PALINDROMES
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Wellspring
Grade: C
Directed by: Todd Solondz
Written by: Todd Solondz
Cast: Ellen Barkin, Richard Masur, Debra Monk, Richard Riehle,
Walter Bobbie, Alexander Brickel, Rachel Corr, Will denton,
Hannah Freiman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Shayna Levine, Valerie
Shusterov, Sharon Wilkins
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/29/05
A fellow critic, Andrew Hehir of Salon magazine, cites a terrific
palindrome: "Tulsa nightlife: filth, gin, a slut." This is a lot cooler
than "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama." A palindrome is a word
or even a complete sentence of more than reads the same
backwards as it does forward. Todd Solondz's new film is a
palindrome in that you could start with the concluding resolution
and zip back to the beginning of the one-hundred minute story,
and you'd see a character go through the same set of
experiences. Not literally, since obviously the film does not
literally play backwards as it does forward, but psychologically in
that one fellow, in a sharply honed monologue, tells Aviva
(whose name can be spelled backwards) that people do not
change. They may look different: gain weight, lose weight: get a
breast implant or a hair transplant. Genetically, however, we're
as fixed as a dog who gets neutered by a veterinarian. If you're
depressed at 13, you'll be depressed at 50. Or so he says.
What's important here is: how does Solondz put across his
belief in the absolute power of genetics? He does this by the
unusual device of having eight actors perform in the role of the
very same 12-year-old Aviva, people who include a few teens,
including an obese African-American woman, an androgynous
boy, even the great Jennifer Jason Leigh, who looks three
decades younger than her 43 years.
While the plot is non-linear, the story line includes these events.
The twelve-year-old Aviva, who had told her mother (Ellen
Barkin) that she wants lots and lots of kids because "there'll
always be someone to love," is pregnant. Her mother drags her
to an abortionist who, in a botched surgery dooms the girl to be
childless for life. Per the writer-director's principal theme, she
will try unsuccessfully to change. She takes off on an odyssey
from New Jersey, hitching rides and even sailing across a
mystical body of water to reach a family of evangelical
Christians in Kansas, led by the well-fed Mama Sunshine
(Debra Monk). Once there, Solondz trots out one of the more
embarrassing scenes in recent cinema history. A group of
young misfits, including a girl with no arms, another with no
legs, a kid with Downs Syndrome, a nerd with mucous, among
others, energetically sing in praise of Jesus, while Aviva
overhears three men plotting in an adjacent room to kill abortion
doctors.
Though Solondz has been accused of being the most
misanthropic of all film directors, he does not share a particular
enmity toward humankind. His oddballs are no worse than
serial killers trotted out in so many thrillers or people living with
suppressed rage as those in works of Neil LaBute. In his best
film, "Welcome to the Dollhouse," he portrays the pranks and
bullying and sexual threats of just about everyone in an
American junior high school, satirizing the Seventh-Grade-from-
hell. In "Storytelling," he has wry observations which poke
through the illusions of a wealthy New Jersey family. In
"Happiness," he deals with pederasts and wankers, sending up
a telephone stalker who cannot deal in person with women as
well as three sisters, their mother and father who cannot deal
with their personal demons.
"Palindromes" embarrasses us in satirizing groups of losers,
taking particular aim against both a fanatical pro-lifer and a
mother who, by sad contrast, forces her daughter to have an
abortion. But the satire this time is scarcely effective because
the filmmaker uses the distancing advice of eight actors (mostly
bad ones at that) portraying a single person, thereby leaving us
emotionally bereft and empty.
Rated R. 100 minutes. © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com
========== X-RAMR-ID: 39672 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1379679 X-RT-TitleID: 1137746 X-RT-SourceID: 570 X-RT-AuthorID: 1123 X-RT-RatingText: C
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