Monday, June 2, 2014

THE CINEMA OF TODD SOLONDZ TOLD THROUGH IMAGES & STILLS...



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
Welcome To The Dollhouse
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...
Happiness
Life During Wartime
Palindromes
Storytelling
Welcome To The Dollhouse


SIBLINGS
A sub-category under Solondz' exploration of the modern american family is the sometimes strained & complicated relationship between siblings. In Happiness, we get sisters who are either quietly competing with one another or looking down on each other. In Storytelling, we have a younger brother worried about his reputation in school because his older brother may be gay (he even goes so far as to confront him about it). And there's tons of extra resentment and disconnect between Dawn and her older brother in Welcome To The Dollhouse...
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Happiness
Storytelling
Life During Wartime



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

Happiness
Palindromes
Storytelling
Welcome To The Dollhouse
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. 
Fear, Anxiety & Depression
Happiness
Happiness
Life During Wartime
Life During Wartime
Life During Wartime
Storytelling
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Dark Horse
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 SOLONDZ COLOR PALETTE...
What throws a lot of people off about his work (and almost always goes unnoticed yet has been copied by so many young up & coming American indie filmmakers without even realizing it) is the combination of bright & subconsciously happy colors mixed with the dark material from the previous category. Its more than obvious that when it comes to issues like depression & death, the average mind cant help but think about colors like black, grey and other typically dreary colors. But the color pallet that Solondz uses is often associated with children's books and daytime nickelodeon programming which makes his films extra creepy.
Pink, Yellow, Bright Red & Sky Blue seem to be his regular colors of choice... 
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Happiness
Palindromes
Palindromes
Life During Wartime
Life During Wartime
Dark Horse
Dark Horse
Fear, Anxiety & Depression
Wiener Dog
Wiener Dog
Wiener Dog




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).
Fear, Anxiety Of Depression
Happiness
Storytelling
Palindromes
Life During Wartime
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...
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Happiness
Happiness
Palindromes



DREAMS &HALLUCINATIONS
Technically this could be absorbed in to the dark humor category but I felt that it needed its own. With the exception of Palindromes (which feels like one giant dream at certain moments in the film) there's always a moment in every one of Solondz' films where a character has a dream sequence that comes out of nowhere and throws us off...
Life During Wartime
Life During Wartime
Storytelling
Storytelling
Welcome To The Dollhouse



YOUTH & COMING OF AGE
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.
Happiness
Storytelling
Life During Wartime
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Palindromes
Wiener Dog






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