughing because they’re so uncomfortable (which I doubt), I really
> don’t understand what’s supposed to be funny about it.
One's own reaction to the audience's reaction seems to be a recurring
problem with Solondz. Who said that there had to be anything funny
about
Happiness? I would disagree about this: I think many of the film's
scenes do have the rhythym of comedy--but we get used to the fact
that the director is playing with our expectations. As far as I can
remember, the crowd I saw the film with wasn't "whooping it up;" and
anyone who was certainly has problems of their own, although these days
it may have as much to do with art appreciation as with psychology.
But would you have felt any better about the film if the audience had
been suitably revolted instead of amused? Probably not.
A final question: if you took away what I'll call the latent
comedy in Happiness, would you have a worse film than, say, Naked (which
many film cognescenti thought very highly of, but I hated)?
--Larry Rosenhein
Bryant Frazer
: What bugs me are a) his
: stunted, immature worldview, which makes both of his films to date seem
: to me like petty acts of creative revenge ("let me *show* you how
: miserable you made my life, you fucking assholes"),
You call it "creative revenge" and I call it "catharsis." Maybe it's a
case of identifying too much with the filmmaker, but as far as films about
the fucking assholes that are ruining all of our lives, every day, I'll
take Solondz' allegedly stunted, immature worldview over the smug
self-importance of Neil LaBute, for example.
And while I might buy the theory that DOLLHOUSE, at least, is Solondz's
effort to "get back at" some of the folks who hurt him in early childhood,
perhaps including family and schoolmates, I can't believe that HAPPINESS
is so rigidly autobiographical. Seems to me he's created a mosaic of
unhappy people struggling toward happiness. Some of them are doomed, and
others may yet find their way to it (I'm tempted to read the Rufus Read
character, like the Heather Matarazzo character in the earlier film, as
someone for whom endurance may equate to hope for the future; if nothing
else, facing down your demons at an early age does give you a head start
on adulthoood). But he's searching, just like artists always are. The
people in HAPPINESS may be cartoons, but I'm interested in Solondz's
efforts to invest them with real humanity. What startled me about
HAPPINESS is that, at least where the three or four key characters are
concerned, I really felt he succeeded.
: and b) his lazy use
: of shock tactics and cheap irony to get an emotional rise out of his
: audience.
Maybe it's my love for horror movies that has given me a resolute fondness
for "shock tactics." I do have to note, at any rate, that dimestore irony
has been a critical component of fine Hollywood films from the silent era
forward. Beyond that, I don't think it's worth arguing the points. After
all, I never felt "shocked" by HAPPINESS, nor was I particularly moved by
any ironies. He did get an emotional rise out of me, but I felt that he
got to that point fairly, and without resort to easy manipulation.
: Andrew Lewis Conn tackles a) in the current _Film Comment_,
: and I agree with him that "in its insistence on continually topping its
: own outrageousness, HAPPINESS proves to be as redundant and boring as
: SPEED 2 or ARMAGEDDON...offer[ing] cum shots and pedophilia as special
: effects for intellectuals."
To which I can only respond that I'm not much of an intellectual, nor have
I ever harbored a distaste for "special effects," even when used in the
service of mere spectacle. I don't yet have my copy of the new FILM
COMMENT, so I can't comment further.
: I think that I'm ultimately even more
: irritated by b), however; the moment in HAPPINESS that made me angriest
: was the one in which Solondz follows Dylan Baker with his dosed sandwich
: and the camera pauses to admire a photograph of the character with his
: adoring family. "See! I'm burrowing beneath the happy facade! I
: acknowledge people's private hells! LOVE ME!!!" Grow up.
That's the angle that everyone fixated on in writing their reviews, and
honestly, it's a facet of the movie that never really engaged me or even
seemed worthy of comment. I mean, OBVIOUSLY he's burrowing beneath the
happy facade. Facade-burrowing is a primary subject of "independent"
American film, from THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN straight
through BLUE VELVET and on into the 1990s with IN THE COMPANY OF MEN, just
to name the ones on the tips of my fingertips. If I believed that Solondz
actually thought that HAPPINESS was some effort at blowing the doors off
the American idyll and exposing us as the twisted motherfuckers we all
are, well, yeah, I'd ask him what else is new and shut the door on his
career. But I think there's a very humanist, compassionate undertow to all
of this that is very valuable. Many viewers don't seem to appreciate it,
or perhaps to be conned by it, but I do and I am.
: : I vote HAPPINESS most misunderstood film of the year.
: As do I.
: Mike "but for different reasons" D'Angelo
In your one-sentence review of HAPPINESS, you blast DOLLHOUSE for
"sadism." I still don't get that. In your longer review of DOLLHOUSE, you
seem to suggest that you have a fundamental quarrel with the notion of
undermining a bleak, heartbreaking story with slapstick comedy. I can
understand that -- first DOLLHOUSE and then HAPPINESS kept me completely
off-balance for a reel or two, as I struggled to get my bearings. Once I
became oriented, though -- wow.
As an interesting aside, I get the feeling that your objections to
HAPPINESS may be close kin to the discomfort some of us felt with LIFE IS
BEAUTIFUL. Like HAPPINESS, it has chosen to leaven the horror with comedy.
The difference is that Solondz is more of a cynic than Benigni could ever
be. It may only say something about *my* worldview that I prefer the
cynical film.
I still like the quote from the DOLLHOUSE press kit, where Solondz says
that comedy is the only way he knows to deal with "excruciating torment."
The films aren't going to appeal to everyone, but they sure do speak to
those of us who enjoy them.
Ultimately, I find myself relying on the director's own words as assurance
that he's not out there trying to mock his characters and his audience.
Granted, he could be building a fake persona through repeated interviews,
creating a facade of sensitivity that will allow him to put one over on
naive viewers such as myself, but, at least for me, the work bears out his
good intentions. This doesn't prove that the movies are good, but it does
indicate that they're nowhere near as willfully cruel and/or sadistic as
at least some viewers believe (not necessarily you, Mike, although you
have used both the C and the S word in relation to DOLLHOUSE).
This is from http://www.nitrateonline.com/fhappiness.html
"People say I’m cruel or that the film’s cruel, but I think rather it
exposes the cruelty and I think that certainly the capacity for cruelty is
the most difficult, the most painful thing for any of us to acknowledge.
That we are at all capable. And yet I think that it exists as much as the
capacity for kindness and it’s only the best of us that are able to
suppress, sublimate, re-channel and so forth these baser instincts, but I
see them to some degree at play as a regular part of life in very subtle
ways."
Bryant Frazer
clarifications.
Bryant Frazer <bfr...@panix.com> expounded thusly:
: As an interesting aside, I get the feeling that your objections to
: HAPPINESS may be close kin to the discomfort some of us felt with LIFE IS
: BEAUTIFUL.
I'm really talking here about your quarrels with Solondz, as evidenced in
your comments on DOLLHOUSE, not HAPPINESS in particular.
: Ultimately, I find myself relying on the director's own words as assurance
: that he's not out there trying to mock his characters and his audience.
I mean this in the context of these arguments with the film's detractors.
For me, the film itself is assurance enough -- I'm not relying on
extratextual interviews with the director to decide how to "read" the
film. But when I'm talking to someone who had a fundamentally
different experience of the film, it's helpful to be able to quote the
director on his intentions. Just wanted to clear that up before someone
else called me on that one.
Mike D'Angelo
: How is the worldview of BUFFALO 66 any more mature? Isn't Gallo using
: that film as an act of creative revenge against his real-life family?
That's an element of the film, but it's not its primary focus; nobody
could call BUFFALO '66 cynical or vicious overall. And while I wouldn't
argue that Gallo's film is any more mature than Solondz's, there's a
crucial difference: Gallo is clearly *aware* that his movie is
fundamentally childish, and makes no attempt to disguise it. On the
contrary, he has his protagonist deliver fifth-grade dialogue like "And
I'll tell you somethin' else: you make me look bad, and I will never,
ever talk to you again. But if you make me look good...well then you can
be my best friend. My best friend...in the whole world." The movie is a
deliberate fairy tale -- whereas HAPPINESS clearly purports to be frank
and adult. There's a world of difference.
Consider this a reply to Harkness' sarcastic comment as well.
Mike "two birds, one stone" D'Angelo
Mike D'Angelo
: Mike D'Angelo wrote:
:
:> I think that I'm ultimately even more irritated by b), however; the
:> moment in HAPPINESS that made me angriest was the one in which Solondz
:> follows Dylan Baker with his dosed sandwich and the camera pauses to
:> admire photograph of the character with his adoring family. "See!
:> I'm burrowing beneath the happy facade! I acknowledge people's
:> private hells! LOVE ME!!!" Grow up.
:
: That's one way to see it. Another, is to look at it like the final
: sequence of FATAL ATTRACTION - with its final lingering shot of the
: family portrait. It, to my mind, establishes the costs exhibited in
: order to maintain that familial bliss (murder and the denial of
: passion). Rather than acknowledging people's private hells, and asking
: for understanding, it is an indictment of that "ideal family".
Of course it is, and a stunningly crass one -- that's exactly the point I
was attempting (perhaps less than coherently) to make. It's specifically
the way in which this shot deliberately calls attention to Solondz's
thematic agenda that I find so irritating; Solondz effectively halts the
scene for a moment in order to remind us of what he's up to. (He does it
again later on, when Dylan Baker is driving to the other kid's house and
the camera lingers on a "WATCH FOR CHILDREN" sign or something.) It's
either a cheap ironic gag, an expression of insecurity, or (my theory)
both.
Mike "CAUTION: FALLING SUBTEXT" D'Angelo
Mike D'Angelo
: You call it "creative revenge" and I call it "catharsis." Maybe it's a
: case of identifying too much with the filmmaker, but as far as films
: about the fucking assholes that are ruining all of our lives, every
: day, I'll take Solondz' allegedly stunted, immature worldview over the
: smug self-importance of Neil LaBute, for example.
Well, I didn't like YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS much more than HAPPINESS,
when it comes to that, and have similar problems with it. (IN THE
COMPANY OF MEN, on the other hand, struck me as neither smug nor
self-important.) In any case, I acknowledged in a previous post that
Solondz's films are likely cathartic both for himself and for many
viewers; I guess I'm just looking for a bit more than that, personally.
: Seems to me he's created a mosaic of unhappy people struggling toward
: happiness. Some of them are doomed, and others may yet find their way
: to it [...]
I found HAPPINESS slightly more hopeful than DOLLHOUSE, which is why I
liked it a bit more, and would hesitate to label it "sadistic," as I did
DOLLHOUSE. It still seems little more than a facile catalogue of misery,
though. Let me annoy you by again quoting the Conn article you haven't
yet read: "But by making all of his characters sexual monomaniacs [this is
an overstatement, but not much of one -- md'a], isn't Solondz presenting a
picture as flat and punishing as the Fifties sitcom model he wishes to
eschew?...(When even the smallest bit player -- the doorman of the
building where three of the lead characters reside -- turned out to be a
rapist, I gave up.)" I had a similar reaction: when *everybody* in a
movie as sprawling as HAPPINESS is totally fucked up, I find it difficult
to give a damn about much of anybody. It's Pathology Overload.
: In your one-sentence review of HAPPINESS, you blast DOLLHOUSE for
: "sadism." I still don't get that.
The more I think about it, the more I think that "sadism" isn't the word
I want. It implies that I think that Solondz enjoys mocking or
ridiculing characters like Dawn, and ultimately that's not what I believe;
as I said, I do think that he's sincere. Let me put it another way.
At the NYFF press conference for HAPPINESS, Solondz was taking about
independent film v. Hollywood film, and he made some disparaging comment
about how much he hates Hollywood films that, say, try to milk sympathy
for a character by making him disabled or something. And yet it seems to
me that that is *precisely* what Solondz does, especially in DOLLHOUSE.
He gives us a terrific protagonist, and then he proceeds to spend an hour
and a half humiliating her over and over and over and over and over and
over and over and over. And over. And over *again*. And after a while,
I began to find it wearisome, and somewhat manipulative. (I have the
same problem with a lot of Fassbinder's oeuvre, actually.) It's easy to
get an audience to sympathize with a character who's constantly being
shat on, but to what purpose? Just to demonstrate that for some
unfortunate people, this is what life is like?
Regina Robbins, in particular, tends to defends Solondz's work on the
grounds that it reflects the real world, but I've never believed that art
is automatically worthy merely because it's accurate. I'm looking to be
entertained or enlightened -- preferably both. DOLLHOUSE, for me, is too
horrific to be entertaining in any conventional sense, and I already knew
that life sucks for some people, so I walked out of the theater wondering
why exactly I'd been put through the emotional wringer. HAPPINESS
offered me more of a catharsis, and I think it shows promise, but Solondz
has still got some artistic maturing to do.
: As an interesting aside, I get the feeling that your objections to
: HAPPINESS may be close kin to the discomfort some of us felt with LIFE
: IS BEAUTIFUL. Like HAPPINESS, it has chosen to leaven the horror with
: comedy.
Except that I don't see any comedy in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL -- at least not
once it moves to the camp. But god knows my interpretation of that
picture isn't the conventional one (I thought "contortionist" was pretty
apt, actually).
Mike "yuk yuk...yucch" D'Angelo
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> ...nobody
> could call BUFFALO '66 cynical or vicious overall. And while I wouldn't
> argue that Gallo's film is any more mature than Solondz's, there's a
> crucial difference: Gallo is clearly *aware* that his movie is
> fundamentally childish, and makes no attempt to disguise it. On the
> contrary, he has his protagonist deliver fifth-grade dialogue like "And
> I'll tell you somethin' else: you make me look bad, and I will never,
> ever talk to you again. But if you make me look good...well then you can
> be my best friend. My best friend...in the whole world." The movie is a
> deliberate fairy tale -- whereas HAPPINESS clearly purports to be frank
> and adult. There's a world of difference.
Frank, yes; but how does it purport to be "adult?" Merely by having adult
subject matter? But BUFFALO 66 has that as well. I don't believe that
Solondz makes a creative distinction between that which is childish and
that which is adult. His is a world populated by big babies. Perhaps
this is another part of his worldview that you don't like. To me, it is
patently obvious that the big difference between childhood and adulthood
is that as an adult you have more stuff and have gathered a bit more info.
It's comforting to me that someone else has noticed this. For you, it's
clearly unsettling.
RAR.
Mike D'Angelo
: And why *shouldn't* he want to show the fucking assholes the extent of
: what they've done? Not only does he have to suffer, he has to be a
: good sport about it? It would seem to me that only people who
: identified with the fucking assholes would be made uncomfortable by
: this.
Solondz's films don't make me "uncomfortable." I just don't find them
terribly interesting. I guess you could argue that this suggests that I
don't find other people's pain interesting, thus painting a portrait of
me as insensitive jerk; but in fact I merely want their pain to serve
some kind of dramatic purpose. There's a reason that the "tragic flaw"
is such a prevalent dramatic motif: watching people suffer for no good
reason is simply awful. (Bryant, this is where the "sadism" comes in,
though I still think it's the wrong word.)
: And if he's really so petty, why doesn't he stack the decks against the
: people who would--if we accept the notion that Solondz at least
: minimally identifies with HAPPINESS' less glamourous, more shat upon
: characters (Adams, Read, Hoffman)--be the cinematic equivalents of the
: real-life fucking assholes?
He does. You mentioned Lara Flynn Boyle and Dylan Baker, but I didn't
see much empathy for Boyle's walking caricature, and Baker, patriarch or
no, clearly fits into the hapless-loser category, along with Philip
Seymour Hoffman, Camryn Manheim, etc. Are we supposed to feel anything
but venom for Cynthia Stevenson's happy homemaker, or Dawn Wiener's
family? He ain't oozin' with compassion for all and sundry, by any
means.
Mike "about to look up 'sundry'" D'Angelo
John Harkness
Mike D'Angelo wrote:
> Steve Erickson <ste...@nospamearthlink.net> wrote:
>
> : How is the worldview of BUFFALO 66 any more mature? Isn't Gallo using
> : that film as an act of creative revenge against his real-life family?
>
> That's an element of the film, but it's not its primary focus; nobody
> could call BUFFALO '66 cynical or vicious overall. And while I wouldn't
> argue that Gallo's film is any more mature than Solondz's, there's a
> crucial difference: Gallo is clearly *aware* that his movie is
> fundamentally childish, and makes no attempt to disguise it. On the
> contrary, he has his protagonist deliver fifth-grade dialogue like "And
> I'll tell you somethin' else: you make me look bad, and I will never,
> ever talk to you again. But if you make me look good...well then you can
> be my best friend. My best friend...in the whole world." The movie is a
> deliberate fairy tale -- whereas HAPPINESS clearly purports to be frank
> and adult. There's a world of difference.
>
> Consider this a reply to Harkness' sarcastic comment as well.
>
> Mike "two birds, one stone" D'Angelo
>
> -The Man Who Viewed Too Much-
> http://www.panix.com/~dangelo
My reply was not sarcastic. Too abrupt by half, but the description given
of Happiness struck me as a perfect description of Buffalo 66, the most
utterly meanspirited and hateful movie I saw last year. -- so much so that
I'd wished I thought of it.
John
Mike D'Angelo
: My reply was not sarcastic. Too abrupt by half, but the description
: given of Happiness struck me as a perfect description of Buffalo 66,
: the most utterly meanspirited and hateful movie I saw last year. -- so
: much so that I'd wished I thought of it.
Apart from the scenes involving Billy's parents, what about the film did
you find mean-spirited and hateful?
Mike "genuinely curious" D'Angelo
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> > [...] And Solondz was most certainly laughing at the character as
> > she quietly strolled down the sidewalk, vaguely happy after her one
> > night stand.
>
> Most certainly? What evidence? I wasn't laughing. Did the camera
> do something funny?
I think it was the song playing in the background, which I saw as
Solondz' cruelly ironic comment on Joy's pitifulness. He's laughing at
her for being so lonely that she'd actually be glad that a married
Russian thief would fuck her, ditch her, and then steal her stuff.
> If he identifies with Joy--and I think she's the obvious
> alter-ego--why would he "get off" and hurting her?
Self-loathing? Masochism? The pure joy of being cruel?
(Of course, this assumes that Joy is in fact Solondz' alter-ego, which
is something I'm still not sure I believe.)
> It is silly to judge a filmmaker's intentions by the reaction of
> audiences. People are known to laugh hysterically at things that are
> not funny in the least, because they are immature. No one in my
> theater laughed at that line. I didn't feel like laughing. I felt
> like vomiting. [...]
It's true that as a viewer we should be able to separate the film and
the audience's reaction, but I think it's an unrealistic expectation.
