Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)

So, as we were leaving the parking garage after watching Life During Wartime, the cashier asked "What movie did you see?" Told her. "What did you think?" She's obviously polling her customers. "We really liked it. What have the others said?" "The last group said it was weird, crazy, and perverse." "It was. But it was so interesting."

Life During Wartime picks up the lives of the extended family Solondz depicted in Happiness (1998), boldly examining the aftereffects of incest, pedophilia, and suicide on the perpetrators, yes, but more significantly on those left behind to clean up the mess. As Solondz shows, the clean-up is consistently imperfect. Because is characters cannot, do not know how to talk truthfully about what they witnessed, they are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Moreover, because the situations are realistically complicated, there's no way the characters can resolve the problems. They are doomed to plodding along as best they can.

The first scene, between Joy and her husband, Alan, is a good example of Solondz's expertise with dialogue and keeping his audience de-stabilized. They are dressed up, in a booth at a nice-ish restaurant; she is weepy, he is teary, and we don't know why. Come to find out, they don't seem to know either. Because he is so solicitous and she seems so dysfunctional, my sympathies were with him, especially when she cannot pull things together when he gives her a thoughtful anniversary gift. Then he begins to say how hard he's worked at cleaning up all areas of his life, but that one area continues to give him trouble. Oops, I'm beginning to understand why she's crying. And then the server comes to the table, recognizes his voice, calls him a pervert, and spits on him. Joy begins to apologize for him, saying that he's changed. Clearly, things are much more complicated that they initially appeared to be.

Solondz's films are not for the fainthearted or the squeamish. No gore, no on-screen violence, just lots of uneasy truths.

Highly Recommended. With the foregoing caveats--plus the recommendation that you see Happiness first.