Life During Wartime a Miserable Existence

I’ve been trying to write a review of Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime for almost a month now. A pseudo-sequel to his 1998 effort Happiness, the film picks up ten years after shocking revelations tore the Jordan family apart. But with a new cast and a much different feel this movie left me not just cold but a tiny bit shell-shocked, and while the filmmaker’s penchant for ugliness has never been my cup of tea for my part this might be his only brew I ever found to be completely indigestible.

Paul Reubens (center) in Life During Wartime © IFC Films

Granted, my problems had little to do with the actual plot (what there is of one). No, I was okay with Joy (Shirley Henderson) returning to Florida to meet with her older sisters Trish (Allison Janney) and Helen (Ally Sheedy) for guidance. I was equally fine with Trish’s romance with Harvey (Michael Lerner) and her attempts at being a good parent in the wake of her husband Bill’s (Ciarán Hinds) incarceration. I had no problem that Bill was released, searching for a reason to go on and eager to speak with oldest child Billy (Chris Marquette) even though he knew it would be painful.

All of this was fine. Not particularly interesting, but fine, the potential for both drama and comedy inherent in just about every fiber of the narrative’s being. No, what I had a problem with was just how ugly Solondz decided to make it all. Worse, he also made it feel a heck of a lot like play acting, everyone talking and relating to one another in a weirdly stilted manner making their dialogues pretty much insufferable. The movie is filled with scenes that felt stagy at best, derivatively monotonous at worst, all of them combined together to craft a flabbergasting and horrific monstrosity I don’t know how anyone could suffer through.

Yet plenty do. This director has his admirers, those who claim him to be a genius with a deep and profound understanding of the human condition. The truth of the matter is, other than his debut effort Welcome to the Dollhouse I’ve just never seen it. While I’ve respected his vision and his filmmaking chops his films have always done very little for me, his continued forays into darkness and misery seemingly just for the sake of descending into darkness and misery not making me all that appreciative of a camper.

But I’ve never hated one of his pictures. Even the oddly disjointed and almost pointlessly esoteric Palindromes had a few things going for it (not the least of which were the performances), traits I could admire even if the whole left me unexcited and cold. This time out, however, I’ve got virtually nothing to grab a hold of. This movie didn’t so much stomp on my ability to like it as pretend it was a urinal splashing its stream this way and that. By the time it was over I came to the conclusion that Solondz didn’t just hate me he didn’t like his characters, either, and why he’d want to return to them when all he felt was venom and vitriol was a thing I just couldn’t comprehend.  

I don’t have much more to say. Life During Wartime is the kind of film that leaves me scratching me head wondering what the person behind it was thinking in the first place. It’s the kind of movie I don’t so much hate as find not worthy of even discussing, Solondz quickly becoming a misery-selling afterthought I no longer want to give the time of day.

Film Rating: ê (out of 4) 

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