Palindromes (2005)
Note: Some spoilers. I've tried
to say as little as possible about the plot of the
film but in order to talk about this film, some things
must be stated.
When Todd Solondz approaches a topic,
you can bet that you are going to get a look at it
with offbeat and quirky eyes. Yet, at the same time,
you're also going to get a look at it with fresh,
unvarnished and realistic eyes. His approach is always
unique, and this vision allows him to appeal to the
more offbeat and quirky audiences in film culture.
And yet, one of the most unusual qualities to his
stories is that he strips away pretense, political
correctedness, the idea of taboo, and many of the
filters that we, as society, place upon certain subjects.
Solondz is always interested in
the outsider, the different. Just by looking at the
director, it is obvious that he himself is an outsider.
He knows that voice. In "Welcome
to the Dollhouse," he approached the isolation
and confusion of pubescence. Originally called "The
Middle Child," the film confronted the issues of feeling
like an outsider in your own nerdy family. It also
addressed pubescence and teen sexuality. The blunt
and unvarnished language used by his two young leads,
Heather Matarazzo and Brendan Sexton, is disturbing
and brutal but, one must also admit, honest and poignant.
Solondz takes the brutality and angst of youth and
turns it into a poem of honesty and truth. It is amazing.
He did the same with pedophilia
and pubescence in "Happiness"
and with racism and sexuality in "Storytelling."
And in "Palindromes" his subject matter is not far
away from such themes. This new film deals with abortion
and teen pregnancy. But again, Solondz has found a
way to make the story he tells not only odd, quirky
and offbeat but also brutally honest and unvarnished.
It is an amazing film.
It should be no surprise that, ten
years later, Dawn Wiener, protagonist of "Welcome
to the Dollhouse," Solondz's first cult hit, returns
here. She is a character but only in a minor sense.
The real focus here is on Dawn's distant cousin Aviva,
a thirteen-year-old girl who, in the opening scenes
tells us that she wants to have lots and lots of babies.
It is only fitting that in a film
with abortion as its main theme, the idea of motherhood
would also be present. Solondz gives us both a traditional
mother and a non-traditional one. Ellen Barkin is
fantastic as Aviva's mother. Oscillating between caring
and nurturing and stubborn and wrong-headed, Barkin
gives her best performance in ages and provides the
perfect ironical balance in her character. It is imperative
that this equilibrium between two extremes be perfectly
captured in the character for Solondz's script to
work and Barkin does just that. Meanwhile, in the
middle of the film, Debra Monk steps up and provides
the perfect non-traditional matriarch as Mama Sunshine,
the overseer of a group of orphans and disabled children
in her care.
This midsection of the film might
be seen by many as anti- Christian or anti-religious
by many people, but it is a fine line that Solondz
walks. Again, his ability to intermingle satire with
brutal realism is amazing. Mama Sunshine is a good
person and a loving mother. Her invocation of Jesus
is not hypocritical or idiotic here. She is a genuine
person with real goodness inside her. Perhaps misguided
but never mean, cruel or hypocritical. This is key
in keep Solondz's film from sinking into parody.
Sure, it's fun to giggle at the
group of children here as they put on pop songs about
Jesus and religious issues. But Solondz isn't mocking
his characters or their beliefs. Rather he is mocking
a society and a modern religious society that turns
to pop music and "show business" to present their
ideas. He is mocking the propaganda of the modern
Christian right. And, of course, it's damn funny to
have kids singing religious pop songs about abortion.
It should be absurdist but, since this is a parody
of something that really goes on in modern Christian
society, it becomes hauntingly realistic.
There is great acting by young people
in the film. Alexander Brickel is simply amazing as
Peter Paul. He's so real that we, at first, think
that he really believes he is in some sort of morality
or Afterschool Special. It is only later, when his
character has a flirtatious moment and discusses abortion
that we realize this young actor understands exactly
what the film is about. This is probably the best
performance that we are going to see by a young actor
this year.
And, in a turn of sheer brilliance
here, Solondz cast eight women in the role of Aviva.
Throughout the film, each of these women appear as
the young character. Some of the actresses are much
older than thirteen. A couple of them are African-American
or Latino. In doing this, Solondz makes his protagonist
an "every-woman." Aviva could be any age, any race,
from any part of the country. We see her as she wants
to be seen. We see her as the other characters in
the film want to see her, a sexual woman, a mother,
a girl, a whore, a virgin. Fat, skinny, with braces,
with freckles, beautiful and perfect, ugly and unwanted.
Solondz allows us to consider not just this one young
girl's story but rather as a story that perhaps many
women have. This is pure genius on the director's
part and he caps it off by having Jennifer Jason Leigh
appear as Aviva near the end of the film, when she
is still a teenager but has become an older, wiser
and defeated person. We see all that Aviva has experiences
emotionally on the older, wiser and more worldly face
of Leigh. It is utter poetry.
"Palindromes" is yet another amazing
and wholly unique film from Solondz. With it, he becomes,
yet again, one of the most important American directors
working in film today. Unapologetic and uncompromising,
Solondz speaks to audiences not with a scream, but
a whisper. And yet his message rings loud and clear,
an honest and realistic voice in a world of hypocrisy,
brutality, indifference and pain. Are you listening?
Notes:
Also with Stephen Adly-Guirgis,
Matthew Farber (reprising his role as Mark Wiener),
Tyler Maynard (hilarious as twinky Jiminy) and Richard
Massur.
The film debuted at Telluride in
September 2004 and has been picked up by Wellspring
for arthouse release in the U.S. beginning in April,
2004.
Filmed in New York.
The film is dedicated: "In Loving
Memory of Dawn Wiener."
Viewed at SXSW in March 2005.
