I admit there's an element of brutality in all my work. It's part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore. But the last thing I'm trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people's pain and humiliation. - Todd Solondz
Todd Solondz hails from New Jersey, as I do, a state the size of a shoebox stuffed to the gills with nearly 9 million people. Todd grew up in Livingston, I grew up Nutley less than ten miles to the east of that town. Nutley became known to the world through the television show The Sopranos, which I can attest to being a very accurate portrayal of that small area. The Garden State does hold much natural beauty, as is evident from the famous "Pine Barrens" episode of The Sopranos, but also possesses much strife. The HBO series used NJ as a setting for both tragedy and small triumphs; Todd Solondz has parlayed his experiences growing up in Jersey to offer an alternate view of the state which is decidedly less complimentary.
Solondz’s work is dripping with contempt for New Jersey, which is not entirely unwarranted. To grow up and survive in such a densely populated area is to morph your personality to fit into the prevailing model of what is viewed as successful or you will perish. There is a joke NJ slogan which goes “New Jersey: Where the Weak are Killed and Eaten” and Solondz’s cinema is not far off from that mark. I rarely look people in the eye when I speak to them and am abrupt and stand-offish. In general I do not trust people for you never really know what they are hiding. Solondz exemplifies this feeling by displaying the façade of his characters and then ripping the mask off to expose the putrid center of their true selves. The character of Dr. Maplewood in
Happiness is a brilliant example of a man trying to “pass” as normal and then committing hideous acts. His name is a symbol of his rotten core. Maplewood is a town right near Livingston bordered by many blighted cities. Maplewood looks nice, but drive out of town and you find poverty and dismal forgotten communities on its borders. This has been Solondz’s calling card; wipe away the artifice of the portrayed self and expose the Other. Navigating through Otherness is what cripples people’s psyches in a state where appearance and inauthenticity is praised over genuine expressions of personality. Brutal and yet darkly humorous, Todd Solondz has produced a body of work which depicts the unique brutality of Jersey.
- Leanne Kubicz
MODERN FAMILY
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
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| Palindromes |
Just beneath the surface of every happy family photo and nice family dinner in a Todd Solondz film are layers of dysfunction (Welcome To The Dollhouse, Happiness, Palindromes, Life During Wartime & Dark Horse) emotional abuse & neglect (Welcome To the Dollhouse), bullying (Welcome To The Dollhouse & Storytelling) and plenty of deep dark secrets & lies (Happiness & Palindromes). As Leanne mentions in the intro - these characters try to pass for something that they aren't...
DARK HUMOR
There`s good laughter and bad laughter. As long as they`re not laughing at the expense of any of these characters, it`s OK. My films are comedies, but they`re sad comedies - Todd Solondz
Dark, twisted & quirky humor is probably what Solondz is most known for over everything else (that and twisted sexual perversions, which we'll get in to later). I've said it on here before and I'll say it again - it takes a special kind of talent to find humor in subjects like pedophilia, abortion & suicide.
Unfortunately that's what draws people to his work, and it's usually for the wrong reasons. Be honest - how often have you spoken to someone about Happiness and the conversation never really goes beyond "oh man, that movie is so fucked up, maaaan"?
To me that's insulting because there's a lot more to his work (especially his work from '96-'01) beyond totally "fucked up" humor. Its similar to people who enjoy stuff like A Clockwork Orange or Taxi Driver (my personal favorite film) just because those films are violent.
Solondz' "humor" is also quite challenging because we're not necessarily supposed to be laughing at what he presents us all the time. Sometimes we find ourselves laughing at something for the wrong reasons in his films.
To be honest, I am often unsettled by the responses some people have had to my movies, and that includes many people who like them. - Todd Solondz
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| Happiness |
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| Palindromes |
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| Storytelling |
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
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| Wiener Dog |
FEAR, ANXIETY, DEPRESSION & SUICIDE
Although Solondz's films will always be categorized as "comedy", things arent always a total laugh-fest. There's always some kind of a suicide or suicide attempt in almost all of his work (Fear Anxiety & Depression, Happiness, Life During Wartime & Dark Horse) and if not that, there's always at least two characters who suffer from depression in every single one of his films. There's even some serious moments in his filmography that may choke you up (the scene at the end of Life During Wartime where Bill confronts his son is pretty sad).
But the biggest blow to Todd Solondz fans (and proof of his darker side) had to be the death of Dawn Weiner (Welcome To The Dollhouse) who was not only the poster child for his work, but was a symbol of hope to a certain degree. At the end of Welcome To The Dollhouse, Solondz gave us hope as we saw Dawn essentially grow & rise above all the shit she had slung at her by life. But 8 years later, that same character ended up killing herself in Palindromes which kind of left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Watching Welcome To The Dollhouse now knowing that the main character will killer herself a few years later makes the viewing experience a little more tough.
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| Fear, Anxiety & Depression |
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| Happiness |
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| Happiness |
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| Life During Wartime |
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| Life During Wartime |
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| Life During Wartime |
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| Storytelling |
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
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| Dark Horse |
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| Wiener Dog |
So far, at least, I haven`t found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny - Todd Solondz
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO TODD SOLONDZ
Much like Claire Denis, David Lynch, Abel Ferrara and a few other filmmakers I've explored before, its more than obvious that Todd puts himself in his own films either literally (Fear, Anxiety & Depression) or through characters that look exactly like him (Dollhouse, Storytelling, Palindromes & Life During Wartime).
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| Fear, Anxiety Of Depression |
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| Happiness |
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| Storytelling |
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| Palindromes |
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| Life During Wartime |
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| Wiener Dog |
PERVERTS, PREDATORS & PEDOPHILES...
The darkest side of Solondz' work is probably sexual perversion (specifically Pedophilia). In Storytelling, we have a black male college professor who not only fetishizes about his young white female students, but he also gets off on having them yell out racial slurs at him during sex. In Welcome To The Dollhouse, not only is Dawn (age 12) threatened and almost raped by a classmate, but her sister is later kidnapped by a pedophile. We all know the twisted characters in Happiness, played by Dylan Baker (pedophile) & Philip Seymour Hoffman (repressed perverted who calls women anonymously and talks dirty to them) and pedophilia runs all throughout Palindromes as well...
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
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| Happiness |
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| Happiness |
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| Palindromes |
YOUTH & COMING OF AGE
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
In American films, this period of life is not treated seriously. You have either the cute and cuddly Disney kid or the evil devil monster. For me it`s fertile territory - middle class kids growing up in the suburbs - Todd Solondz
Some may disagree, but I feel like Solondz is one of the few American filmmakers to really explore youth and take them seriously (even in comedy films). Welcome To The Dollhouse alone solidified this for me. For some reason, Jr. high is the most overlooked period among youth in film. Filmmakers almost always jump from elementary school, where kids are cute & innocent, to high school, which is technically the stage just before adulthood. But Welcome To The Dollhouse is one of the few films that explores that awkward/intermediate period of growing up.
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| Happiness |
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| Storytelling |
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| Life During Wartime |
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| Welcome To The Dollhouse |
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| Palindromes |
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| Wiener Dog |
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