You say you felt like vomiting at Bill's last line. So did I, except
I was apparently in the minority since everyone around me was laughing
uproariously. Perhaps it makes me weak that I'm affected by people's
reaction to the film, I don't know, but I can say right now that it
would be absolutely impossible for me to not take into account that
experience, to not give weight to the feeling of being horrified while
everyone else is laughing. The audience affects your perception of the
film, good or bad, and there's not much you can do about it.
Though having said that, I strongly suspect that I'd still hate the
film had I seen it completely alone. The reading of the dialogue, the
pauses the actors make (e.g., right before the "jerk off punchline"),
the way things are treated, the overall tone -- it all feels like it's
intended to be mocking and funny. I think I would've picked up on that
hateful vibe no matter what, and that the audience's reaction only
confirmed my suspicions.
> > [...] (Solondz won't allow us the satisfaction of seeing this
> > monster get what he deserves).
>
> Maybe because he refuses facile labels like "monster." [...]
I'm not asking that Solondz present the character as pure evil (in
fact, one of my main problems with 'Schindler's List' is that the Nazis
are made out to be *too* evil), but this is a movie that hates all of
its characters and makes unrelenting fun of them. If you're going to
make the audience hate a woman because she's fat, or because some kid
is awkward and confused, then you'd better damn well make the audience
hate a pedophile for being a pedophile, because greeting all of these
innocents with scorn while at the exact same time being tender with a
pedophile is, to me, absolutely repugnant. Had Solondz been tender with
every character *other* than the pedophile, I'd have criticized *that*
as being unfair. It's the picking and choosing of what characters to
hate that makes me queasy.
> [...] This line of argument is turning very reactionary--Solondz is
> first lambasted for having too little sympathy for his characters,
> then for having too much--or rather, for having sympathy for the
> "wrong" characters.
I hope I explained this in the previous paragraph. (And BTW, I still
think Solondz shows some contempt for Bill, though it's not nearly as
much as he shows for a lot of the others.)
> Perhaps his way of thinking is that at least Dylan Baker is actually
> mentally ill or seriously twisted, as opposed to his wife or his
> sister-in-law the poet, who are just morally bankrupt.
But isn't that as invalid as dismissing the pedophile? You're saying
that we should sympathize with the pedophile because he's ill -- that
he has no control over his actions -- but couldn't you say something
very similar for the poet or the wife? Surely they didn't wake up one
morning and say, "Today I'm going to be morally bankrupt," to re-use
your own example. If you're going to extend sympathy, I don't see on
what grounds you can say, "Okay, this person is deserving but this
person is not."
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> The tightly framed close-ups of Manheim, Hoffman, Lovitz, and Gazarra
> always appeared distorted in some way; these actors are shot to look
> uglier than they actually are. Lovitz sweats, Hoffman has a wince
> that looks like he's constantly repulsed by his own b.o., Manheim is
> given bad lighting, etc. Boyle, if I recall correctly, isn't given
> many close-ups, but she looks perpetually bitchy. All of these
> characters, I think, are mocked relentlessly.
Which, right there, would be more than enough for me to dismiss this
movie as childish, bitter, and ugly. I have no interest in watching
fictional characters being unfairly mocked for over two hours. I don't
hate people the way Solondz does.
> But this line seems consistent with the shockingly frank exchanges
> that the pair had earlier. You may think these exchanges are
> unrealistic, but that doesn't amount to outright contempt.
I think it does. I think Solondz loathes the little boy for being
confused, for not being normal. It seems that he's taking a certain
amount of pleasure in watching this kid sweat. (Of course, none of
us can make definitive cases since so much of this is based on our own
interpretation of the material and our gut feeling as to what Solondz
is trying to do.)
> [...] Sure, you laugh *at* Dr. Littlefield and Joy, but in the end,
> *I* was absorbed in their dilemmas caused by their sick or fragile
> psyches. I laughed at De Niro in KING OF COMEDY and Ben Stiller in
> THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY as well. Does this mean the respective
> directors only wants to mock these characters?
That's a strong point, and I have no answer for it. I laugh plenty at
Burton's Ed Wood, Burton's Lydia, Burton's Edward Scissorhands, but
it's somehow always a fond, likable laughter. When Lydia, the cliched
angst-ridden teen dressed in black, sits down at her bedroom table to
write a suicide note, and keeps scribbling out adjectives and adverbs
to make it sound more and more tragic, I laugh knowingly at what she's
experiencing. That's the kind of thing that we all go through, that
we've all thought about doing (or have done), and so it's funny. But
never in the spiteful, cynical, hateful way of a Solondz film. When
Solondz makes fun of his characters I simply sit there staring at the
screen wondering why the hell he's being so cruel. I'm not taking part
in his festival of hate.
So it's a fine, undefinable line between laughing at the characters
and, er, *really* laughing at the characters. I don't know what the
difference is, exactly, but there *is* a difference.
Peace Electric
> [...] Unlike Peacel, I don't doubt that Solondz's feelings towards
> *certain* characters (Dawn, Joy, Mr. Pedophile Whose Name Eludes Me)
> are sincerely tender. [...]
I kind of agree. I would say that his treatment of some characters is
less hateful than of others. Bill the pedophile, for example, is
probably the most tender portrait in both films, but even then it shows
occassional signs of contempt (and when it doesn't, it's like one big
slap in everybody else's face).
Peace Electric
> In a minute. And why *shouldn't* he want to show the fucking
> assholes the extent of what they've done? Not only does he have to
> suffer, he has to be a good sport about it? It would seem to me that
> only people who identified with the fucking assholes would be made
> uncomfortable by this.
It's interesting that a lot of the 'Happiness' supporters seem to share
Solondz' bitter, cynical, hateful world view, as well as a real anger
towards people in general. I mean, really: "fucking assholes" -- who
would those be, exactly? The overweight woman? The smug poet? Joy? Do
these people really deserve to be punished and humiliated and insulted?
So Joy broke up with Jon Lovitz because she wasn't attracted to him.
Does that make her a "fucking asshole"? Does that mean she deserves to
be pelted with tomatoes?
And come on, you don't really think that those of us who were offended,
disgusted, repulsed, annoyed, angered by this film are part of the vast
Fucking Asshole Syndicate, do you? That's a pretty huge generalization.
> [...] Against whom, exactly, is his alleged revenge being wreaked,
> if winner and loser alike are being given their due?
It's this simple: Solondz hates everybody. He hates people, and he
hates his characters because they remind him of people. Some people
find that entertaining. I'm not one of them.
Matthew Butcher
> Peace Electric wrote:
>> And Solondz was most certainly laughing at the character as she quietly
>> strolled down the sidewalk, vaguely happy after her one night stand.
> Most certainly? What evidence? I wasn't laughing. Did the camera do
> something funny?
If there's an easier way to guarantee a laugh than a Montovani cover of
"You Light Up My Life," I'd love to hear of it.
It was this shot, along with the ice-cream-parlour scene, that finally
took me out of the "interesting failure" camp and pissed me off
completely. If Solondz *has* to ridicule his characters to get a laugh,
he could at least restrain himself from such cheap jabs.
> [...] If he identifies with Joy--and I think she's the obvious
> alter-ego--why would he "get off" and hurting her? Maybe he honestly
> feels like this kind of mistreatment has happened to him, and he's just
> being blatantly honest.
Unlike Peace Electric, I don't think he's being a willful sadist here.
(I do think that much of the trouble he sets up for his characters, such
as Joy's vicious reception on her first day of teaching, is maddeningly
contrived, but that's another story.) My take: Solondz cares
passionately for his protagonists, and sees their losing struggles with
society as mirrors of his own. And he can't help pausing every few
minutes for a good snicker at their pathetic lives. Joy's an
effortlessly affecting songwriter, and she shivers with bliss at
elevator music.
Why does he do this? Because he can't face his self-loathing unless he
shies back from his characters and disguises it as ridicule. Because he
badly wants to leaven his films with humour, and is too unimaginative to
see any other sort. Because he's pandering to the hip cynicisms of his
audience. Any or all of the above.
The above applies only to his alter egos, by the way, and not to the
one-note demons he makes no effort to understand -- Mrs. Wiener, Missy,
Helen Jordan, Trish, etc. (Funny, now I think of it, that they're all
female.)
>> Solondz tricks you into thinking he's being genuine (or at least tries
>> to trick you), and then laughs at everyone he's tricked with that final
>> punchline: "No, I'd jerk off instead." That line received one of the
>> biggest laughs in the entire film.
> It is silly to judge a filmmaker's intentions by the reaction of
> audiences. People are known to laugh hysterically at things that are not
> funny in the least, because they are immature. No one in my theater
> laughed at that line. I didn't feel like laughing. I felt like vomiting.
> But for the father to respond that way seemed inevitable, because the core
> of their relationship throughout the film was that Dad always answered
> son's questons honestly.
Still, a filmmaker should be aware of the likely responses to his
material. Neil LaBute had a potentially searing monologue in "Your
Friends & Neighbours," and killed it by making it too sitcom-ish (eg.,
he cuts directly afterwards to startled reaction shots). That said, I
think this conversation is the high point of Solondz's script. Bill's
dialogue bored me in some of the other scenes with its pally therapeutic
triteness -- yeah, it was probably intentionally banal, but that didn't
make me any more enthusiastic. But this scene, with Bill discussing
horrors in that matter-of-fact tone of voice, is chilling. At a couple
of spots I wished Solondz had tried a little harder to avoid audience
giggles, even if it meant dialogue not as completely in character; I'd
probably have changed "jerk off" to "masturbate," for instance. But
that's very minor stuff compared to my dissatisfactions elsewhere in the
movie.
--
Matthew Butcher | He's even got a noise for Lillian Gish.
but...@math.ubc.ca | -- Amberg/Raymond/Bernauer
Peace Electric
> [...] I had a similar reaction: when *everybody* in a movie as
> sprawling as HAPPINESS is totally fucked up, I find it difficult
> to give a damn about much of anybody. It's Pathology Overload.
It's completely phony. It's exactly that kind of thing that turns me
off because I realize that it's a child's view of the world. Solondz
uses the title ironically, but it shouldn't be; there *is* happiness
in the world. Even the unhappy experience happiness, albeit in small
bursts. To suggest otherwise is a lie.
Peace Electric
('Buffalo '66' spoilers.)
> That's an element of the film, but it's not its primary focus; nobody
> could call BUFFALO '66 cynical or vicious overall. [..]
No, in fact I'd call it the exact opposite: unabashedly romantic and
optimistic. While the parents are two scathing caricatures, everyone
else in the film is seen in surprisingly fair terms: Layla is clearly
idealized by Gallo's camera; the quarterback character is revealed to
be "not such a bad guy"; Goon, despite being slow, is both loyal and
concerned (and in fact, gets a great big apology scene); and Wendy,
the crush, is basically just a regular person -- no, "this is the
bitch that refused to look at me twice" type stuff. In reality, Gallo
appears to be an egotistical ape (how much of that is an act I really
don't know), but as a director, he's incredibly understanding.
'Buffalo '66' finds the poetry in shit, which is something I find much
more appealing and much more artistic than finding the shit in shit, as
Solondz is so cleverly making a career out of.
Bryant Frazer
: (Quoting Conn in FILM COMMENT)
: "But by making all of his characters sexual monomaniacs [this is
: an overstatement, but not much of one -- md'a], isn't Solondz presenting a
: picture as flat and punishing as the Fifties sitcom model he wishes to
: eschew?...
Except that I found HAPPINESS very funny and very touching. Really, this
all turns on whether or not you were affected by the film. It's kinda like
having a sense of humor about MARS ATTACKS! -- you're either rolling in
the aisles or you're bored and irritated. I think those of us who liked
the film experienced it in a fundamentally different way than those who
disliked it. Going around and around like this certainly helps us pinpoint
where our diferences are, but I think it's impossible to reconcile opinion
about this one.
As far as the "sexual monomaniacs" charge goes, I agree completely that it
helps make HAPPINESS an inverted fifties sitcom, which is kind of the
point. Fucked-up sexuality is pretty much the primary subject of the
movie.
: (When even the smallest bit player -- the doorman of the
: building where three of the lead characters reside -- turned out to be a
: rapist, I gave up.)" I had a similar reaction: when *everybody* in a
: movie as sprawling as HAPPINESS is totally fucked up, I find it difficult
: to give a damn about much of anybody. It's Pathology Overload.
I had a similar reaction to SHORT CUTS, which seems to be the thematic and
structural predecessor to HAPPINESS. In fact, I found Altman's attitude in
the former film to be as insufferably pessimistic as you say Solondz's is
in HAPPINESS. I guess my reasons for preferring Solondz to Altman just hve
to do with personal sensibility -- I recognize the world of HAPPINESS more
readily than I do the world of SHORT CUTS, and find that HAPPINESS
actually makes me appreciative of the good in this world, rather than
scornful of the bad. I don't know why I walked out of HAPPINESS gratified
and full of hope, but I did -- it may be a bizarre reaction, but it's one
that I valued greatly. I guess it's sort of a therapeutic phenomenon,
where the director takes you down into the depths, gives you a little
information about the way things work in those black corners, and thus
better equips you for dealing with the bleaker things in life.
: At the NYFF press conference for HAPPINESS, Solondz was taking about
: independent film v. Hollywood film, and he made some disparaging comment
: about how much he hates Hollywood films that, say, try to milk sympathy
: for a character by making him disabled or something. And yet it seems to
: me that that is *precisely* what Solondz does, especially in DOLLHOUSE.
: He gives us a terrific protagonist, and then he proceeds to spend an hour
: and a half humiliating her over and over and over and over and over and
: over and over and over. And over. And over *again*. And after a while,
: I began to find it wearisome, and somewhat manipulative.
I've gotta say that i didn't find the entire film to be an exercise in
humiliation, although I grant you your point. I didn't find it cheaply
manipulative, though (and that's an important distinction, because all
good films are designed from square one to manipulate an audience). The
difference is that Dawn Wiener is a sympathetic character not so much
because she's being humiliated -- which is, after all, an easy enough
thing to do in movies -- but because she's so easy for many of us to
identify with. Was my experience of junior high as bad as Dawn Wiener's?
Nah, and I'm very thankful for that. But I think Solondz hits on something
that was very striking to me even when I was in seventh grade -- more ably
than any other film I've seen, DOLLHOUSE really captures the social
structure among young adolescents, and that whole cruel dynamic that seems
to be conveniently ignored or misunderstood by the adults who are
supposedly protecting and caring for the children.
I'm speaking here from the point of view of a frustrated and tormented
child struggling within that system, which is the point of view that
DOLLHOUSE takes in every scene. Solondz lays it on thick, but the
verisimilitude, at least in terms of *my* junior high experience, is
valuable in itself.
: (I have the
: same problem with a lot of Fassbinder's oeuvre, actually.)
EXCELLENT point of comparison. I like Solondz more than Fassbinder, but
that may be a function of time and place rather than form or content..
: It's easy to
: get an audience to sympathize with a character who's constantly being
: shat on, but to what purpose? Just to demonstrate that for some
: unfortunate people, this is what life is like?
I feel I should point out here that I had a happy childhood in a nice
house on a nice street. There was a lot of trauma involved, however -- I
freaking hated sixth and seventh grade with a passion -- and I found
DOLLHOUSE to be a good reflection of that. It hit close to home.
: Regina Robbins, in particular, tends to defends Solondz's work on the
: grounds that it reflects the real world, but I've never believed that art
: is automatically worthy merely because it's accurate.
But if it's accurate in a way that we've not seen before, that counts for
something, doesn't it? That's not the sole criterion, of course, but I
think that initial frisson at realizing that, hey, my god, that's what
it's really like is pretty exciting. In other words, if it hits close to
home, I tend to sit up and take notice.
Matthew Butcher
Peace Electric wrote:
> While the parents are two scathing caricatures, everyone
> else in the film is seen in surprisingly fair terms: Layla is clearly
> idealized by Gallo's camera; the quarterback character is revealed to
> be "not such a bad guy"; Goon, despite being slow, is both loyal and
> concerned (and in fact, gets a great big apology scene); and Wendy,
> the crush, is basically just a regular person -- no, "this is the
> bitch that refused to look at me twice" type stuff. In reality, Gallo
> appears to be an egotistical ape (how much of that is an act I really
> don't know), but as a director, he's incredibly understanding.
Peace, I liked "Buffalo '66" and all, but I'm puzzled by some of the
foregoing. We see hardly anything of the placekicker beyond a few
moments where he's cavorting with his strippers; Billy's decision, on
the basis of this glimpse, that he isn't "such a bad guy" is one of the
funniest lines in the film. Not that the character is drawn spitefully
-- it just isn't really drawn at all.
As for Rosanna Arquette's Wendy, I thought bitch-type stuff was exactly
what we got. She's a twitchy creep, and Layla says as much. I didn't
care, though, since (a) she's also very funny, and (b) that sort of
thing is hardly the main focus of the movie. (Compare and contrast with
the work of, say, our whipping boy of the month.)
Bryant Frazer
: It's interesting that a lot of the 'Happiness' supporters seem to share
: Solondz' bitter, cynical, hateful world view, as well as a real anger
: towards people in general.
That's real good. "You enjoy hateful movies because you're a hateful
person." Thanks for clearing that up for me.
: I mean, really: "fucking assholes" -- who
: would those be, exactly? The overweight woman? The smug poet? Joy? Do
: these people really deserve to be punished and humiliated and insulted?
: So Joy broke up with Jon Lovitz because she wasn't attracted to him.
: Does that make her a "fucking asshole"? Does that mean she deserves to
: be pelted with tomatoes?
I should point out that the whole "fucking asshole" business originated
with Mike, and was picked up by Regina and I in the course of responding
to his post. In retrospect, I guess I should have quibbled with the term,
since I really don't think that anyone in DOLLHOUSE or HAPPINESS is being
reduced to that level, except maybe the Wiener parents. I do think that we
often have trouble getting along with one another, due to selfishness,
miscommunication, or psychological disorder, and I think HAPPINESS is
about that to some extent.
In response to your point about Joy and the Jon Lovitz character, well, I
don't think either one of them is a fucking asshole. But they're in a bad
situation that Joy doesn't handle very well, and both of them wind up
acting very poorly. It's a shame. It's also funny and heartbreaking all at
the same time.
And let me just clarify for the record that I, in my bitter, cynical,
hateful way, felt various levels of empathy for all of the different
characters in HAPPINESS, including the overweight murderess that you seem
to think we're meant to despise. (Well, probably except for the Russian
cab driver.) Some of them were pretty stupid and self-destructive,
granted. When I have truly unhappy days, I feel stupid and
self-destructive as well. But they were all confused, lurching toward
their own ideas of happiness.
: And come on, you don't really think that those of us who were offended,
: disgusted, repulsed, annoyed, angered by this film are part of the vast
: Fucking Asshole Syndicate, do you? That's a pretty huge generalization.
No more sweeping than your assertion up above that those of us who like
the film are bitter, cynical hateful people.
