Earlier this week, music writer Matthew Perpetua published “Party in the USA: The Obama Vibe Shift 2008-2011,” a music playlist full of saccharine late-aughts pop cheer (e.g. Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry). To our seasoned 2022 ears, the music is equal parts naïve and horrifying; one person replied to Matthew, “I say this with awe and appreciation: this playlist made me just want to throw up.” Although Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime (2010) takes its name from a Talking Heads song, this playlist is a better fit. The film is a direct sequel to Happiness, and with one major caveat, both films depict desperation and ugliness in periods of American optimism. Hope and change do not apply to these characters, just as it did not during the sustained prosperity of the late 1990s. Nonetheless, Solondz, who previously saw no hope and could find no answers, softens his attitude. This time around he lets his characters consider forgiveness, with all the possibility and pain that entails.
The opening scene is a direct echo of Happiness. Once again, we see Joy at an uncomfortable dinner date that ends disastrously. This time, however, Shirley Henderson plays Joy instead of Jane Adams. Her companion is Allen (Michael K. Williams), who was previously portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman (you may recall that Joy’s sister Helen once played matchmaker). This is a deeper exploration of an idea Solondz explored in Palindromes: by recasting every role in Happiness, he seems to suggest that a different exterior does not change who these characters fundamentally are. All the new actors reinterpret their pre-existing characters, and while some tics are slightly different, their essence/core/whatever remains the same.
No one is more aware of ironclad human nature than Bill (Ciarán Hinds), who was just released from prison after serving time for raping two prepubescent boys. It is unclear, at least when we first see him, whether Bill is rehabilitated or if he will attack someone again, but no one feels his absence more than his young son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder). On the cusp of his bar mitzvah, Timmy approaches “manhood” with disarming sincerity, asking painful moral questions about death, terrorism and pedophilia that older, more polite adults gloss right over. Another interesting update is the presence of Andy, who killed himself in Happiness and now Paul Reubens portrays him as a literal ghost who haunts Joy. Solondz has little interest in horror, and instead sees the supernatural as a walking, talking metaphor that helps his living characters consider guilt.
Unlike several other Solondz films, Life During Wartime is available to stream online. It can be found on VOD platforms, or on the Criterion Channel, whereas you may recall Happiness can only be found on out-of-print DVDs. It is worth mentioning because this film highlights Solondz’s formal gifts, particularly his use of color and composition. Cinematographer Edward Lachman frequently uses abundant light, often giving a yellow hue that matches the Florida setting where most of the film takes place. But the light also adds to the characters’ interiority, instead of making them look jaundiced. Hinds’ stiff, somber performance underscores Bill’s realization that he has no future, and the crisp photography only deepens his truth. Some actors/characters ease into the background, like a note-perfect Allison Janney, who plays Trish, but even her attempts at a sunny disposition ultimately become a sick joke. I cannot help but wonder how the director’s earlier work would land if the image was handled with similar care.
Solondz has always worked with a mix of seasoned and new actors throughout his career, yet this film is unique because it includes a sequence that could only be accomplished by two actors at the top of their powers. At a fancy hotel, Bill happens upon Jacqueline (Charlotte Rampling), and their matter-of-fact sexual frankness defines the seduction between them. Both of them are full of self-loathing, although Jacqueline vainly assumes Bill shares her obsession with age, and they find a moment of escape in each other’s bodies (few films depict this many sex scenes among the middle-aged). If most Solondz dialogue is stilted and full of pain, then Rampling and Hinds portray two people who finally get beyond all that through a lifetime of hard-earned cynicism. In a twisted way, this is the director’s version of hope. If happiness is elusive, at least experience will provide a protective shell.
Parts of Life During Wartime are difficult to watch, and not in a way that Solondz could have anticipated. Across two films, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael K. Williams each play Allen, and both actors died too young from substance abuse complications. That tragic feeling is further compounded when we see Allen’s ultimate fate, and his ghost terrorizes Joy with a mix of desperation and cruelty. This film does not resolve the unanswered questions it raised in Happiness, and yet characters find the courage to level with one another. That matter-of-fact clarity happens between Bill and his son Billy (Chris Marquette), now college-aged, as well as Timmy and Mark Wiener (Rich Pecci), Dawn’s surviving brother who has been a mainstay of the Solondz cinematic universe. Finally, in the carefully acted final scenes, there is a completeness to what the filmmaker accomplishes here, one that can rarely be found in his earlier work. While this film is not Solondz’s most daring or most provocative, it might be his best.
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