NYFF 2009: Life During Wartime

In a quasi-sequel to Happiness, Todd Solondz ponders what it means to forgive with his typical downbeat worldview

Todd Solondz / USA / 2009 / 96m

Life During Wartime basically picks up where Happiness left off, but this time around Todd Solondz has chosen to switch it up, ala 2004’s Palindromes, by selecting different actors to play the original roles. Make no mistake, this choice is a gimmick, but it also allows for different portrayals of certain characters, although they are still the same deep down inside and no physicality will change that.

The film opens with a scene in which Joy, now played by the frail and aggravating Shirley Henderson, and Allen, delicately played by The Wire’s African-American Michael K. Williams, are out to dinner for their anniversary. The waitress knows Allen from his voice and then Joy finally figures out that Allen will never be able to stop Allen’s perverted ways. She leaves him and goes to Florida, first visiting her mother, and then her sister Trish, whose pedophile husband Bill just got released from jail, and then her other successful, but unhappy sister Helen. All the while, little Timmy, whose repeated line “But I’m almost a man” becomes a mantra for the film, is about to have his Bar Mitzvah, but not before he finds out his father’s tendency to touch little boys which landed him in jail and his mother is dating a “normal” man who gets her wet.

There are only a few moments that truly resonate, although the film’s sense of humor will appeal to Solondz’s fans. These moments include an encounter between Bill and a woman at a hotel bar, wonderfully played by Charlotte Rampling, and an encounter between Bill and his college-bound, druggy son Billy. Ciarán Hinds conveys much through minimal dialogue. Life During Wartime is Solondz’s best looking film yet, meticulously shot by Ed Lachman, but it also shows him as a filmmaker that is in a creative and artistic rut thematically.