: It's this simple: Solondz hates everybody. He hates people, and he
: hates his characters because they remind him of people. Some people
: find that entertaining. I'm not one of them.
Have you bothered to read any of my posts where I quote the director's own
words in support of my contention that this is an unfair reading of his
work? He goes off at length about the emotional connections he feels to
his characters, his distress at the way human beings are capable of
treating one another, and his firm belief that the acting of making a film
at all is a hopeful act. If you're going to claim that he simply makes
films -- and then lies to interviewers -- because he hates everyone, you'd
better show some evidence of that.
I'm curious. Have you ever considered the possibility that Solondz
actually identifies with and, at some level, cares for these characters?
And if so, why did you reject that possibility? Just because the audience
you saw the film with laughed at them?
Trent
> I'll
> take Solondz' allegedly stunted, immature worldview over the smug
> self-importance of Neil LaBute, for example.
>
Can you explain more about your dislike of Neil Labute? I found "In the
Company of Men" to be much better than "Happiness." I found much more
truth in Labute's film (I liked "Your Friends and Neighbbors" too, even
more than "Happiness", but I don't think there is as much to relate to
in that film). I just saw it for the first time over Christmas
vacation, and I was thinking about it for days afterwards. Everyday I
see people who could do what Chad did.
I also think Labute is a much better director from a technical
standpoint. The dark lighting, the ominous positioning of the camera,
and dehumanizing enviroment the characters work in. And that last
silent shot of Howard screaming "Listen to me! Listen to me!" is much
more effective than some 12-year old cumming off of a balcony.
-----> Trent
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> That's a strong point, and I have no answer for it. I laugh plenty at
> Burton's Ed Wood, Burton's Lydia, Burton's Edward Scissorhands, but
> it's somehow always a fond, likable laughter. When Lydia, the cliched
> angst-ridden teen dressed in black, sits down at her bedroom table to
> write a suicide note, and keeps scribbling out adjectives and adverbs
> to make it sound more and more tragic, I laugh knowingly at what she's
> experiencing. That's the kind of thing that we all go through, that
> we've all thought about doing (or have done), and so it's funny. But
> never in the spiteful, cynical, hateful way of a Solondz film. When
> Solondz makes fun of his characters I simply sit there staring at the
> screen wondering why the hell he's being so cruel. I'm not taking part
> in his festival of hate.
I'm interested in the phrase above, "That's the sort of thing that we all
go through...But never in the...way of a Solondz film." This makes it
sound as if you just don't believe that anyone has ever been as miserable
as Solondz presents his characters as being. This of course would make it
difficult for a viewer to invest in the story. But is this any different
from the reaction of those inner-city minority youths who were taken to
SCHINDLER'S LIST and, unaware that it was a fictional account of
historical events, laughed hysterically at atrocities? They weren't being
malicious, they just didn't recognize or idenitfy with what they were
looking at.
Sorry to skirt so closely to the personal and/or psychoanalytical, but it
seems to me that the reactions that we are all having to this film aren't
based on scholarly assessment. Solondz's intention, I think, is to throw
intellectualism, reason, common sense--the smokescreens behind which his
HAPPINESS characters hide their essential bestial natures--to the wind and
put us as close to the source of the evil as possible. No kidding, I really
think he's concerned not just with "meanness," but with evil--which, is
Hannah Arendt said, is banal, not mysterious and rare.
RAR.
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> It's interesting that a lot of the 'Happiness' supporters seem to share
> Solondz' bitter, cynical, hateful world view, as well as a real anger
> towards people in general. I mean, really: "fucking assholes" -- who
> would those be, exactly? The overweight woman? The smug poet? Joy? Do
> these people really deserve to be punished and humiliated and insulted?
No, and that's exactly Solondz's point. Again, I am baffled by the
assertion that because someone makes a film that shows hateful behavior,
they somehow endorse this behavior. Is a documentarian given this grief
is she doesn't turn the camera off during an atrocity? Or maybe it's
better to be a documentarian, because at least then you didn't "make"
anything happen, whereas Solondz is bad because he on purpose goes out and
shoots films with this kind of stuff in them. In the final analysis, I
think this debate comes down to the following exchange:
"Come on, nothing in life is really that bad."
"Oh, yes it is."
RAR.
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> Regina Alexandra Robbins wrote:
>
> > Most certainly? What evidence? I wasn't laughing. Did the camera
> > do something funny?
>
> I think it was the song playing in the background, which I saw as
> Solondz' cruelly ironic comment on Joy's pitifulness. He's laughing at
> her for being so lonely that she'd actually be glad that a married
> Russian thief would fuck her, ditch her, and then steal her stuff.
Of course, we don't know at that point that he's married, or that he's
never gonna call again, or that he's as bad a thief as we find out...so
the cruel irony isn't nearly as cruel as you claim it is. It is sort of a
joke that this ridiculous tacky player is who she's mooning over, but how
many times in life has a woman found herself gaga over a guy who, at first
glance, she completely dismissed?
> It's true that as a viewer we should be able to separate the film and
> the audience's reaction, but I think it's an unrealistic expectation.
> You say you felt like vomiting at Bill's last line. So did I, except
> I was apparently in the minority since everyone around me was laughing
> uproariously. Perhaps it makes me weak that I'm affected by people's
> reaction to the film, I don't know, but I can say right now that it
> would be absolutely impossible for me to not take into account that
> experience, to not give weight to the feeling of being horrified while
> everyone else is laughing. The audience affects your perception of the
> film, good or bad, and there's not much you can do about it.
So filmmmakers should never take risks with their material, should never
attempt to put a new spin on something, because some fools might miss it.
We should attempt to appeal to the most ignorant, most emotionally stunted
people in the audience, and deep thinkers be damned. (I include you in
the deep thinker department, for the record--I think you had just the
reaction Solondz wanted you to have, but for whatever reason, it didn't
work for you.)
> I'm not asking that Solondz present the character as pure evil (in
> fact, one of my main problems with 'Schindler's List' is that the Nazis
> are made out to be *too* evil), but this is a movie that hates all of
> its characters and makes unrelenting fun of them. If you're going to
> make the audience hate a woman because she's fat, or because some kid
> is awkward and confused, then you'd better damn well make the audience
> hate a pedophile for being a pedophile, because greeting all of these
> innocents with scorn while at the exact same time being tender with a
> pedophile is, to me, absolutely repugnant. Had Solondz been tender with
> every character *other* than the pedophile, I'd have criticized *that*
> as being unfair. It's the picking and choosing of what characters to
> hate that makes me queasy.
I am just not with you here. I don't hate the fat woman at all. I don't
hate the kid either. I pity them, but I don't hate them. I am just
totally and completely stunned that anyone believes that we are supposed
to hate these characters or that Solondz hates them. That scene in the
bar where Hoffman and Manheim dance to "All Out Of Love" had me
practically in tears. And I don't mean tears of laughter. It
*is* possible to feel great affection for a person or thing while
acknowledging that it's fucked-up, pathetic or silly.
> > Perhaps his way of thinking is that at least Dylan Baker is actually
> > mentally ill or seriously twisted, as opposed to his wife or his
> > sister-in-law the poet, who are just morally bankrupt.
>
> But isn't that as invalid as dismissing the pedophile? You're saying
> that we should sympathize with the pedophile because he's ill -- that
> he has no control over his actions -- but couldn't you say something
> very similar for the poet or the wife? Surely they didn't wake up one
> morning and say, "Today I'm going to be morally bankrupt," to re-use
> your own example. If you're going to extend sympathy, I don't see on
> what grounds you can say, "Okay, this person is deserving but this
> person is not."
A good point. Maybe we're all falling into Solondz's little trap. He
makes a movie in which everyone is wretched and ridiculous in some way.
Then he sits back and says, "I wonder what the audience will think is
going on. I wonder who they'll love and who they'll hate. I wonder how
many people will go on Usenet and reveal much, much more about themselves
than they intended."
RAR.
Andrew Johnston
says...
> Mike D'Angelo wrote:
>
> > [...] I had a similar reaction: when *everybody* in a movie as
> > to give a damn about much of anybody. It's Pathology Overload.
>
> off because I realize that it's a child's view of the world. Solondz
> uses the title ironically, but it shouldn't be; there *is* happiness
> in the world. Even the unhappy experience happiness, albeit in small
> bursts. To suggest otherwise is a lie.
I don't think Solondz is saying happiness doesn't exist, rather, that
it's easier to lie to yourself and pretend to be happy than to actually
achieve happiness. And that people are often so weighed down by the
bullshit inside their heads that they can't allow themselves to achieve
it. You may chalk this up to his alleged contempt for his characters, I
say it's an example of how the characters in HAPPINESS (with the notable
exception of Mannheim) are incredibly well-developed. No movie I saw last
year had characters that seemed more real.
Peace Electric
> : It's interesting that a lot of the 'Happiness' supporters seem to
> : share Solondz' bitter, cynical, hateful world view, as well as a
> : real anger towards people in general.
>
> That's real good. "You enjoy hateful movies because you're a hateful
> person." Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Sorry, that's not how I meant it. I was simply taken aback by some of
the anger exhibited towards these "fucking assholes" (whoever they may
be -- I'm still not sure), and the delight in showing them how terribly
they've ruined people's lives. You have to have *some* bitterness,
*some* cynicism, and *some* hate towards others to want to see a movie
that gives it to the "fucking assholes." I'm not suggesting that people
who like 'Happiness' are hateful (because that would be ridiculous),
but rather that maybe (maybe!) the people who like 'Happiness' -- or
get a cathartic charge out of it -- have more hate towards the "fucking
assholes" of the world than people who loathe the film. I mean, I don't
think I'd consider anyone I've ever met a "fucking asshole." Sure I've
met cruel people who treated me like shit for no discernible reason,
but I've never wanted to see them punished. I've never wanted to make
a movie -- or have someone else make a movie -- that would show them
just how cruel they really were. I've just never held a grudge.
BTW, the last part of my original sentence: "as well as a real anger
towards people in general" -- I don't even know why I wrote that, since
it's not at all what I meant. Sorry about that; it was late.
> Have you bothered to read any of my posts where I quote the
> director's own words in support of my contention that this is an
> unfair reading of his work? [...]
Yes, and what can I say? I don't believe the guy, or at least think
there's more going on than he's mentioning. Because what he says and
what he puts up there on the screen have very little in common.
> I'm curious. Have you ever considered the possibility that Solondz
> actually identifies with and, at some level, cares for these
> characters? And if so, why did you reject that possibility? Just
> because the audience you saw the film with laughed at them?
I don't think it's possible to *viciously* mock your characters and
identify with them at the same time. Whether or not you think that
that's what Solondz is doing depends on how you read the film. I look
at the screen and I see nothing but Solondz' hate, bitterness, and
anger towards the world, and I see it continuously directed at the
characters. You look at the screen and you see something vastly
different.
Andrew Johnston
> MuseMalade wrote:
>
> (Spoilers.)
>
> > The tightly framed close-ups of Manheim, Hoffman, Lovitz, and Gazarra
> > always appeared distorted in some way; these actors are shot to look
> > uglier than they actually are. Lovitz sweats, Hoffman has a wince
> > that looks like he's constantly repulsed by his own b.o., Manheim is
> > given bad lighting, etc. Boyle, if I recall correctly, isn't given
> > many close-ups, but she looks perpetually bitchy. All of these
> > characters, I think, are mocked relentlessly.
>
> Which, right there, would be more than enough for me to dismiss this
> movie as childish, bitter, and ugly. I have no interest in watching
> fictional characters being unfairly mocked for over two hours. I don't
> hate people the way Solondz does.
If he hates his characters so much, why did he obviously lavish such
attention on developing them? Having had the opportunity to watch the
movie on video at home the other day, a lot of subtleties in the
performances (especially those of Adams, Baker and Hoffman) jumped out at
me that I had missed before--the kind of stuff that wouldn't be there if
the (writer-) director didn't have a fully-formed vision of the
characters that he successfully articulated to the cast. There's a world
of difference between hating characters and feeling sorry for them--and
it seems more than evident to me that we're supposed to feel sorry for
Joy, Bill, etc. instead of hating them. The only really hateful
characters in the movie are Vlad, Helen (who's a clever parody of Kathryn
(sp?) Harrison/Elizabeth Wurtzel-type writers who I hate in real life
anyway) and Mannheim--and in the case of those three, convincing the
audience to hate them makes perfect dramatic sense.
>
> That's a strong point, and I have no answer for it. I laugh plenty at
> Burton's Ed Wood, Burton's Lydia, Burton's Edward Scissorhands, but
> it's somehow always a fond, likable laughter. When Lydia, the cliched
> angst-ridden teen dressed in black, sits down at her bedroom table to
> write a suicide note, and keeps scribbling out adjectives and adverbs
> to make it sound more and more tragic, I laugh knowingly at what she's
> experiencing. That's the kind of thing that we all go through, that
> we've all thought about doing (or have done), and so it's funny.
And so is Jon Lovitz's "I'm champagne--you're shit" speech, for exactly
the same reasons. I dare anyone who's ever been dumped (and given "It's
not you, it's me" as an excuse) not to identify with that scene.
Andrew Johnston
says...
> Subject: Re: HAPPINESS: Worst of the Year (SPOILERS)
> From: Peace Electric <pea...@sk.sympatico.ca>
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.current-films
>
> Regina Alexandra Robbins wrote:
>
> (Spoilers.)
>
> > > night stand.
> >
> > do something funny?
>
> I think it was the song playing in the background, which I saw as
> Solondz' cruelly ironic comment on Joy's pitifulness. He's laughing at
> her for being so lonely that she'd actually be glad that a married
> Russian thief would fuck her, ditch her, and then steal her stuff.
>
>
started this thread, Johnny doesn't vomit up cum at the breakfast table,
he just vomits, period. The film makes it more than clear that Baker was
a rear-entry-oriented pedophile. I don't want to sound overly pedantic
(or like I'm trying to start a thread on the mechanics of molesting an
unconscious 10-year-old), but I think you're exaggerating stuff about the
film to fit your conclusion that Solondz is the World's Biggest
Misanthrope. HAPPINESS is a movie about self-delusion, something that
every man, woman and child on Earth practices to one degree or another.
And nowhere is self-delusion more prevalent than in the arena of sexual
relations. It seems obvious to me that she learns something, and grows up
a little bit, as a result of the experience with Vlad--as does Hoffman
from his experience with Mannheim. As much as I loved the movie, I
thought it was a cheap irony (at first) that Helen would suggest setting
up Joy with Allen in the final scene (in light of Allen's obscene call to
Helen earlier). Upon a second viewing, it occurred to me since Joy and
Allen are the only two characters who've really learned anything in the
movie, maybe their date wouldn't be such a horror show after all.
Andrew Johnston
says...
> Regina Alexandra Robbins wrote:
>
> > In a minute. And why *shouldn't* he want to show the fucking
> > assholes the extent of what they've done? Not only does he have to
> > suffer, he has to be a good sport about it? It would seem to me that
> > only people who identified with the fucking assholes would be made
> > uncomfortable by this.
>
> Solondz' bitter, cynical, hateful world view, as well as a real anger
> would those be, exactly? The overweight woman? The smug poet? Joy? Do
> these people really deserve to be punished and humiliated and insulted?
> Does that make her a "fucking asshole"? Does that mean she deserves to
> be pelted with tomatoes?
I consider my worldview to be optimistic, albeit tempered with a certian
amount of realism...and I was honestly surprised to love HAPPINESS as
much as I did, since avoided DOLLHOUSE for years because friends I trust
were saying the kinds of things about it that you are in this thread.
DOLLHOUSE may contain "real anger against people in general", but if you
say that it exists in HAPPINESS, I really have to wonder if we saw the
same movie.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> I'm interested in the phrase above, "That's the sort of thing that
> we all go through...But never in the...way of a Solondz film." This
> makes it sound as if you just don't believe that anyone has ever been
> as miserable as Solondz presents his characters as being. [...]
No, I do believe that people can be that miserable, and in fact, at
times I myself have been as miserable (or more). But I'm not talking
about whether or not such degrees of depression and sadness and
pitifulness are possible, but rather how Solondz treats all of these
characters who are at these various stages in their lives. I don't
think it's clever, or witty, or funny, or dramatic, or tragic, or
interesting, or artistic to mercilessly mock these poor people for
having problems, for being so pitiful, as I truly believe he's doing
with Bill's caustically blunt final response to his confused son, with
the ironic song that plays over Joy's loneliness, with the overweight
woman's interruption for ice cream, with the "nobody knows his name"
ending to the Jon Lovitz suicide, etc.
Additionally, I have zero patience with Solondz' painting the world as
a perpetually unhappy place, because to me that's every bit as false as
painting the world as a perpetually happy place. I'm completely unable
to relate to that sort of untruthful simplification.
Peace Electric
> SPOILERS for "Buffalo '66"
>
> Peace, I liked "Buffalo '66" and all, but I'm puzzled by some of the
> foregoing. We see hardly anything of the placekicker beyond a few
> moments where he's cavorting with his strippers; Billy's decision, on
> the basis of this glimpse, that he isn't "such a bad guy" is one of
> the funniest lines in the film. Not that the character is drawn
> spitefully -- it just isn't really drawn at all.
True, but there's not a lot of characters in the movie, so I had to
cover him (Mickey Rourke is so much of a non-character that I never
think of him as actually being in the movie). However, even though we
don't see much of the kicker, I do think it's worth noting that Billy
immediately forgives the guy after prison and however many years of
revenge. If the movie really were as hateful as John Harkness is
suggesting, then you'd think that this character would certainly have
received some grade-A scorn. Instead, though, Billy forgives him and
then moves on. And last time I checked, "forgiveness" and "hate" don't
exactly mix.
> As for Rosanna Arquette's Wendy, I thought bitch-type stuff was
> exactly what we got. She's a twitchy creep, and Layla says as much.
> I didn't care, though, since (a) she's also very funny, and (b) that
> sort of thing is hardly the main focus of the movie. [...]
I'm surprised you thought she was a bitch. Sure, Layla didn't like her,
but I saw that more as petty, protective jealousy than anything
relating specifically to Wendy. My memory of the scene is a bit vague,
but doesn't Wendy notice Billy, reminisce with him a bit, and even
invite him over to the table. If so, then I'd argue that Gallo goes in
the exact opposite direction that you'd expect: instead of making Wendy
some kind of uber-bitch so as to attach us more to Layla, he makes her
polite and fairly regular. (She did giggle a bit, but I saw it more as
nervousness to the situation than any kind of direct insult.)
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> Additionally, I have zero patience with Solondz' painting the world as
> a perpetually unhappy place, because to me that's every bit as false as
> painting the world as a perpetually happy place. I'm completely unable
> to relate to that sort of untruthful simplification.
So I take that to mean that romantic comedies with almost totally
unbelievable endings are repgunant to you as well? (And I don't mean
just stupid contemporary junk like PRETTY WOMAN, but classic fare like
NINOTCHKA.) How about every film made by a studio in the 1950's?
