Happiness

I recently saw my first Todd Solondz film, Welcome To The Dollhouse. What a dark ride!

This week it took a couple of evenings for me to get through Happiness. There was a lot to get. Goodness gracious! (As my dear Grandmother might say, who, incidentally, is not a candidate for viewing THIS one!)

I'd read the reviews for Happiness in 1998; I'd had a typically positive Psychic Movie Reviewer moment. This indie sounded unique. I waited for Happiness - sniffle - to appear upon my friendly video store shelves, but saw nada. I imagine that the store probably had like two copies maybe, displayed briefly upon a bottom shelf someplace. I forgot about the existence of this film, until recently. And I recently heard that a certain video chain had allegedly pulled Happiness from its shelves due to customer complaints.

Disturbing yet intriguing, this film pulled me along, the matrix of character interaction becoming increasingly more intricate and strange. Definitely not for all tastes!

The subject of child sexual abuse is handled matter of factly, yet chillingly and effectively. As with the domestic/sexual abuse of women, the problem of child sexual abuse is obviously one that crosses lines of class, social status, and profession. Happiness acknowledges this fact, in the character of family man/psychiatrist Bill Maplewood.

Loneliness, rage, sexual repression/obsession, disintegrating marriages, sadly sophisticated children, relationships built upon artifice, this film has it all. It's Prozac Cinema at its best: try to be on an even keel when pressing 'play'.

Spouses, parents and children seem to be communicating across a void.

After viewing Happiness for the second time, I realized that the entire soundtrack intentionally consisted of melodramatic, and/or ultra perky canned music: a perfectly ironical compliment and contrast in style with the strong, harsh, quirky film scenes.

Presentation: director Solondz sets up the viewer for traditional father/son talk scenes, via mood and pseudo canned music: giving the subject matter and dialogue all the more impact. WHAT did he just say? Ward and Beaver Cleaver never behaved this way.

Got 134 minutes and a desire to see something darkly different? Rent Happiness. Or buy it.

This is the best movie I never, ever want to see again. It's dark, disgusting, powerful, painful and honest. The focal point of cinema has been used here as an assault on every day life. Everyone has had these moments at one point or another in their lives and now here's the hot-faced shame and moral nausea experienced vicariously through a parade of terrible, terrible people, not parsed out by blessed months or years between horrifying events as one would hopefully find in real life, but non-stop for however many minutes this film lasts. I can't deny that it was a good film, but it's also a film that hurts to watch. Good job in an era when the only thing I can remotely equate this experience to is being in the front row at "Cloverfield" and being surrounded by people vomiting.

This is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but I would hesitate to recommend it to people whom I don't know pretty well. It explores aspects of life and living (and suffering) that most films avoid or actively deny. And it does so brilliantly. The characters are vividly real, and there is such a strong sense of situations unfolding in real time that it's truly mesmerising. I felt like a fly on the wall, eavesdropping on conversations I could never hear otherwise. I think many people would absolutely hate this movie, partly because it doesn't pass judgement on behaviours that are repulsive to the bulk of humanity, and partly because it exposes us to them at all.

Centred around a New Jersey based family of three sisters, their parents and their partners and acquaintances, this film looks at their lives. Involving a lonely sister, a sister with a good family life, a paedophile, a telephone sex pest and an elderly couple breaking up, the film follows their short stories through whatever it takes them.

I remember hearing this film reviewed as being pretty good, but it was pointed out by the critic that it was far from a movie to take a first date to! Seeing it now for the first time he was very right, in fact I would say it is the type of film that could make a partner worry about you if you suggest you watch it together. What type of audience this was made for is questionable but it is not without merit even if it is very, very bleak. The actual `plot' is no more than a collection of stories that roughly overlap due to the character's relationships to one another. Most of these work well enough and are interesting, but the odd one falls slightly flat – Allen's overweight flatmate goes a little too far and the Russian thief subplot is not really engaging.

However for most of the film the stories are very engrossing despite being very sad. The plot assumes unhappiness of one form or another to be a given as part of life, and I think that that is a pretty fair assumption. Some of the characters bring it on themselves, some of them are simply alone however all the scope of human misery is here even if it takes the form of events that not everyone will be able to relate to. No matter whether or not you like the characters you will feel for them – they are very well written and the dialogue feels natural. While the paedophile character will turn many stomachs, I did respect the film for not monsterising him.

Baker plays him very well, and mixes it with all the hallmarks of a `normal' guy. His chats with his son form a strand that runs through the film well and is ultimately quite moving and hard to watch. Hoffman and Boyle don't really have a great deal to do and their characters were harder for me to buy into, as their relationship was not clear. All the cast do a good job regardless mainly because the characters are very well written and fit together in a great ensemble presentation. Special mention should go to Lovitz for a great little cameo that opens the film – in 4 minutes he gives a better performance than I have seen him give anywhere else.

Overall this film is not an easy, fun film to watch but it is very well written even if some of the threads do not engage as much as the others. The conclusion of the film offers no respite and only sees a collection of characters hurt by themselves or others who have little hope for the future other than to just keep plodding on. Like it or not the message of the film is powerful even if the presentation doesn't do anything to make it accessible. When REM close the credits singing `happiness where are you? I've searched so long for you' it is difficult not to feel something.

Gradually, as I watched this movie, I became aware that I was witnessing some of the most powerful and honest acting, writing, and directing I had ever experienced. And I'm glad, because if this material had been attempted by anyone without extreme skill and sensitivity, it would have been a monstrous disaster. As it is, I don't think I would add it to my DVD collection. I don't know if I could watch it again, and I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable people seeing it on my shelf unless they knew me well. There are moments of great hope in this movie, when you think misery may finally give way to happiness. There are moments of great honesty, when a character says just what you'd expect them to say, and you realize how "safe" every other movie character has been in comparison. The humor that other reviews talk about is not the kind of humor that makes me laugh, personally. It's the dark, visceral humor of human weakness, meanness and even pathology. I still appreciate it for what it is, and it is used in a profound and delicate way. I highly recommend this movie to anyone who is willing to accept that life, and especially sexual life, is really much more complex and difficult than we usually admit. I recommend watching it alone, or with a friend or partner with whom you can discuss the most emotionally difficult topics. This movie will test you if you stick with it, but you'll know you saw something profound.