Audiences regularly accept these fairy tales without a peep, because they
help us delude ourselves that fairy tales will happen to us in real life.
What is the big difference if someone wants to lean on the boogeyman side
a little more? If it's really an aversion to "untruthfulness" that spurs
your objections.
RAR.
Dave Cowen
>: what they've done? Not only does he have to suffer, he has to be a
>: good sport about it? It would seem to me that only people who
>: identified with the fucking assholes would be made uncomfortable by
>: this.
>
>terribly interesting. I guess you could argue that this suggests that I
>don't find other people's pain interesting, thus painting a portrait of
>me as insensitive jerk; but in fact I merely want their pain to serve
>some kind of dramatic purpose. There's a reason that the "tragic flaw"
>is such a prevalent dramatic motif: watching people suffer for no good
>reason is simply awful.
What astounds me about this thread is that everybody's going back and forth
about Solondz's motivations, dramatic impact, character motivations, etc...
when nobody mentions the real reason that Happiness was on their list:
Happiness did/did not make me laugh.
Happiness, as a drama, stinks. I'll give the "I hate Todd Solondz" camp
that much: the story isn't interesting in the slightest. What Todd Solondz
gives us are broadly-drawn characters who find themselves in strange or
disgusting circumstances and react to them in interesting or surprising
or humilating ways. All the while, there are small pauses before or after
the particularly interesting, or surprising, or humiliating things for the
audience to laugh or snicker. Their pain doesn't serve some kind of dramatic
purpose, because it's only there to make us laugh. It's a -comedy-.
Now, the reason Solondz is being canonized is because he's making us laugh
about things we've never laughed about before. Because it tackles some of
this "daring new material", people are bound to think about it as a "serious
work of art," a "statement on modern sexuality." But it's not, at least no
more than There's Something About Mary was (although, ultimately, I liked
Happiness because, at least for me, there were more laughs).
Now, the problem is, some people don't find these situations funny. For
example, the "wallpaper" scene, either because they don't get it, or because
they don't find the humor to be a laughing matter:
>> Wow, I can't even see what's funny about the wallpaper scene. So he
>> jerks off onto the wall and then covers it up with paper. So where's
>> the humour in that? What's the joke?
>
>Hoffman's clumsy face as he fumbles for one of those magazine
>subscription cutouts was hilarious. Actually making use of those
>annoying cutouts that everyone hates was doubly hilarious.
Interestingly, for me the reason the scene was funny was because Hoffman used
semen as a permanent adhesive, clearly not the intended use for semen. How
did he come up with doing that? It's funny because it's unexpected and weird.
In fact, it's funny for the -exact same reason- the "hair gel" joke is funny
in There's Something About Mary (semen holds magazine subscription card up/
semen hold's Cameron Diaz's hair up)! Which movie you prefer, it seems,
depends on whether you find Cameron Diaz's hair or magazine subscription cards
more inherently funny.
Sure, Solondz laces his films with cheap shock value. Cheap shock value,
however, often generates laughs. Petty cruelty often generates laughs.
Characters with weird sexual tics often generate laughs. Happiness ends
up generating a lot of laughs: at least in the theater which I went to.
Yes, at times we're supposed to laugh at these characters failings. At
least in my experience of Happiness, the characters were drawn so broadly,
so specifically to provide comic counterpoint for the types of situations
they got into, that you didn't "care for them" more than the fact that they
were kind of goofy. I really don't understand (as in Andrew Johnston's
post) saying that the characters were the "most realistic" they'd seen.
Grafting common nervous tics onto outrageous situations does not equal
realistic, but it can result in humor.
Dave "It's -funny- that life is so shitty, get it?" Cowen (es...@fische.net)
M. Whittier
<Pine.GSO.3.95qL.99011...@ciao.cc.columbia.edu>, Regina
Alexandra Robbins <ra...@columbia.edu> wrote:
>On Sun, 17 Jan 1999, Peace Electric wrote:
>> It's true that as a viewer we should be able to separate the film and
>> the audience's reaction, but I think it's an unrealistic expectation.
>> You say you felt like vomiting at Bill's last line. So did I, except
>> I was apparently in the minority since everyone around me was laughing
>> uproariously. Perhaps it makes me weak that I'm affected by people's
>> reaction to the film, I don't know, but I can say right now that it
>> would be absolutely impossible for me to not take into account that
>> experience, to not give weight to the feeling of being horrified while
>> everyone else is laughing. The audience affects your perception of the
>> film, good or bad, and there's not much you can do about it.
>
>So filmmmakers should never take risks with their material, should never
>attempt to put a new spin on something, because some fools might miss it.
>We should attempt to appeal to the most ignorant, most emotionally stunted
>people in the audience, and deep thinkers be damned. (I include you in
>the deep thinker department, for the record--I think you had just the
>reaction Solondz wanted you to have, but for whatever reason, it didn't
>work for you.)
<snip>
>Maybe we're all falling into Solondz's little trap. He
>makes a movie in which everyone is wretched and ridiculous in some way.
>Then he sits back and says, "I wonder what the audience will think is
>going on. I wonder who they'll love and who they'll hate. I wonder how
>many people will go on Usenet and reveal much, much more about themselves
>than they intended."
>
>RAR.
Following this thread, I couldn't help but think that most of the insights
posted here, while compelling, are unlikely to ever be fully
authenticated, unless Solondz himself puts in an appearance. (Whether or
everyone involved would believe he is capable of sufficient insight and
self-honesty to really clear up the controversy here is still debatable,
but that's beside the point.) I don't mean at all to suggest that this
makes the discussion pointless; rather I keep thinking that this strangely
successful movie (didn't it do inordinately well for a film of its type?)
didn't provoke such soul-searching in the vast majority of its viewing
audience. Which is a significant thing, I think.
This is what I am getting at: here in Minneapolis, the film was unusually
successful, and more to the point, it pulled in what would seem to be a
really unlikely audience. For better or worse, the Twin Cities are known
as the epicenter of a phenomenon known as Minnesota Nice, in which people
are exceedingly, pointedly polite and friendly, in a frozen-smile sort of
way (think Bill Macy's character in Fargo) while being scheming and
cynical, in motive and interior thought. Whether this is really a
localized phenomenon, is up for grabs, as well as the notion of it being
entirely pervasive.
Regardless, it does exist. And if it thrives anywhere, it's in a
generation of upper to upper-upper middle class middle-aged married
couples that is quasi-retired, and has significant free time and
discretionary income. The sort of couples who wear garish Cosby sweaters
and much precious metal jewelry, and chortle at every Woody Allen movie
(they likely LOVED Aphrodite; saw it as one long Playboy cartoon) and
order golf toys from Hammacher Schlemmer. The sort of suburban, repressed,
denial-prone, perky-but-rotten-at-the-core worldview people that Solondz
would seem to despise most, arguably with some justification.
These people came in droves to Happiness during it's extended run here. I
saw the film twice, once during its first week, and a second time in the
third or fourth week, and both occasions it was sold out, noticeably full
of Someone's affluent grandparents. I'll admit I found the movie
disturbing, but even more so I was mortified by the reaction of the
audience, during both viewings. They whooped and guffawed and hooted as
though they were watching a Road Runner cartoon. They seemed to perceive
the film, even its saddest, most gruesome moments, as a laugh riot, a
string of comic vignettes, so many banana peels, with an overlay of
smuttiness.
I bring this up for two reasons. One is that it seems (doubly- maybe
triply?) ironic that if Solonz's intention was to speak to the fellow
wounded souls out there who could empathize with the under(weiner)dog, at
least in this zip code, the bullies stole his lunch money. All over again.
Why _were_ all of these people at this film? Did they hear it was a
"naughty" movie, and they were titillated beyond their ability to resist a
movie without Meg Ryan? It sure wasn't about receiving a moral, or
emotional spanking; they seemed to identify utterly with the cruelty and
absurdity, and not at all with the suffering, or irony. And speaking of
irony, they seemed completely immune to it, given that they were being
portrayed pretty nastily up there, in all their repressed, dishonest
splendor; they seemed interested primarily in "the dirty bits" and the
humiliation.
This might serve to validate Solondz's alleged worldview, except if this
is his audience, it's a little like Schindler's List being made a
financial success by neo-Nazis who came to see the torture scenes, and
giggle.
The second reason is that in reading this thread, a secondary division
(the primary division seeming to be settling down to:
Cynic/Not-THAT-Much-of-a-Cynic) seems to be those who found humor in the
film, and those who found nothing to laugh at whatsoever, and are
disturbed by the idea that laughter is what Solondz had in mind. But I am
probably projecting all over the place, I admit.
I guess the question I am asking is this: what was the success of this
film about for _the majority_ of the audience it reached? (I am not
suggesting that what I saw here is typical, as far as audience
demographics, or reaction [well, maybe reaction]). But still, I doubt that
most of the people who saw this film annotated and digested it to the
extent it has been here, or even that it was necessarily intended for
those capable. Any ideas on what struck a chord?
And another completely unrelated question: if we are to think that Joy is
Solondz's alter ego, isn't the fact that she is a pitiably bad 'artist'
(this is how I recall perceiving her 'ability'; I admit I may be
misremembering), who despite having little sense of her own remarkable
lack of originality and talent, trudges on with her sad, unlikely dream of
recognition and success, oddly significant? Is this self-defensive
posturing on Solondz's part? Specifically a first-strike of the
self-deprecatory sort?
Michael
-mwit...@minn.net
Bryant Frazer
: It *is* possible to feel great affection for a person or thing while
: acknowledging that it's fucked-up, pathetic or silly.
Bingo.
-bf-
Andrew Johnston
says...
> These people came in droves to Happiness during it's extended run here. I
> saw the film twice, once during its first week, and a second time in the
> third or fourth week, and both occasions it was sold out, noticeably full
> of Someone's affluent grandparents. I'll admit I found the movie
> disturbing, but even more so I was mortified by the reaction of the
> audience, during both viewings. They whooped and guffawed and hooted as
> though they were watching a Road Runner cartoon. They seemed to perceive
> the film, even its saddest, most gruesome moments, as a laugh riot, a
> string of comic vignettes, so many banana peels, with an overlay of
> smuttiness.
>
> I bring this up for two reasons. One is that it seems (doubly- maybe
> triply?) ironic that if Solonz's intention was to speak to the fellow
> wounded souls out there who could empathize with the under(weiner)dog, at
> least in this zip code, the bullies stole his lunch money. All over again.
I was told that they're actually trying to add screens for HAPPINESS in
New York at this late date because Howard Stern just saw the movie and
spent an hour of his show last monday or tuesday raving about how much he
loved it. I didn't hear what he had to say, but I suspect that Stern (a
very smart cookie) probably got what the movie is about. However, if
legions of Stern-heads start flooding the theaters, it will be exactly
the kind of phyrric victory that you describe.
Are there any Stern listeners here who can summarize what he thought of
HAPPINESS? I'm quite curious.
Bryant Frazer
: Which movie you prefer, it seems,
: depends on whether you find Cameron Diaz's hair or magazine subscription cards
: more inherently funny.
Well, if the rest of THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY had been as funny as its
occasional (admittedly hysterical) money shots, I would happily have
praised it to the stars. (Hell, I would have been happy if it just wasn't
quite so boring.) But I don't think it would have had quite the same
impact on me as HAPPINESS. There's a dead serious undercurrent to Solondz
that adds an urgency and poignancy to the gags. TSAM was a little
poignant, in spots, but it wasn't coherent in its emotionality.
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> And another completely unrelated question: if we are to think that Joy is
> Solondz's alter ego, isn't the fact that she is a pitiably bad 'artist'
> (this is how I recall perceiving her 'ability'; I admit I may be
> misremembering), who despite having little sense of her own remarkable
> lack of originality and talent, trudges on with her sad, unlikely dream of
> recognition and success, oddly significant? Is this self-defensive
> posturing on Solondz's part? Specifically a first-strike of the
> self-deprecatory sort?
If an artist can't laugh at him/herself, he's probably a pretty bad
artist. The self-deprecation comes from a recognition of the fact that
the artistic impulse, in general, comes from a desire to work some
personal shit out in a more interesting way than therapy or a less
dangerous way than criminal activity. That doesn't mean that the art
produced isn't good; it just means that the artist is often put in the odd
position of watching other people be entertained by their diary, or their
laundry list, or something.
In cinematic comedy, it is essential that any artists portrayed onscreen
must be sort of bad, or at least weird. For an artist to portray another
artist--who will naturally be assumed by the audience to be someone they
identify with--as deep and fabulous would be perceived as the height of
self-promotion and snobbery. Screen art is often bad for another, more
practical reason, too: who has time to create good, fake poetry or music
for thirty seconds of a movie?
RAR.
Dashiell Christopher
> Mike D'Angelo <dan...@panix.com> expounded thusly:
>
< various snips throughout >
> : (When even the smallest bit player -- the doorman of the
> : building where three of the lead characters reside -- turned out to be a
> : rapist, I gave up.)" I had a similar reaction: when *everybody* in a
> : movie as sprawling as HAPPINESS is totally fucked up, I find it difficult
> : to give a damn about much of anybody. It's Pathology Overload.
>
> I had a similar reaction to SHORT CUTS, which seems to be the thematic and
> structural predecessor to HAPPINESS. In fact, I found Altman's attitude in
> the former film to be as insufferably pessimistic as you say Solondz's is
> in HAPPINESS. I guess my reasons for preferring Solondz to Altman just hve
> to do with personal sensibility -- I recognize the world of HAPPINESS more
> readily than I do the world of SHORT CUTS, and find that HAPPINESS
> actually makes me appreciative of the good in this world, rather than
> scornful of the bad.
That's an interesting comparison, I appreciate that. And, I also echo your
sensitivity to the world of HAPPINESS and SHORT CUTS respectively - but from an
different angle. I found the Carver stories in Altman's SHORT CUTS to be
totally unbelievable when compared to the source stories that Carver, himself,
created. It's interesting to note that while Altman was working from existing
material; the overriding assumption in this thread has been that Solondz is
working solely from his own experiences or sensibilities. I haven't seen so
much lip service paid to "artist intent" (for a film) in a while.
I'm wondering; is this ultimately worthwhile or rewarding?
Ohhhh, I strongly disagree. Solondz will never reach the heights attained by
Fassbinder - on any level. Consider films such as:
- LILI MARLEEN
- THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
- BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
- THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
What kind of overt humiliation and manipulation, exhibited in a manner similar
to Solondz, do you find evident in these films?
Dash
--
"I'm crazy about this city. Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings
in half. In the top half I see faces and it's not easy to tell which are
people, which are the work of stone masons. Below is shadow where any blasé
thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful
women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things. Hep.
It's the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does it. When I look
over the strips of green grass lining the river, at church steeples and into
cream-and-copper halls of apartment buildings, I'm strong. Alone, yes, but top
notch and indestructible."
Toni Morrison, Jazz, 1992
Dashiell Christopher
> Dashiell Christopher <dashc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> : Mike D'Angelo wrote:
> :
> :> I think that I'm ultimately even more irritated by b), however; the
> :> moment in HAPPINESS that made me angriest was the one in which Solondz
> :> follows Dylan Baker with his dosed sandwich and the camera pauses to
> :> admire photograph of the character with his adoring family. "See!
> :> I'm burrowing beneath the happy facade! I acknowledge people's
> :> private hells! LOVE ME!!!" Grow up.
> :
> : That's one way to see it. Another, is to look at it like the final
> : sequence of FATAL ATTRACTION - with its final lingering shot of the
> : family portrait. It, to my mind, establishes the costs exhibited in
> : order to maintain that familial bliss (murder and the denial of
> : passion). Rather than acknowledging people's private hells, and asking
> : for understanding, it is an indictment of that "ideal family".
>
> Of course it is, and a stunningly crass one -- that's exactly the point I
> was attempting (perhaps less than coherently) to make. It's specifically
> the way in which this shot deliberately calls attention to Solondz's
> thematic agenda that I find so irritating; Solondz effectively halts the
> scene for a moment in order to remind us of what he's up to. (He does it
> again later on, when Dylan Baker is driving to the other kid's house and
> the camera lingers on a "WATCH FOR CHILDREN" sign or something.) It's
> either a cheap ironic gag, an expression of insecurity, or (my theory)
> both.
At first, I suspected that this is what you were going for. But what I was
responding more to was the "I acknowledge people's private hells!..."
portion of your post. What you describe _here_ corresponds to the "happy
facade" statement; but the "private hells" phrase suggests that you believe
Solondz *was not* repudiating Baker's perversion; but seeking absolution
from the audience instead.
What I see you having a problem with is Solondz's "thematic agenda". You've
made this painfully clear. I just don't see that particular scene
supporting *that* agenda. In part, I think it works on more levels than
just existing to reiterate his *agenda*. Like I mentioned before, I think
it was effective in establishing the father's odd duality. Measured, yes.
Still, I found it effective. Like you, I found the inclusion of the that
"WATCH FOR CHILDREN" sign repetitive. But, I didn't see that scene
confirming an insidious agenda. Rather, I saw it as a simple case of
cinematic excess. Maybe I'm more forgiving, considering this is his second
film, but while I found the scene irritating ("a cheap ironic gag",
perhaps), I didn't find it malicious.
A difference of opinion? Perhaps.
Dash
Dashiell Christopher
Alex Fung wrote:
< ruminations snipped >
> I gotta say, though, that this is a really exciting thread; I haven't
> seen anything on this newsgroup as good for two or three years.
I'll enthusiastically second that! Thanks folks.
Dash
--
""Frankly, Mr Shankly , I'm a sickening wreck
I've got the 21st Century breathing down my neck
I must move fast, you understand me
I want to go down in celluloid history"
The Smiths, The Queen Is Dead
Larry Rosenhein
>
> But they were all confused, lurching toward
> their own ideas of happiness.
>
say that the central problem with the film is that it doesn't really
give any indication that the characters have learned anything, or that
there is any hope for them. The idea that Joy's sister is going to
set her up with this loser obscene phone-caller seems like the nail in
the coffin; unless it's the kid, who seems to have absorbed from his
glum elders the solitary key to happiness.
> Have you bothered to read any of my posts where I quote the director's own
> words in support of my contention that this is an unfair reading of his
> work? He goes off at length about the emotional connections he feels to
> his characters, his distress at the way human beings are capable of
> treating one another, and his firm belief that the acting of making a film
> at all is a hopeful act. If you're going to claim that he simply makes
> films -- and then lies to interviewers -- because he hates everyone, you'd
> better show some evidence of that.
>
I'm surprised you would make this argument. Even if one can't show he's
lying,
there's no reason to just assume that what he says is true; artists have
been know to use misdirection when speaking of motivations for their
work. He
may not understand his own motivations for that matter. And
even if we take him at his word, that still doesn't mean he was
successful in
conveying his vision. I'm not going into the film with a press kit: I
have
to judge the film by what's on the celluloid. To make a film that
purports to
show "distress at the way people treat each other", and end up with H.,
is kind of
like making an anti-violence movie that features a lot of gratuitous
puncturing and dismemberment. It seems simple-minded and unimaginative
to me.
--Larry Rosenhein
Alex Fung
Steve Erickson (ste...@NOSPAMearthlink.net) writes:
> More than any other 1998 release, HAPPINESS really demonstrates the
> extent to which films work a Rohrsach test. I'm equally baffled by
> people who claim that the film demonstrates total contempt for its
> characters (especially since many of them had no problem with a truly
> hateful film like WILD THINGS) and people who claim that it holds no
> contempt towards them.
I think there's no dispute that HAPPINESS is being interpreted in
substantially different ways by the pro- and con-camps, but I'm a little
confused by your infusion of WILD THINGS as a hateful film -- how so? It
struck me as deliriously sordid -- a film which acknowledged its own
trashiness and wallowed in it (it's very much the sort of film in which
you expect the black widowesque matron to greet the audience on a
balcony, swimsuit-clad and puffing a cigarette) -- but I don't get this
hateful vibe.
Back to HAPPINESS:
> It's the kind of film that I found enormously entertaining while I was
> watching it but that seems worse the more I think about it.
I confess that the film hasn't held up as well with me upon subsequent
viewings (probably because the initial screening was so jolting).
--
Alex Fung (aw...@freenet.carleton.ca) | http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/
"Somebody asked me what I learned from Michael Bay. And I said,
'nothing.'"
- Billy Bob Thornton
Alex Fung
MuseMalade wrote:
>
> Peace Electric wrote:
>>
>>> MuseMalade wrote:
>>>
>>> (Spoilers: 'Happiness', 'There's Something About Mary'.)
>
> Joy goes through a lot of shit, but at every moment, I had pity for her.
> The key here is Solondz's use of close-ups. The tightly framed
> close-ups of Manheim, Hoffman, Lovitz, and Gazarra always appeared
> distorted in some way; these actors are shot to look uglier than they
> actually are. Lovitz sweats, Hoffman has a wince that looks like he's
> constantly repulsed by his own b.o., Manheim is given bad lighting, etc.
> Boyle, if I recall correctly, isn't given many close-ups, but she looks
> perpetually bitchy. All of these characters, I think, are mocked
> a pitiful, but lovable loser. Jane Adams has a sympathetic face, and
> Solondz milks it. (She never looks worse than she does in other films.)
I can't say that I agree that the other characters are relentlessly
mocked, either (Lovitz's scene is a funny one, but it's also awfully
painful; I dunno, I could feel for the guy, and even if he did wind up
resorting to juvenilia I could at least understand the source of hurt
prompting him to lash out), but I do agree that the perpetually-bewildered
Joy was an extremely amiable, heartrending presence; I remember enthusing
how Jane Adams' performance made our hapless heroine such a lovable
character (to a person who would wind up despising the picture and
replacing its initial character with "CR", but I digress.) Adams is so
perfect in the role that I can't possible imagine anyone else doing the
character, not even the originally-cast Patricia Arquette, who, while
talented, would be hardpressed to reproduce the level of affection Adams
elicits.
> And let me tell you, Adams' rendition of the title song almost brought
> tears to my eyes.
It's a funny moment, but I found it also immensely sweet given the utter
sincerity of the scene; by this point, I had such affinity with Joy and
wanted her to find happiness that it seemed almost prescient to have her
appear onscreen and start singing about her yearning for it.
>>> [...] Dylan Baker's thread was also remarkable, if somewhat uneven.
>>> I couldn't detect any moment where Solondz displays unadulterated
>>> contempt for Dylan Baker's character.
>
>> The scene where he receives the threatening phone call is all right,
>> and the scene where he tries to confess to his wife isn't bad, but
>> aside from those two, I think the character is receiving some scorn as
>> well. Surely Solondz was laughing at him as he clumsily masturbated to
>> the kiddie magazine, or when he talked to his kid about erections and
>> such.
>
> I'll give you the kiddie magazine [...]
Even with the kiddie magazine, I don't really think there's "unadulterated
contempt" for Dylan Baker's character. Take LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG
ISLAND, for example -- were we supposed to feel scorn for John Hurt's
character when he similarly went into stores rummaging for Tiger Beat
magazines and such so at which he could longingly gaze? I don't think
so, and I similarly don't think that's the case with Dr. Maplewood here.
Granted, there's a pretty clear difference here given the pedophilic
overtones -- this is not exactly a stand-up-and-cheer moment -- but
neither, I think, is this a "Look At That Evil Bastard" moment: I felt
equal parts of revulsion (for obvious reasons), pity (Baker has already
made it quite clear at this point of the picture that he's unable to
control his urges) and humour (at the incongruity of the man with the
teenybopper magazines).
> Sure, you laugh *at* Dr. Littlefield and Joy, but in the end, *I* was
> absorbed in their dilemmas caused by their sick or fragile psyches.
Hey, we're not laughing *at* them, we're laughing *with* them :)
Alex Fung
Regina Alexandra Robbins wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jan 1999, Peace Electric wrote:
>
>> Regina Alexandra Robbins wrote:
>>
>>> Most certainly? What evidence? I wasn't laughing. Did the camera
>>> do something funny?
>>
>> I think it was the song playing in the background, which I saw as
>> Solondz' cruelly ironic comment on Joy's pitifulness. He's laughing at
>> her for being so lonely that she'd actually be glad that a married
>> Russian thief would fuck her, ditch her, and then steal her stuff.
>
> Of course, we don't know at that point that he's married, or that he's
> never gonna call again, or that he's as bad a thief as we find out...so
> the cruel irony isn't nearly as cruel as you claim it is. It is sort
> of a joke that this ridiculous tacky player is who she's mooning over,
> but how many times in life has a woman found herself gaga over a guy
> who, at first glance, she completely dismissed?
I must confess that I'm not quite certain to which Joy scene Peace
Electric is referring -- the Day After scene in which the lovestruck Joy
wades through the sea of protesters on her way to work which Ms. Robbins
describes above, or her final scene in which she confronts Vlad about her
stolen merchandise? If it's the former, I can't say that I found the
moment cruel at all -- it actually seemed to me to be a terribly tender
sequence depicting Joy's exhiliration at finally (she thinks) finding
happiness and love in her forlorn life. I loved the way the camera
showed her floating through the scene as if on a cloud, untouched; amidst
all the chaos surrounding her -- the screaming protesters, the deluge of
refuse being tossed in her direction -- she's attained a certain blissful
serenity.
The latter scene struck me as being similarly far from cruel; I thought
it was Joy's strongest and most resilient moment in the picture. Her
resolve in confront Vlad and asking for her stuff back (albeit in a
typical, Joy-like halting manner) was a display of inner strength not seen
from her anywhere else in the picture, not even when she deigns to inch
out of timidity for an instant to quietly state "I am not a scab; I am a
strike-breaker." Of course, she winds up giving him money before the
scene ends, but there's a perceptible shift in her actions henceforth --
she's not doing it because she doesn't know any better, and Adams makes it
clear that Joy has no false impressions that she'll ever see him again.
The impression that I got from the film was that Joy has grown from this
experience.
>> It's true that as a viewer we should be able to separate the film and
>> the audience's reaction, but I think it's an unrealistic expectation.
>> You say you felt like vomiting at Bill's last line. So did I, except
>> I was apparently in the minority since everyone around me was laughing
>> uproariously. Perhaps it makes me weak that I'm affected by people's
>> reaction to the film, I don't know, but I can say right now that it
>> would be absolutely impossible for me to not take into account that
>> experience, to not give weight to the feeling of being horrified while
>> everyone else is laughing. The audience affects your perception of the
>> film, good or bad, and there's not much you can do about it.
>
> So filmmmakers should never take risks with their material, should never
> attempt to put a new spin on something, because some fools might miss
> it. We should attempt to appeal to the most ignorant, most emotionally
> stunted people in the audience, and deep thinkers be damned. (I
> include you in the deep thinker department, for the record--I think you
> had just the reaction Solondz wanted you to have, but for whatever
> reason, it didn't work for you.)
I just have to say that I'm shocked to hear that people were laughing at
this moment; there are other bits in the film which the pro-Solondz camp
find funny while the anti-Solondz group does not, but I don't think
there'd be any debate from either side that this was not a laughable
moment, and Bill's final line was not a comic punchline. I've seen
HAPPINESS with an audience that was very much into the picture as well as
one which appeared to gaze at it with a cool disdain, and in both cases
the crowd was mute at during this scene.
>> If you're going to make the audience hate a woman because she's fat, or
>> because some kid is awkward and confused, then you'd better damn well
>> make the audience hate a pedophile for being a pedophile, because
>> greeting all of these innocents with scorn while at the exact same
>> time being tender with a pedophile is, to me, absolutely repugnant. Had
>> Solondz been tender with every character *other* than the pedophile,
>> I'd have criticized *that* as being unfair. It's the picking and
>> choosing of what characters to hate that makes me queasy.
>
> I am just not with you here. I don't hate the fat woman at all. I
> don't hate the kid either. I pity them, but I don't hate them. I am
> just totally and completely stunned that anyone believes that we are
> supposed to hate these characters or that Solondz hates them. That
> scene in the bar where Hoffman and Manheim dance to "All Out Of Love"
> had me practically in tears. And I don't mean tears of laughter. It
> *is* possible to feel great affection for a person or thing while
> acknowledging that it's fucked-up, pathetic or silly.
I'm completely with Ms. Robbins on this one; I just do not see any hatred
of these characters by the filmmaker, nor any reason to believe that we
the audience are supposed to loath these people. It seems that both
camps on this picture are looking at it from fundamentally different
viewpoints. I don't mean to be simply contrarian -- I state this with all
honesty that I don't think I saw a film in 1998 in which the filmmaker
bathed as much love and affection for its characters, as sordid and
pathetic as they may be, than Solondz did in HAPPINESS. I had complete
empathy with all the main characters in the film, and found Manheim's
character's basic plight to be quite poignant -- a lonely woman who
clearly yearns for Hoffman's dismissive, distracted character and comes up
with all sorts of increasingly silly and absurd reasons to come
a-knockin'. It seems to me that the "All Out Of Love" scene is intended
to be a moment of genuine sweetness between two lonely people who've found
solace in each other's arms, and I think it does work in that respect; it
is, of course, also amusing given the silliness of this microcosm of
tranquility in Joe And Mary's Bar accompanied by the cheesy Air Supply
tune, but it's not simply a gag alone -- for one thing, the moment runs on
far too long to be exclusively a comic bit: it's a scene of slow-dancing
which runs for about a minute of screen time. And I quite literally don't
understand why anybody would hate the Rufus Read character.
I gotta say, though, that this is a really exciting thread; I haven't
seen anything on this newsgroup as good for two or three years.
Mike D'Angelo
: I had a similar reaction to SHORT CUTS, which seems to be the thematic
: and structural predecessor to HAPPINESS. In fact, I found Altman's
: attitude in the former film to be as insufferably pessimistic as you
: say Solondz's is in HAPPINESS. I guess my reasons for preferring
: Solondz to Altman just have to do with personal sensibility -- I
: recognize the world of HAPPINESS more readily than I do the world of
: SHORT CUTS [...]
Definitely a matter of personal sensibility, since I feel precisely the
opposite -- for me, there's more genuine humanity in the Modine/Moore
confrontation in SHORT CUTS than there is in both of Solondz's features
to date (and I don't *just* say that because I enjoy seeing Ms. Moore
without pants). I don't recognize the ugly-cartoon world of HAPPINESS at
all; as I wanted to retort to Mr. LaBute, those ain't *my* friends and
neighbors. Granted, Solondz intentionally heightens the reality (as does
Altman, albeit less so), but I didn't sense a core of truth underlying
the exaggeration. Obviously, others did.
Dave Cowen is right, incidentally: this would all be academic if I'd
found the film hilarous. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, either.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, for instance, is way funnier in LEBOWSKI.
Mike "that did *not* occur to us, Dude" D'Angelo
-The Man Who Viewed Too Much-
http://www.panix.com/~dangelo
"Randy, be Christlike!"
Bryant Frazer
: I haven't seen so
: much lip service paid to "artist intent" (for a film) in a while.
: I'm wondering; is this ultimately worthwhile or rewarding?
Not sure. At any rate, the artist's intentions don't count for anything in
the final analysis. The film has to stand on its own.
But I thought it was worth dragging Solondz himself into the discussion
because he stands accused of making a hateful film. It would be better, I
suppose, to take the time and effort to explain in irrefutable terms why
HAPPINESS is a compassionate film, rather than a hateful one -- but
quoting the director's own stated purpose is much more convenient.
I don't think the film supports the interpretation, and it's nice to be
able to say that the director agrees with me. It's not definitive,
however.
: Ohhhh, I strongly disagree. Solondz will never reach the heights attained by
: Fassbinder - on any level. Consider films such as:
: - LILI MARLEEN
: - THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
: - BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
: - THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
: What kind of overt humiliation and manipulation, exhibited in a manner similar
: to Solondz, do you find evident in these films?
Well, I typed without thinking, simply because I responded on a gut level
to Mike's comparison of Solondz to Fassbinder. Let me say that I admire
Fassbinder greatly as a filmmaker -- LILI MARLEEN is probably my favorite
of his films, largely because I think Hanna Schygulla is really terrific
in it. But I don't subjectively "like" his films as much as I like
Solondz's films. Given the choice of watching MARIA BRAUN or DOLLHOUSE
tonight (and I do have MARIA BRAUN on VHS in the next room), I'd take
DOLLHOUSE in a minute.
I'm embarrassed to say that I can't respond directly to your question. I
just get a similar "vibe" from Fassbinder's films, for lack of a better
term. Many of them deal with exploitation, submission, and/or masochism.
Fassbinder's concerned with sexual identity as an expression of inner
being, as I believe Solondz is, albeit with less political and
psychological sophistication. And both Fassbinder and Solondz tell
intimate stories of "ordinary" people with interesting pathologies.
It's been quite a few years since my Fassbinder exploration, and I fear I
can't be much more specific. If Mike, who invoked R.W.F. in the first
place, would like to offer some further thoughts, I'd love to hear 'em.
Mike D'Angelo
: Ohhhh, I strongly disagree. Solondz will never reach the heights
: attained by Fassbinder - on any level. Consider films such as:
:
: - LILI MARLEEN
: - THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
: - BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
: - THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
:
: What kind of overt humiliation and manipulation, exhibited in a manner
: similar to Solondz, do you find evident in these films?
Of those four, I've only seen MARIA BRAUN so far, and it doesn't really
fit the bill. I was thinking more of stuff like FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and
IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS and THE STATIONMASTER'S WIFE. I attended a
Fassbinder retro at MoMA some time ago, at which I saw a dozen or so of
his films within a short period, and after a while it began to seem like
he was making the same movie over and over: naive fool is exploited by
people (s)he considers his/her friends, never quite wises up. FOX is the
purest example, but the basic structure crops up repeatedly.
Mike "gearing up for Bresson" D'Angelo
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> [...] Again, I am baffled by the assertion that because someone makes
> a film that shows hateful behavior, they somehow endorse this
> behavior. [...]
Except I'm not talking about the character's behaviour as much as I am
Solondz' treatment of the characters. Example: the eliciting of laughter
when the raped boy throws up semen (which is what I still think it was
supposed to be). Now, I'm not arguing that Solondz is cruel because he
presented a character as heinous as Bill; I'm arguing that it's cruel
for him to make fun of a molested child. It's all about tone and his
treatment, as both writer and director, of the characters. I'm positive
you don't think he intended that to be funny, and hell, you may even be
right, but what can I say, I passionately disagree. Not only did my
audience laugh (anecdotal and perhaps not representative, I admit), but
I even felt as if *I* were being goaded into laughter. This scene --
and in fact the entire film -- has the structure of comedy. It has the
timing of comedy. And what can I say, I just don't think vomiting up
your friend's dad's semen is a side-splitting event.
> "Come on, nothing in life is really that bad."
>
> "Oh, yes it is."
Actually, I think Dave's laughed/didn't laugh version is more accurate.
Because I, and I imagine others, realize that life *can* be that bad.
However, my belief is that it's never *only* that bad. There are always
the moments of calm, the moments of clarity, the moments of beauty, the
moments of happiness. Solondz, for some reason, purports that those
moments just don't exist (or that if they do, they're ironic and should
be laughed at and/or mocked). For that alone I'd call him a liar.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> And so is Jon Lovitz's "I'm champagne--you're shit" speech, for
> exactly the same reasons. I dare anyone who's ever been dumped (and
> given "It's not you, it's me" as an excuse) not to identify with
> that scene.
But aren't you giving yourself away here? As far as I can tell, you
got some kind of satisfaction out of seeing Lovitz verbally harass
Joy (which, I'd bet, is exactly what Solondz wanted you to feel). But
I had the exact opposite reaction: I identified with Joy, and I felt
that she didn't deserve the barrage of insults. So you see: there's
you in the theater identifying and enjoying Joy being mocked, and
here's me sitting two feet away wondering what the hell I did to
deserve this. More than any other character in the film I identified
with Joy, and so I was repulsed by the delight Solondz was taking in
her torture (whether or not Solondz was doing this as an act of
revenge or as an act of self-torture I can't say, although it seems
undeniable that he's getting at least a certain amount of twisted
enjoyment out of giving it to Joy not once, not twice, but over and
over and over again).
I believe it was Steve Erickson who labeled this film a cinematic
Rorschach test. I agree with that description, and I'd maybe take it
one step further: it's a Rorschach test that, depending on your point
of view, will look like either the most beautiful flower you have ever
seen or an elephant violently raping your mother.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers: 'Se7en', 'You've Got Mail', 'Pleasantville')
> So I take that to mean that romantic comedies with almost totally
> unbelievable endings are repgunant to you as well? (And I don't mean
> just stupid contemporary junk like PRETTY WOMAN, but classic fare
> like NINOTCHKA.)
Funnily enough, I don't like either of those films, and in the case of
'Ninotchka', I never really understood why. But I wasn't referring to
movies with happy endings when I mentioned "untruthful simplification."
I was thinking more along the lines of the pre-color world of
Pleasantville. It's that completely upbeat, overly chirpy, "Everything
is always perfect" world view that I have a hard time relating to. Now,
we'll never agree on which films reflect that and which ones don't, but
here's two recent examples: 1) I didn't think that 'You've Got Mail'
was unrealistically upbeat. Sure it was optimistic and positive to the
point of being unreal, but it still had moments of sadness and loss
(Ryan closing her store; the look on Hank's face after Ryan insults him
in the restaurant) for me to buy into the universe. 2) 'Se7en' is
relentlessly bleak, but it's still so full of hope (e.g., the tender
scenes between Mills and Tracy, the "vibrating apartment" scene,
Somerset's concern for Tracy when she reveals her secret, the scene
right after Lust in which the entire film comes to a stop so that the
characters can reflect on whether or not there's still anything worth
fighting for) that I'm easily able to identify with the film.
Peace Electric
{re: Joy's crappy music)
> Is this self-defensive posturing on Solondz's part? Specifically a
> first-strike of the self-deprecatory sort?
It's funny you bring that up because I was wondering if over the years
Solondz hadn't built up a resistance to his peers by making fun of
hismelf before anyone else got around to it. If that's it (and I admit
that it's a wild stab in the dark), then it might make some kind of
strange sense for Solondz to also make fun of his characters before the
audience can. Perhaps he thinks that if he can point out a character's
flaws before the audience notices, he can somehow avoid the *really*
cruel jabs.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> Of course, we don't know at that point that he's married, or that
> he's never gonna call again, or that he's as bad a thief as we find
> out...so the cruel irony isn't nearly as cruel as you claim it is.
> [...]
You're right. I thought it was cruel as I was actually watching it,
when she was mocked for being happy about the sex and the subsequent
ditching. The actual stealing part wasn't revealed later, so little did
I realize that at the time I'd only scratched the surface of Solondz'
mocking. But to clarify, I *did* take offense at the scene the first
time I saw it, and the later revelation only added to it.
> So filmmmakers should never take risks with their material, should
> never attempt to put a new spin on something, because some fools
> might miss it. We should attempt to appeal to the most ignorant,
> most emotionally stunted people in the audience, and deep thinkers
> be damned. [...]
Except here's the problem: I think the audience's laughter was the
correct reaction. I think it was the desired response. It's not that
my audience was a horrendous collection of sadists, and that I'm now
angry at Solondz for mistakenly appealing to these people. It's that
my audience was perfectly normal and that *Solondz* is the sadist. I
don't frown on people for laughing at the character's torture and
pain, I frown on Solondz for making the torture and pain funny.
> [...] That scene in the
> bar where Hoffman and Manheim dance to "All Out Of Love" had me
> practically in tears.
I won't attack this scene because it doesn't seem to be mocking in any
overt way. Whether that's because Solondz truly cared or because I just
wasn't clever enough to catch the joke, I don't yet know. However, one
or two fleeting shots don't make up for the two hours of cruelty. It's
like if Hitler ran out into the street and rescued a kitten; sure it
was a nice thing to do, but it still doesn't make up for the Holocaust.
> [...] It *is* possible to feel great affection for a person or thing
> while acknowledging that it's fucked-up, pathetic or silly.
True, but I think Solondz goes beyond that: he's not just recognizing
and depicting these things, he's actively making fun of them. So it's
not so much that our basic principles are any different (for example,
I agree with your above sentence and you probably agree that making fun
of the pathetic is, well, pathetic), but it's that we're reading
fundamentally different things into the film. And although I hate to
admit it since I despise this film, I'm not sure that either reading is
more right than the other. It's impossible to dismiss either side
because neither side is so clearly in the wrong.
BTW, the scene is never mentioned, but I wonder what others thought
about Bill's massacre daydream. It was here that I first noticed that
something was seriously off, as Bill -- seen through Solondz' camera
as some kind of heightened, romantic figure -- guns down dozens of
people in the park while the most delightful little song plays in the
background. I was annoyed and somewhat offended by the sheer hostility
in what was being depicted. Does Solondz really think it's a good
thing when one of the fuck ups of the world takes matters into his
own hands? Does he think it's funny? He got the audience to laugh at
it even though at that point they wouldn't have realized that it was
a daydream. How Roger Ebert can criticize 'Very Bad Things' for being
detached, cynical, and ironic and then turn around and praise a film
containing scenes like this one is beyond me.
Bryant Frazer
: Lurching is one way to put it. But in a nutshell, I think you could
: say that the central problem with the film is that it doesn't really
: give any indication that the characters have learned anything, or that
: there is any hope for them. The idea that Joy's sister is going to
: set her up with this loser obscene phone-caller seems like the nail in
: the coffin; unless it's the kid, who seems to have absorbed from his
: glum elders the solitary key to happiness.
Yes, I think the kid has a good shot at sorting things out for himself.
But I think many of the characters, especially Joy and P.S. Hoffmann's
character, *have* to have learned something from the experience. We're not
shown that overtly, because it wouldn't fit in terms of tone and
atmosphere with the rest of the movie. The film's attitudes and feelings
run beneath the surface, which is why so many viewers apparently misread
the movie.
: I'm surprised you would make this argument. Even if one can't show he's
: lying, there's no reason to just assume that what he says is true; artists have
: been know to use misdirection when speaking of motivations for their
: work.
The reason I make that argument is because I'm flabbergasted that someone
could watch HAPPINESS and come away from it with the idea that the
director is mocking his characters. That the director speaks eloquently
and consistently about his identification with the characters and his
sadness at the cruelty of everyday life suggests, to me, that anyone
making the argument that he's just a callous bastard putting us all
through the wringer should reconcile that with the director's statements.
To say, "Well, he's lying" or "he's a callous bastard, but he doesn't
realize it" is good enough. But I'm just making it clear that this reading
of the film suggests either a willful misrepresentation on the part of the
director or a clear pathology.
: He may not understand his own motivations for that matter. And
: even if we take him at his word, that still doesn't mean he was
: successful in
: conveying his vision. I'm not going into the film with a press kit: I
: have
: to judge the film by what's on the celluloid.
Agreed. I didn't go into the film with a press kit, either, and I loved
it. But the argument that I was responding to basically boiled down to,
"The audience at my screening laughed at the 'Son, I think I'd just jerk
off' line, therefore Solondz meant it to be a joke." I mean, I could
respond that my audience (opening day, Manhattan, sell-out crowd) was dead
silent during the same line, but we could be here all day. Authorial
intent is not the single key to reading a film, but it can provide some
direction.
: To make a film that
: purports to
: show "distress at the way people treat each other", and end up with H.,
: is kind of
: like making an anti-violence movie that features a lot of gratuitous
: puncturing and dismemberment. It seems simple-minded and unimaginative
: to me.
The key word in this argument is "gratuitous." We apparently disagree on
whether the cruelties depicted by HAPPINESS are gratuitous or not. I
thought it was just about the least gratuitous film I saw all year, with
an emotional wallop that was umatched.
Steve Erickson
wrote:
> Dashiell Christopher <dashc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> : Ohhhh, I strongly disagree. Solondz will never reach the heights
> : attained by Fassbinder - on any level. Consider films such as:
> :
> : - LILI MARLEEN
> : - THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
> : - BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
> : - THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
> :
> : What kind of overt humiliation and manipulation, exhibited in a manner
> : similar to Solondz, do you find evident in these films?
>
> Of those four, I've only seen MARIA BRAUN so far, and it doesn't really
> fit the bill. I was thinking more of stuff like FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and
> IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS and THE STATIONMASTER'S WIFE. I attended a
> Fassbinder retro at MoMA some time ago, at which I saw a dozen or so of
> his films within a short period, and after a while it began to seem like
> he was making the same movie over and over: naive fool is exploited by
> people (s)he considers his/her friends, never quite wises up. FOX is the
> purest example, but the basic structure crops up repeatedly.
One of thes difference between Fassbinder and Solondz, apart from a pretty
huge gap in talent, is that Fassbinder was quite successful in making that
"all human relations=exploitation" theme connect with the history of
Germany and the ways sexism, racism, classism and homophobia have corrupted
human behavior. His films may be pretty hopeless views of the human
condition - and they've often been criticized for this - but I think they
offer some insight into the reasons *why* people behave in such
exploitative ways.
It seems to me that Solondz has made some tentative steps in this direction
- more successfully in WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, I think - regarding
American life, but this is not exactly one of his strengths. The critique
of American life implicit in HAPPINESS is not particularly original and
profound, to put it mildly.
--
Steve Erickson
Remove "nospam" to reply.
http://home.earthlink.net/~steevee
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> Regina Alexandra Robbins wrote:
>
> (Spoilers.)
>
> > [...] Again, I am baffled by the assertion that because someone makes
> > a film that shows hateful behavior, they somehow endorse this
> > behavior. [...]
>
> Except I'm not talking about the character's behaviour as much as I am
> Solondz' treatment of the characters. Example: the eliciting of laughter
> when the raped boy throws up semen (which is what I still think it was
> supposed to be).
The kid was throwing up because, as we saw earlier, Bill put too much
sleeping powder in his tunafish. If you insist on believing that the
vomit is semen, all I can say is that the filmmaker didn't give you the
information necessary to draw that conclusion. As for who we're supposed
to laugh at in that scene -- if anyone -- it's Bill, who is watching his
master plan go up in smoke. That vomit is the first sign that this act
isn't going to go unnoticed.
Now, I'm not arguing that Solondz is cruel because he
> presented a character as heinous as Bill; I'm arguing that it's cruel
> for him to make fun of a molested child.
I thoight the film went out of its way not to make fun of the molested
child. Everyone around the kid gets laughed at -- Bill, his son, the dad
who is so self-involved that he yells at his kid for not realizing he's
been sexually assaulted -- but the little boy is just a nice little kid.
Yes, the film shows him being lied to, taken advantage of, trusting the
wrong person, but this isn't tantamount to being mocked. Solondz spares
him, largely because, I think, he's one of the few characters who is
absolutely positively not complicit in his own downfall. He's a child;
what can he do? Whereas Joy for example, much as we admire her attempt at
kindness and fair-mindedness, sort of asks for it with Vlad -- which
doesn't excuse his behavior, either, but we laugh (sym- or empathetically)
at Joy's predicament because she could have seen it coming, maybe.
RAR.
Dylan Bryan-Dolman
> Larry Rosenhein <chr...@scifac.indstate.edu> expounded thusly:
> : each other", and end up with H., is kind of like making an
anti-violence
> : movie that features a lot of gratuitous puncturing and dismemberment.
> : It seems simple-minded and unimaginative to me.
Er...Clockwork Orange? Funny Games?
> The key word in this argument is "gratuitous." We apparently disagree on
> whether the cruelties depicted by HAPPINESS are gratuitous or not. I
> thought it was just about the least gratuitous film I saw all year, with
> an emotional wallop that was umatched.
I don't think anything the critics of Happiness have said contradicts the
film's emotional wallop. It's just that, quite naturally, they resent
having been walloped. The fact that even people who hate the movie are
moved enough by the characters' suffering to bear a very personal grudge
against the person who caused them to suffer (i.e. the director), is strong
evidence argument that Solondz has made a humane and moral film.
Dylan
=dbd=
Nor is honor or degree / Known in our society.
Beggar, banker, whore and wit / In a common darkness sit.
--Chorus of Bedlamites, "A Rake's Progress"
Dylan Bryan-Dolman
> I won't attack this scene because it doesn't seem to be mocking in any
> overt way. Whether that's because Solondz truly cared or because I just
> wasn't clever enough to catch the joke, I don't yet know. However, one
> or two fleeting shots don't make up for the two hours of cruelty. It's
> like if Hitler ran out into the street and rescued a kitten; sure it
> was a nice thing to do, but it still doesn't make up for the Holocaust.
Wow, strong words. You really cared about those characters. Solondz did a
good job.
Dylan
=dbd=
Mike D'Angelo
: I don't think anything the critics of Happiness have said contradicts
: the film's emotional wallop. It's just that, quite naturally, they
: resent having been walloped. The fact that even people who hate the
: movie are moved enough by the characters' suffering to bear a very
: personal grudge against the person who caused them to suffer (i.e. the
: director), is strong evidence argument that Solondz has made a humane
: and moral film.
That's pretty specious reasoning. I'm moved by the sight of just about
anybody suffering, unless the film works overtime to convince me that
they deserve it (even then, I can't say that I *enjoy* it); by your
definition, any film that provokes a strong emotional reaction is
automatically humane and moral -- including, presumably, a hypothetical
snuff film. You mention FUNNY GAMES, but Haneke's movie, while far more
unpleasant to watch than HAPPINESS, isn't operating as a traditional
narrative -- it's a meta-film, clearly designed to provoke questions
about the nature of screen violence. It's *intentionally* sadistic,
whereas I'd argue that Solondz's films are (rather paradoxically)
unintentionally so. I certainly wouldn't claim that they're inhumane or
immoral, though.
Mike "I need a haircut" D'Angelo (irrelevant, perhaps, but true)
Dashiell Christopher
> Dashiell Christopher <dashc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> : Ohhhh, I strongly disagree. Solondz will never reach the heights
> : attained by Fassbinder - on any level. Consider films such as:
> :
> : - LILI MARLEEN
> : - THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN
> : - BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
> : - THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS
> :
> : What kind of overt humiliation and manipulation, exhibited in a manner
> : similar to Solondz, do you find evident in these films?
>
> Of those four, I've only seen MARIA BRAUN so far, and it doesn't really
> fit the bill. I was thinking more of stuff like FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and
> IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS and THE STATIONMASTER'S WIFE. I attended a
> Fassbinder retro at MoMA some time ago, at which I saw a dozen or so of
> his films within a short period,
Ahhh, the benefits of living in the Apple.
> [...] and after a while it began to seem like he was making the same movie
> over and over: naive fool is exploited by people (s)he considers his/her
> friends, never quite wises up. FOX is the purest example, but the basic
> structure crops up repeatedly.
Now that I think about it more, your comparison is historically valid, and
certainly not without its supporters. In fact, this very criticism of
Fassbinder's work was levied when the films first opened. FOX, and many of
his early stylized films were widely criticized for being engendered with a
certain "fondness" for depicting emotional violence. In stark contrast to
other Young German filmmakers of the day (Kluge for example), whose use of
naturalism was effective in criticizing the establishment (through parody).
Fassbinder's stylizations (American Soldier, for example) created an
ambiguous mix of distanciation and identification.
With Fassbinder, I would argue, his early films were concerned with the
question: How do you present a truly critical stance in film? (dubbed by
Thomas Elsaesser, "The Impossible Critique") His solution: to offer all
perspectives, without prejudice. Many among the film community felt that
this type of filmmaking was morally irresponsible (not unlike HAPPINESS). I
think his films allow the viewer the possibility to *live within* or *view
from the outside*, these worlds - unfettered by a static morality. And in
this case, the audience can decide for themselves if the film is critical or
representative of an emotional drama.
As for FOX where matters of sex and privilege intersect and collide, Fox,
who is belittled by a vicious bourgeoisie crowd, *can* appear to be
subjected by, and abandoned to, a sense of viciousness and hopelessness that
is not unlike HAPPINESS. But, it can also be argued that his early films,
whose distanced criticism does not allow for easy resolutions of guilt or
righteousness; levels critical the playing field. Fassbinder takes himself
out of the equation and puts the characters and the audience on the same
uncomfortable playing field. It's up to the _audience_ to decide what the
film is about. And, in this respect, the film reveals more about the
critical stances of the individual audience members *themselves* (rather
than what the characters or director represent, a la HAPPINESS). That, in a
nutshell, is what I believe Fassbinder's films attempt to answer.
That brings us full circle now. Back to the original question of whether
it is possible to present a truly critical piece of work in the Fassbinder
mold - one that covers all perspectives without a staid morality AND
specifically indicts the audience. Films like FOX AND HIS FRIENDS and THE
MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS attempt, I think, to set a new moral standard -
ones defined _solely_ by the audience. A tall and ambitious road to travel,
I think. And a feat I admire greatly about Fassbinder.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Larry Rosenhein
>
> BTW, the scene is never mentioned, but I wonder what others thought
> about Bill's massacre daydream. . I was annoyed and somewhat offended by the
> sheer hostility
> in what was being depicted. Does he think it's funny? He got the audience
> to laugh at
> it even though at that point they wouldn't have realized that it was
> a daydream.
Well, it wasn't hard to guess that it was a daydream. But yes, I
think this was supposed to be funny, in a black sort of way. Here's
a guy who spilling his guts, his pathetic sexual fantasies, to his
psychiatrist. First we learn that the therapist is tuning out,
reviewing the evenings's grocery list; then we see that he has even
sicker violent fantasies himself; then we see he is a closet
pedophile, and later a practicing one. So if you've got big
problems, the last thing you want to do is get professional help
with them. Make a movie instead.
--Larry Rosenhein
Michele317
sleeping powder in his tunafish. If you insist on believing that the
vomit is semen, all I can say is that the filmmaker didn't give you the
information necessary to draw that conclusion. >>
the boy's line is 'there was blood in my b.m.', which is a little bit more
information supporting you, regina (i agree with you that he was sick from the
sedatives).
Alex Fung
Peace Electric (pea...@sk.sympatico.ca) writes:
(Spoilers.)
> Except I'm not talking about the character's behaviour as much as I
> am Solondz' treatment of the characters. Example: the eliciting of
> laughter when the raped boy throws up semen (which is what I still
> think it was supposed to be). Now, I'm not arguing that Solondz is
> cruel because he presented a character as heinous as Bill; I'm
> arguing that it's cruel for him to make fun of a molested child.
> It's all about tone and his treatment, as both writer and director,
> of the characters. I'm positive you don't think he intended that to
> be funny, and hell, you may even be right, but what can I say, I
> passionately disagree. Not only did my audience laugh (anecdotal and
> perhaps not representative, I admit), but I even felt as if *I* were
> being goaded into laughter.
Gosh, I don't mean to sound smug or smarmy when I say this, but I'm
genuinely glad I didn't initially see this with the audience that you
did; I completely agree that this was not a funny moment in the film,
and I can only imagine the amount of contempt you were feeling -- both
for the events you were seeing on the screen which you clearly
disliked as well as for the bizarre reactions from the crowd around
you.
I don't know if anybody else feels the same way about the vomit scene,
but I actually thought it was the sobering moment of the sequence.
After all, we'd just been exposed to an extended sitcom-ish rendition
of Bill going to increasingly absurd and desperate lengths in order to
get little Johnny to partake in the tainted food, simultaneously
striking appalling and silly notes -- there were instances where a
glib utterance of "Curses! Foiled again!" would not seem out of
place. That sequence, probably to offset its disturbing nature, is
played so deliberately lightly and farcical that I was glad that
Solondz included the graver aftermath showing the ill-effects of
Bill's indulgence upon his victim (and I gotta admit that reading this
thread was the first time it ever crossed my mind that Johnny Grasso's
vomiting semen -- I still can't see it); it's instantly cemented that
this ain't no laughing matter. The way I saw it, anyway.
The descriptions of your audience's reactions prompt me to wonder if
that's somewhat tainted your perspective on the film. (I trust you
haven't seen it again.) Don't get me wrong -- I don't doubt that you
were already *intensely* disliking the picture, but is it possible
that your audience's reactions angered you to such a degree that the
resultant effect was augmenting your loathing for the movie? I
confess there've been times when this has happened to me (irrational
as it may be, I found myself really pissed off sitting through a
standing ovation at the endcredits of STARGATE -- I can only imagine
listening to people cheer at PATCH ADAMS), and I've read other people
reporting similar experiences (one memorable review for LIAR LIAR
reported on the crowd's mirth by closing "Sometimes I hate people.")
I'm just struck by your complete and utter disdain of the film and how
all of your analysis lead to the irrefutable conclusion that Todd
Solondz hates his characters and he hates people.
> [...] I wonder what others thought about Bill's massacre daydream.
> It was here that I first noticed that something was seriously off
I hope so, since I think that's the intent -- isn't this basically
one of Bill's very first scenes (after playing shrink to the Hoffman
character and picking lint off his pant leg)? Right off the bat,
we're tipped off that something is definitely wrong with this
seemingly-normal, wonderfully bland-looking man.
> as Bill -- seen through Solondz' camera as some kind of heightened,
> romantic figure -- guns down dozens of people in the park while the
> most delightful little song plays in the background.
I can definitely see your qualms here, but it worked for me mostly
because of that incongruous background music which served to underline
the absurdity -- the sheer insanity, even -- of the wanton violence on
display here. I find it more annoying when it's depicted as some
glamorous event accompanied by booming chords -- the horrific scene
in AMERICAN HISTORY X immediately jumps to mind, which has Ed Norton's
glowering mug lovingly photographed in black-and-white as a harsh score
rumbles in the background -- because it undoubtedly condemns, but also
in a way rationalizes what's inherently an act of lunacy. In
HAPPINESS, when I heard that pretty little tune playing while Bill
calmly mowed down the people in the park, all I could think of was
(excuse my language) "This is fucked up." As the act itself is, too.
> How Roger Ebert can criticize 'Very Bad Things' for being detached,
> cynical, and ironic and then turn around and praise a film
> containing scenes like this one is beyond me.
Man, wait till you see THURSDAY.
Dylan Bryan-Dolman
> > when the raped boy throws up semen (which is what I still think it was
> > supposed to be).
>
> sleeping powder in his tunafish.
The boy's physical response to the rape was vaguely and confusingly
represented, and that was a culpable flaw in the movie, Solondz's only
failure of nerve. It was central to the director's concept that the
molester remain a sympathetic character, and perhaps for that reason he
soft-pedalled the consequences of the rape for the boy (yes, something in
Happiness was sugarcoated for the viewers' comfort!). The boy was, simply
put, not in enough physical pain for a small child who has just been anally
raped by an adult for the first time, as the movie later confirms has
happened. It just made no sense for the boy to be cheerful if slightly
nauseous the morning after, and then in a hospital bed by the end of the
week. It does not take a couple of days for the blood to show up in the
toilet.
Dylan
=dbd=
Dylan Bryan-Dolman
> Now, I'm not arguing that Solondz is cruel because he
> presented a character as heinous as Bill; I'm arguing that it's cruel
> for him to make fun of a molested child. It's all about tone and his
> treatment, as both writer and director, of the characters. I'm positive
> you don't think he intended that to be funny, and hell, you may even be
> right, but what can I say, I passionately disagree. Not only did my
> audience laugh (anecdotal and perhaps not representative, I admit), but
> and in fact the entire film -- has the structure of comedy. It has the
> timing of comedy.
The clue is that it has the structure and timing of a comedy far broader
and cruder than is suited to the director's other choices -- his direction
of the actors, the deliberate, thoughtful pace of the editing, and so on.
It's like bitonality in music -- the movie functions in two "keys" at once,
sitcom and tragedy, one at the level of the script, and one at the level of
the performances and visual style. Solondz forces us to participate in the
cruelty with him by our programmed comic responses at the same time as he
makes us feel the effects of that cruelty along with his characters.
Dylan
=dbd=
Dashiell Christopher
> Peace Electric (pea...@sk.sympatico.ca) writes:
>
> (Spoilers.)
>
> > Except I'm not talking about the character's behaviour as much as I
> > am Solondz' treatment of the characters. Example: the eliciting of
> > laughter when the raped boy throws up semen (which is what I still
> > think it was supposed to be). Now, I'm not arguing that Solondz is
> > cruel because he presented a character as heinous as Bill; I'm
> > arguing that it's cruel for him to make fun of a molested child.
> > It's all about tone and his treatment, as both writer and director,
> > of the characters. I'm positive you don't think he intended that to
> > be funny, and hell, you may even be right, but what can I say, I
> > passionately disagree. Not only did my audience laugh (anecdotal and
> > perhaps not representative, I admit), but I even felt as if *I* were
> > being goaded into laughter.
>
> Gosh, I don't mean to sound smug or smarmy when I say this, but I'm
> genuinely glad I didn't initially see this with the audience that you
> did; I completely agree that this was not a funny moment in the film,
> and I can only imagine the amount of contempt you were feeling -- both
> for the events you were seeing on the screen which you clearly
> disliked as well as for the bizarre reactions from the crowd around
> you.
I agree. On a related note, I was in attendance to see BOOGIE NIGHTS in the
dubious San Francisco premiere: where a disco ball was installed above the
screen. Needless to say, it would start spinning at different moments
throughout the film, thrilling a majority of the audience, but totally
undercutting the film. It was a joke! As I was walking out of the theater,
I swore to myself that I had never seen a a film a bad as that one. I
couldn't believe it. Still, when respected friends of mine were continually
raving about the film, I reluctantly decided to give it another try. I'm
glad that I did. I ended up seeing the film in a completely different
light. The same might not be true for you, but it's worth noting I think.
Incidentally, when P.T. Anderson found out what the AMC Kabuki did while
screening his film, he promptly threatened to personally pull the film if
they didn't take down the disco ball. It came down the next day.
> I don't know if anybody else feels the same way about the vomit scene,
> but I actually thought it was the sobering moment of the sequence.
I thought that was pretty clear cut. It may not have actually been semen,
but it certainly was supposed to *resemble* it. It was supposed to trigger
that reaction in the audience.
> The descriptions of your audience's reactions prompt me to wonder if
> that's somewhat tainted your perspective on the film. (I trust you
> haven't seen it again.) Don't get me wrong -- I don't doubt that you
> were already *intensely* disliking the picture, but is it possible
> that your audience's reactions angered you to such a degree that the
> resultant effect was augmenting your loathing for the movie? I
> confess there've been times when this has happened to me (irrational
> as it may be, I found myself really pissed off sitting through a
> standing ovation at the endcredits of STARGATE -- I can only imagine
> listening to people cheer at PATCH ADAMS), and I've read other people
> reporting similar experiences (one memorable review for LIAR LIAR
> reported on the crowd's mirth by closing "Sometimes I hate people.")
> I'm just struck by your complete and utter disdain of the film and how
> all of your analysis lead to the irrefutable conclusion that Todd
> Solondz hates his characters and he hates people.
...see my initial comments. I agree completely.
> > as Bill -- seen through Solondz' camera as some kind of heightened,
> > romantic figure -- guns down dozens of people in the park while the
> > most delightful little song plays in the background.
>
> I can definitely see your qualms here, but it worked for me mostly
> because of that incongruous background music which served to underline
> the absurdity -- the sheer insanity, even -- of the wanton violence on
> display here. I find it more annoying when it's depicted as some
> glamorous event accompanied by booming chords -- the horrific scene
> in AMERICAN HISTORY X immediately jumps to mind, which has Ed Norton's
> glowering mug lovingly photographed in black-and-white as a harsh score
> rumbles in the background -- because it undoubtedly condemns, but also
> in a way rationalizes what's inherently an act of lunacy. In
> HAPPINESS, when I heard that pretty little tune playing while Bill
> calmly mowed down the people in the park, all I could think of was
> (excuse my language) "This is fucked up." As the act itself is, too.
Again, I agree with this most of this as well. Interesting that you bring up
AHX. When I saw it here in LA, people were actually clapping when the curb
scene occurred. Chilling. I had the worst of kind of audience for this
particular film, I must admit. A 50/50 mix of neo-nazi punks (seeing this as
a modern day TRIUMPH OF THE WILL) and bleeding heart liberals (who'd cry at
every turn). It was really annoying.
Dashiell Christopher
> Regina Alexandra Robbins <ra...@columbia.edu> wrote:
> > On Mon, 18 Jan 1999, Peace Electric wrote:
> > > Example: the eliciting of laughter
> > > when the raped boy throws up semen (which is what I still think it was
> > > supposed to be).
> >
> > The kid was throwing up because, as we saw earlier, Bill put too much
> > sleeping powder in his tunafish.
>
> The boy's physical response to the rape was vaguely and confusingly
> represented, and that was a culpable flaw in the movie, Solondz's only
> failure of nerve. It was central to the director's concept that the
> molester remain a sympathetic character, and perhaps for that reason he
> soft-pedalled the consequences of the rape for the boy (yes, something in
> Happiness was sugarcoated for the viewers' comfort!).
I disagree with your contention that Solondz, by *not* making the vomiting
scene more explicit, was directly concerned about establishing a sense of
sympathy towards Baker's character. I don't think the sympathy that Baker's
character was given was contingent upon that scene. I think his relationship
with his son engendered a nature of sincerity. Nothing about his relationship
to that boy was supposed to be malevolent. That is essential in establishing
his absolute duplicity.
> The boy was, simply put, not in enough physical pain for a small child who
> has just been anally raped by an adult for the first time, as the movie
> later confirms has happened. It just made no sense for the boy to be
> cheerful if slightly nauseous the morning after, and then in a hospital bed by the end of the
> week. It does not take a couple of days for the blood to show up in the
> toilet.
I don't know about this. It reminds me of a creative writing workshop I
participated in, where one writer complained about another writer's scene,
involving a shooting and the victim's blood on the dirt, by saying that he
hadn't adequately described the way blood coagulates in dust. I suspect that
kind of detail is secondary to the emotional impact of the event.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> A final question: if you took away what I'll call the latent
> comedy in Happiness, would you have a worse film than, say, Naked
> (which many film cognescenti thought very highly of, but I hated)?
'Naked' is an interesting film to bring up. It also presents a bleak,
tremendously depressing world with little or no happiness, and yet I
think it's Mike Leigh's best film. I've only seen it once, and that was
quite a while ago, but if I remember, I didn't really fall in love with
the film until the security guard came up and kindly offered the David
Thewlis character a place to warm up. To me that was just such an
honestly hopeful moment, as one lonely person reached out to another
lonely person, that it made me accept all the shit surrounding it.
'Happiness' had the opportunity to do this exact same thing, but never
really fulfilled on the promise. I might've been able to buy into the
relationship between Hoffman and Manheim if it hadn't been for some of
Solondz' mocking, as well as the jokey excess of the rape scene. I
always thought that rape was a pretty damaging thing for a person, but
Solondz turns it into a big "I Love Lucy" style sitcom, with comical
pratfalls and over the top acting. How can I buy into Manheim's
loneliness, sadness, and despair when her rape scene is related as one
big clumsy gag?
But even now I'm not being entirely honest because I *did* buy into the
emotions. With every consecutive scene of unhappiness, I gave Solondz
another chance. "All right," I would tell myself, "maybe this time it
won't end in a joke." But no matter what, every scene kept ending in a
joke. I bought into the first half of the restaurant/rape scene -- I
invested emotion into it, into the characters -- only to see Solondz
pull the rug out from under me and start laughing at the very thing I'd
invested emotion into. He kept doing that throughout the entire film,
over and over again, and like a dope I kept thinking that the next time
he'd take it seriously, that the next time the emotions would stick.
Well, eventually we arrived at the big pedophile confession scene, and
as it began I was extremely distrustful. I watched Rufus Read's eyes
water and I thought to myself, "Is this serious? Can I believe this?"
Eventually, the scene dragged on for so long that I began to take it
seriously. "Okay," I thought, "this time Solondz isn't being hip and
ironic with his characters." But even then, after torturing that little
boy for ten minutes, Solondz contradicted everything he'd built up in
the audience and pulled the rug out from under me *again*, giving us
the "jerk off" joke. But it didn't much matter because by that point I
was finished anyway. I had completely closed myself off to the film; I
wouldn't let Solondz fool me again.
(Matthew Butcher argues that the line should've been "masturbate," even
though it would've been out of character for Bill. I agree that the
line should've been "masturbate," but because it would've been *in*
character. I think the joke of the line, as it is now, is basically
this: "Ha ha! Can you believe how frank he was right there with his
son! Ha ha, that pedophile is crazy!" To me, it was a gag that was
built on its shock value and unexpectedness. Had Solondz used a more
clinical word like "masturbate," not only would it have fit into Bill's
role as a psychiatrist, it also would've destroyed the impact of the
shock.)
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> I thoight the film went out of its way not to make fun of the
> molested child. Everyone around the kid gets laughed at -- Bill, his
> son, the dad who is so self-involved that he yells at his kid for not
> realizing he's been sexually assaulted -- but the little boy is just
> a nice little kid. Yes, the film shows him being lied to, taken
> advantage of, trusting the wrong person, but this isn't tantamount to
> being mocked.
What did you think of the scene at the pizza hut, where the father made
fun of the son for being "a fag"? You could make a case for Solondz
here, and say that he's only honestly presenting the close-mindedness
of the father, and while I'd agree that he *is* taking shots at the
father ("get 'im a prostitute," etc.), I also think he's snickering at
the little boy for being so feminine.
Of course, it's kind of pointless to look at an individual scene if you
don't also look at everything that surrounds it. If this one scene were
in the middle of another (kinder) film I might not find the worst in it.
But when it's surrounded by hate and bitterness and detachment, well
then it becomes suspect.
(That said, the scene with the child in the hospital is played fairly
straight. Then again it was, what, thirty seconds?)
Peace Electric
> [...] But the argument that I was responding to basically boiled
> down to, "The audience at my screening laughed at the 'Son, I think
> I'd just jerk off' line, therefore Solondz meant it to be a joke."
> [...]
But I think it goes beyond that. I'll never be able to say because I'll
never be able to see this film for the first time absolutely alone, but
I'm almost positive that if I could, I would still pick up on the
jokiness of the entire picture. There's a certain way that Dylan Baker
delivers the line, there's a certain way that the actors take pauses,
and there's a certain way that Solondz ends the scene right after the
joke that screams to me, "This is supposed to be funny!" I've mentioned
my audience a few times, but I don't think I'm placing as much faith in
their reaction as I am in my own reaction to what I saw up on the
screen.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers and
WARNING: This may be unpleasant reading for some.)
> << The kid was throwing up because, as we saw earlier, Bill put too
> much sleeping powder in his tunafish. If you insist on believing
> that the vomit is semen, all I can say is that the filmmaker didn't
> give you the information necessary to draw that conclusion. >>
>
> the boy's line is 'there was blood in my b.m.', which is a little bit
> more information supporting you, regina (i agree with you that he was
> sick from the sedatives).
As Bill was drugging the kid, I figured that there was no way he'd rape
the kid anally. I figured that no one, let alone a *doctor*, would take
the risk of sodomizing a small child, when doing so would clearly cause
such damage. The alternative: rape him in the mouth.
So, cut to the next day. The kid seems not so bad. Suddenly, he throws
up. Now, the shot is extremely quick, but what that kid vomited didn't
look like any vomit I've ever seen. First, there was barely any there,
and second, it seemed to be brownish-white. Now, I've been a kid, and
as a kid I've thrown up plenty, and never once did I throw up anything
that was the color white. So when I saw that I assumed that Bill had
done what I thought he would do.
Later, though, it's revealed that the kid has also been raped in a more
traditional manner. However, when I saw that I didn't think that my
original interpretation was wrong, just that Bill had gone farther than
expected. I then assumed that he had spent the entire night with this
poor kid, starting off by fondling him, then raping him in the mouth,
and when that wasn't enough, moving onto sodomy. And if I recall, there
was a later suggestion that Bill's wife had awoken in the middle of the
night and seen him do this. If that is in fact what happened, then I
assume that Bill went to work on this kid for a *long* time -- long
enough for a bunch of sleeping pills to wear off, anyway.
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> [...] Don't get me wrong -- I don't doubt that you were already
> *intensely* disliking the picture, but is it possible that your
> audience's reactions angered you to such a degree that the resultant
> effect was augmenting your loathing for the movie? [...]
An audience affects you; only an idiot would deny it. (I have a friend
who hates 'Mars Attacks!' because the woman sitting in front of him
kept clapping her hands and lip-syncing to the Tom Jones songs. I was
sitting next to him, I noticed the woman, but instead of being annoyed,
I appreciated her enthusiasm. That's a huge difference in opinion, and
who knows, maybe it all came about because he was sitting right behind
her while I was sitting behind her and a bit to the left?).
Er, but I digress. Yes, the audience enhanced my anger, I admit, but it
certainly wasn't the main source of it.
> > [...] I wonder what others thought about Bill's massacre daydream.
> > It was here that I first noticed that something was seriously off
>
> I hope so, since I think that's the intent -- isn't this basically
> one of Bill's very first scenes (after playing shrink to the Hoffman
> character and picking lint off his pant leg)? Right off the bat,
> we're tipped off that something is definitely wrong with this
> seemingly-normal, wonderfully bland-looking man.
But not only did I realize that there was something off with Bill, I
also noticed that there was something off with the film. I wasn't
having the reaction Solondz wanted. Instead of laughing at the irony
of the music and loving the absurdity of the moment, I felt bad for
everyone who was being gunned down -- and not just the people in the
movie, but anyone who's ever been gunned down like that in real life.
It's also a tremendously angry and hostile moment, which is something
I find more ugly than cathartic.
Michele Harvey
>
>Peace Electric (pea...@sk.sympatico.ca) writes:
>> How Roger Ebert can criticize 'Very Bad Things' for being detached,
>> cynical, and ironic and then turn around and praise a film
>> containing scenes like this one is beyond me.
>
>Man, wait till you see THURSDAY.
>
LOL!
BTW, this one's out now, direct to video. There's an "R" cut (82 min) and an
"unrated director's cut" that is slightly longer (85 min). Since the Toronto
screening was listed at 90 min, I guess I'll have to rent the "unrated
director's cut" to find out if anything was really removed.
Michele
"She's a high-riding woman...with a whip." - Sam Fuller's FORTY GUNS
I speak for myself, and not my employer
Flip the names to get a valid email address
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> As Bill was drugging the kid, I figured that there was no way he'd rape
> the kid anally. I figured that no one, let alone a *doctor*, would take
> the risk of sodomizing a small child, when doing so would clearly cause
> such damage. The alternative: rape him in the mouth.
>
Not to be crude, but if the kid is unconscious, what good is it for the
pedophile to ejaculate into his mouth? Just for the kinky thrill? I have
never heard of such a thing, though I'm sure there's nothing under the sun
human beings haven't tried when it comes to sex. I must agree that I was
shocked by the revelation that Bill hadn't just touched. However --
again, apologizing for the technicality of all this -- there's not much
being done in a tactile sense for Bill if he puts his penis into the mouth
of a sleeping person. (Btw, oral sex is sodomy too -- anything that isn't
a penis going into a vagina is sodomy, which is why it is ridiculous that
sodomy is illegal in like almost every state. I know, I know -- they
leave it there so that they can charge rapists and molesters with more
crimes, but geez.)
RAR.
Andrew Johnston
says...
> And if I recall, there
> was a later suggestion that Bill's wife had awoken in the middle of the
> night and seen him do this. If that is in fact what happened, then I
> assume that Bill went to work on this kid for a *long* time -- long
> enough for a bunch of sleeping pills to wear off, anyway.
I saw the movie again and didn't catch this. As I recall, when Bill's
wife wakes up the next day, she feels so peaceful and well-rested that
she asks Bill if perhaps they had sex the night before and she doesn't
remember it (as we already know from the scene with Bill and his own
shrink, it's been months since they've done the deed). Bill then proceeds
to reinforce her false impression that they had sex.
--
Milhouse: "Let's post it on the Internet!"
Bart: "No, we need to reach people whose opinions actually matter."
Matthew Butcher
> (Matthew Butcher argues that the line should've been "masturbate," even
> though it would've been out of character for Bill. I agree that the
> line should've been "masturbate," but because it would've been *in*
> character. I think the joke of the line, as it is now, is basically
> this: "Ha ha! Can you believe how frank he was right there with his
> son! Ha ha, that pedophile is crazy!" To me, it was a gag that was
> built on its shock value and unexpectedness. Had Solondz used a more
> clinical word like "masturbate," not only would it have fit into Bill's
> role as a psychiatrist, it also would've destroyed the impact of the
> shock.)
Well, I thought "jerk off" was more in character because Bill uses that
sort of slang throughout -- I suppose he thinks his son would be more
comfortable with it, and maybe Bill would be too -- so that his dialogue
winds up as a weird mix of schoolyard sex talk and Dr. Spock.
--
Matthew Butcher | He's even got a noise for Lillian Gish.
but...@math.ubc.ca | -- Amberg/Raymond/Bernauer
Peace Electric
(This post is rated NC-17.)
> Not to be crude, but if the kid is unconscious, what good is it for
> the pedophile to ejaculate into his mouth? Just for the kinky
> thrill? [...]
That was pretty much my thinking, though, like you, I assumed that he
wouldn't go beyond touching. But when I saw the vomit/semen/pills, I
assumed that, perhaps for a pedophile, oral sodomy would be more, I
don't know, active and satisfying.
> (Btw, oral sex is sodomy too [...]
Yeah, I found that out with my last post when I looked up "sodomize,"
just to see if it was actually a word (apparently it's not).
Peace Electric
(Spoilers.)
> I saw the movie again and didn't catch this. As I recall, when Bill's
> wife wakes up the next day, she feels so peaceful and well-rested
> that she asks Bill if perhaps they had sex the night before and she
> doesn't remember it (as we already know from the scene with Bill and
> his own shrink, it's been months since they've done the deed). Bill
> then proceeds to reinforce her false impression that they had sex.
Boy, now you've jumbled up my memory. I seem to remember that, in
addition to the "did we have sex?" question, she also vaguely recalled
waking up in the middle of the night (for a glass of water?) and seeing
something that she didn't quite understand. It's all very delicately
acted but I could swear that there was a moment where she basically
said, "I saw you... were you... no, nothing," as if she couldn't quite
place her memories.
I believe the moment came after Bill told her they'd made love, when
they were still cuddling.
Dylan Bryan-Dolman
>
> Yeah, I found that out with my last post when I looked up "sodomize,"
> just to see if it was actually a word (apparently it's not).
The religious, legal, and common-usage definitions of sodomy are so at odds
with each other and themselves that it is pretty much meaningless except as
a smear word.
Dylan
=dbd=
Skander Halim
My son Jeffrey, age 9, enjoyed the show. His favourite parts were "when
the guy from Patch Adams shot his wad all over the wall" and "when the
doggie licked up the boy's cum." He gives it ***5/8 and places it right
after Spiceworld on his Top 5 Kids' Films list, even though he felt much
of the humour was aimed at a lower age group than his own.
Okay, okay, I will attempt to contribute something of actual value to this
rather intimidating thread.
First of all, I would agree wholeheartedly with the subject line had
Justin Siegel not conned me into seeing Disturbing Behavior, and had the
L.A. critics not conned me into seeing Still Breathing. But permit me to
momentarily set aside all the moral/ethical questions (which always seem
to dominate discussions about Happiness) and concentrate on the aesthetic
ones (which always seem strangely absent). I mean, is it just me, or is
this a pretty badly-made movie? The script is lumbering and bloated.
Solondz occasionally displays a good ear for dialogue, but at other times
it sounds forced and fake. He employs every amer-indie cliché in the book
(sexual dysfunction; buried family secrets; "black" humour; large cast of
characters who are all interconnected; was it my imagination or was there
_not_ a bumbling, pop-culture-savvy hit-man in this movie?). Some of the
subplots are boring and irrelevant (the elderly couple), while others
abruptly end with no kind of resolution (Boyle/Hoffman). (I suppose one could
claim that Solondz' script "transcends conventional narrative" or
something, but then one would be full of shit.) As a director, meanwhile,
Solondz is competent with the camera and elicits some good performances,
but I don't see anything to get terribly excited about. Happiness, to me,
feels like every Sundance entry from the past ten years combined into one
glib, sordid mess. That's what I meant by "the Armageddon of the indies"
(I don't know what that psychic plagiarist Andrew Lewis Conn meant).
Let's step back a bit and take a look at some of the story decisions
Solondz makes:
-To show us a pedophile's inner torment, he gives him a dream sequence in
which he walks through a park and shoots people with a machine gun.
-To illustrate the pedophile's tendencies, he has him buy a teen-idol
magazine and masturbate to it in the back of his car.
-To further illustrate these tendencies, he gives us dreamy point-of-view
shots of a little boy accompanied by romantic music.
- To further illustrate these tendencies, he has the pedophile DRUG HIS
FAMILY AND FUCK THE KID UP THE ASS! (I mean, my god! Please, Happiness
defenders, you seem like smart people: you didn't actually buy a _frame_ of
any of this, did you?).
- To convey a sense of exaggerated, ironic domestic bliss, he shows a
huband and wife bustling in the kitchen, accompanied by elevator music
(this film features some of the worst use of music in recent memory; it's
like, we _get_ it already).
- To convey how pathetic and messed-up a lonely overweight woman is, he
has her murder someone and chop them up into pieces.
- He makes a film about unhappiness and calls it Happiness.
Those are just a few random examples that immediately spring to mind (much
of the film has faded from my memory, as tends to be the case with films
that aren't very good). Do you see what I'm saying, though? Nearly every
decision Solondz makes is the cheapest, broadest, most obvious,
literal-minded, sitcom-level one possible. Devices a first-time
screenwriter would be ashamed to employ. (I suppose one could claim that
Solondz "intentionally employs sit-com devices to make an artistic point,"
but then boy, one would just be _bursting_ with shit.)
What pisses me off most is that Solondz isn't even really trying. He's
not really striving for anything fresh and original and different. He's
just a tad more graphic than anyone's been before. So? Are we so
gullible as to allow cheap shock value to elevate a pile of cliches to
the level of legitimate art? Have we truly reached the point where pushing
boundaries is enough to get a director placed on a pedestal, with no
consideration given to the skill and imagination with which those boundaries
are being pushed? Shock cinema has an illustrious history, from Bunuel to
Hitchcock to Lynch to Tarantino; but those guys shocked us not only with
the graphic nature of their images but with the richness of their artistic
visions. That some have sought to place Solondz among this pantheon is more
revolting to me than any gross-out cliche his puerile little mind could
ever conjure up.
--
Skander Halim http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~ba547/
"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman
she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again."
--TV listing for "The Wizard of Oz" in Marin County newspaper
Skander Halim
Alex Fung (aw...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> (one memorable review for LIAR LIAR reported on the crowd's mirth by
> closing "Sometimes I hate people.")
Actually, it was "Sometimes I hate this planet." So it can't have been
all that memorable.
Peace Electric
> [...] But permit me to momentarily set aside all the moral/ethical
> questions (which always seem to dominate discussions about Happiness)
> and concentrate on the aesthetic ones (which always seem strangely
> absent). [...]
Thanks for that. I've tried to ignore the offensiveness, but I seem
completely unable to do so. I agree with everything you say, and would
just like to add that this is a supremely boring film. After maybe a
half an hour I wanted it to end, and by ninety minutes I was spending
as much time trying to figure out whether or not the present scene
would serve as a suitable conclusion to the current character arc as I
was following the actual narrative (I must've predicted the ending
about a dozen different times). I also wasn't particularly interested
in any of the characters, and although I was defensive of them, that
was more a result of the actors' performances than anything Solondz did
as a writer.
Peace Electric
seems to me that it's degenerated (or may degenerate) into an icky
dissection of a pedophile's technique. In other words, not my idea of
fun. So, since I started this thread, maybe I should try to provide
some kind of final thought or conclusion (though if the discussion
moves off into another direction, just ignore this post).
Anyway, I received an interesting e-mail which contained, among other
things, the following paragraph:
> I was really only thinking of Joy in the sense of Solondz beating
> _himself_ up (by proxy) in self-defense, but I think you may have
> identified the primary pathology. If how he 'protects' these people
> (characters) is by beating them up before the world (audience) has
> a chance to, then both readings of his films (humane/inhumane) can
> co-exist, logically.
What I like about this reading is that it concisely explains all of the
insanely divided reactions to the film. I mean, even those of us who
agree on the more broader issues of good and bad, generally disagree on
the finer points (for example, no one can agree on exactly who is being
mocked and who isn't -- that is, if anyone). And because I respect the
opinions of the people who have so far posted, it makes it hard for me
to dismiss anyone's interpretation. This isn't some pissed off loony
wandering into the group and complaining that Spielberg keeps making
fun of his pet walrus, it's a bunch of intelligent people not just
disagreeing, but vigorously disagreeing on the most fundamental of
issues.
Now, the way I see it, Todd Solondz is the cause of all of this. Not
just because he's the guy who wrote and directed the film, but because
there seems to be something about his style and his content and the
combination of both of these things that, I think we can all agree,
causes opinions that are so amazingly at odds with one another. There
are things about his sense of humour, his concept of caring, his idea
of drama and tragedy, that are just somehow off. There is something
about, say, the way that he laughs at/with a character that causes such
a varied set of reactions. And because those reactions are so varied,
and because each camp has its fair share of supporters, I can't tell
myself that Person A has simply misread the scene. I'm also no longer
sure that it has anything at all to do with past experiences or degree
of cynicism or whatever. Because if the answer *was* that subjective,
then I think you'd get these same violently opposed reactions to *all*
movies, or at least most of them. But since that doesn't seem to happen
very often, I'm going to hoist it all onto Solondz' shoulders and say
that there's just something off kilter or out of whack about his way of
thinking, and that *that's* what's causing these differences in opinion.
What it is about Solondz I can't be sure, because I'm not a fan and I
don't know much about him. However, even though I concede my blissful
ignorance in this regard, I still really like the theory quoted above
because, more than anything else, it *explains* a lot. If 'Welcome to
the Dollhouse', and Dawn's existence in that film, is nothing more than
a thinly veiled version of Solondz' own experience (which I assume it
is), then it would make sense for him as a filmmaker to have so little
faith in his audience. If he was laughed at and ridiculed while growing
up, not only would it make sense for him to have associated a mocking
insult with comedy, it would also explain why he would apply such a
formula to his films. If in Solondz' mind the audience is nothing more
than an extended version of his classmates, wouldn't it make sense for
him to protect his characters (and himself), by kicking the shit out of
them for laughs? And wouldn't that explain why some of us see nothing
but hostility and anger, while some of us see concern and tenderness?
Anyway, it makes sense to me.
P.S. I'd also like to waste a ton of bandwidth and clarify something I
said about the whole happy universe/sad universe thing. Now, anybody
who's read my posts for any amount of time knows that I have a moronic
tendency to try and categorize and theorize my taste in movies through
a bunch of convoluted rules that apparently only I can understand (I
look back at that whole editing credit thing and, trust me, I don't
know *what* the fuck I was trying to say). And while this whole
being-able-to-relate-to-the-world thing probably falls under that, I'm
still going to make a few points: 1) A film (or, more usually, a TV
show) that presents a world that is 100% positive is not necessarily a
bad thing. Even though I don't believe in the characters, I can still
be entertained by what's happening, and I can easily find humour in the
situations. Take an episode of "The Flintstones"; now, I don't for one
moment identify with the emotions of the characters, but I can still be
entertained (or more accurately, "diverted") by the show. (Two examples
from the world of cinema would be 'A Date With Judy' and 'Good Neighbor
Sam', both of which I found enormously entertaining, despite not
believing in the characters for a second. 2) The same goes for the 100%
negative films, though in those instances it's not the entertainment or
humour I'm appreciating, but rather the technique or the sheer
fascination of watching the events on screen. There was a recent Pearl
Jam music video that basically gave us an animated montage of every
single bad thing that's ever happened on this planet (the Holocaust,
slavery, etc.). And although I couldn't even come close to identifying
with the video's laughable bleakness, I did enjoy it for its animation
(technique). 3) 'Happiness' did not fascinate me, and it did not
impress me with its technique, and so for the most part I watched the
film not being able to relate to the perpetual despair and not being
able to find anything else worth watching.
I would make a bad joke here, but I'm far too tired.
Regina Alexandra Robbins
>
> What pisses me off most is that Solondz isn't even really trying. He's
> not really striving for anything fresh and original and different. He's
> just a tad more graphic than anyone's been before. So? Are we so
> gullible as to allow cheap shock value to elevate a pile of cliches to
> the level of legitimate art? Have we truly reached the point where pushing
> boundaries is enough to get a director placed on a pedestal, with no
> consideration given to the skill and imagination with which those boundaries
> are being pushed? Shock cinema has an illustrious history, from Bunuel to
> Hitchcock to Lynch to Tarantino; but those guys shocked us not only with
> the graphic nature of their images but with the richness of their artistic
> visions. That some have sought to place Solondz among this pantheon is more
> revolting to me than any gross-out cliche his puerile little mind could
> ever conjure up.
I, for one, am not interested in putting Solondz--or even his film--in any
kind of pantheon. I think WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE is a truly special
movie, but this one, eh, I don't need to see it again. I have only made
myself a massive pain in the ass on this topic because I feel as if some
members of the anti-HAPPINESS faction have a) attributed "motives" to the
director that I think are unfair and unwarranted and/or b) clearly reacted
to the material and/or the vision of the director in a very elemental way,
but won't really cop to that. There's an attitude that no reasonable
person could think that the film had any merit, or was made by anyone
besides an evil puppet master. I agree with you that the movie has some
aesthetic problems, but it seems to me that, as you rightly pointed out,
these are continually forgotten about as the argument comes back and back
and back to "Is the world really so horrible a place?" or "This can only
have been meant as a slap in the universe's face." (Sorry about the
rhyme.) In short, I think the movie deserves a fair shake, and that the
level of objection to it is out of proportion with its actual flaws. Come
on, y'all. Can HAPPINESS really, honestly, truly have been worse than
ELIZABETH?
RAR.
Regina Alexandra Robbins
> Anyway, I received an interesting e-mail which contained, among other
> things, the following paragraph:
>
> > I was really only thinking of Joy in the sense of Solondz beating
> > _himself_ up (by proxy) in self-defense, but I think you may have
> > identified the primary pathology. If how he 'protects' these people
> > (characters) is by beating them up before the world (audience) has
> > a chance to, then both readings of his films (humane/inhumane) can
> > co-exist, logically.
>
[snip]>
>
> What it is about Solondz I can't be sure, because I'm not a fan and I
> don't know much about him. However, even though I concede my blissful
> ignorance in this regard, I still really like the theory quoted above
> because, more than anything else, it *explains* a lot. If 'Welcome to
> the Dollhouse', and Dawn's existence in that film, is nothing more than
> a thinly veiled version of Solondz' own experience (which I assume it
> is), then it would make sense for him as a filmmaker to have so little
> faith in his audience. If he was laughed at and ridiculed while growing
> up, not only would it make sense for him to have associated a mocking
> insult with comedy, it would also explain why he would apply such a
> formula to his films. If in Solondz' mind the audience is nothing more
> than an extended version of his classmates, wouldn't it make sense for
> him to protect his characters (and himself), by kicking the shit out of
> them for laughs? And wouldn't that explain why some of us see nothing
> but hostility and anger, while some of us see concern and tenderness?
>
> Anyway, it makes sense to me.
It makes sense to a lot of us.
The syndrome you have identified above is evidently experienced by the
character of Dawn in WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. Dawn is miserable because
people tease her, bully her and then ignore her. She has one little
friend who never does anything but try to be nice. What is her response
to this? She is mean to him. On one hand, it is nonsensical. On the
other, perfectly understandable: she has been taught cruelty. The
stronger torment the weaker. This is the only sphere in which Dawn is the
stronger, because her friend is the follower while she is the leader.
This split sensibility in Solondz's work (Dylan Bryan-Dolman made an
anaology to "bitonality in music," which I thought was wonderfully apt)
also comes from the mixed messages that ostracized/marginalized/depressed
people continually receive from those around them. In an abstract sense,
we as a culture value kindness, justice, championing the weak. We love
watching features on the local news about how such-and-such a good
samaritan saved Christmas for such-and-such a poor family. Hence, an
unusually victimized person (for the record, I pretty much believe that
everyone is in constant struggle between being victim and being
perpetrator, but that's for another group) is given reason to believe that
some day, the torment will stop. Someone will save me. On the other
hand, there is among humans a strong psychological need to believe,
against all evidence, the the universe is already fair and just. This
leads to what we call the "blame the victim" syndrome. We will agree,
theoretically, that someone is innocent until proven guilty, but
practically, it's just easier to believe that if someone weren't guilty,
they wouldn't have been arrested. This extends to the emotionally
victimized when they are told, in all manner of ways, that they "deserve"
what they get. Or at least, they have no right to expect that they won't
be judged by others and accordingly ostracized. This is also called
"Don't be a whiner" or "Be a good sport" or "Don't be so sensitive."
Then the kid grows up and makes a film torn apart, as he is, by
conflicting convictions: he is just as good as anyone else and deserves to
be accepted and vindicated, except that he is a worthless piece of shit
who oughta be glad anyone associates with him at all.
Don't ask for philosophical clarity from artists like this. They're about
emotional and moral chaos (Dionysus), not truth and beauty (Apollo). The
Greeks obviously had more than one art-god for a reason.
RAR.