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125 comments in total

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35 out of 41 people found the following comment useful :-
Accurate and scathing attack on various forms of political correctness, 27 August 2001

Author: Chris Docker (eyeforfilm) from Scotland, United Kingdom

Probably Director Todd Solondz' most mature work to date, Storytelling is split into two parts `Fiction' and `Non-Fiction' - yet similar themes underlie both and pose questions about what we call reality when it comes to prejudice and taboo subjects. Whilst in previous attempts (such as `Happiness') Solondz' work has merely been controversial, in this film he berates political correctness more accurately and more entertainingly. It exposes ridiculous attitudes in the name of political correctness, whether it is the student with an awful essay who almost escapes criticism because he has cerebral palsy, or a black teacher who gets away with being a pervert because his victim doesn't want to entertain thoughts of racism. Nothing is sacred: Jews and the Holocaust also come in for merciless examination. But part of the film involves the story of a `documentary' being made within the main story, by an exploitative screwed up filmmaker who wants to do his own thing in the name of art, so in this sense, Storytelling even turns on itself and questions the validity of using the subject matter that it does. A controversial, worthy, and very entertaining film that stretches your ability to make moral judgements within a convincingly coherent framework.

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15 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Some of the best writing you will ever see., 23 March 2008

Author: addicott from United States

Writer/director Todd Solondz last rocked my world with Happiness, which was the sharpest, most unflinching black comedy I'd ever seen. He does it again with Storytelling, keeping his impeccable edge while exploring some intriguing new turf. No doubt wary after his previous ventures, Solondz attempts to circumvent some of the criticisms that less savvy viewers are bound to make. Sure enough, they go ahead and make them; the reviews are polarized. But the film is a masterpiece.

The film has two parts. The first part, titled Fiction, focuses on a creative writing student Vi (Selma Blair), her Cerebral Palsy-stricken boyfriend Marcus (Leo Fitzpatrick) and their professor Mr. Scott (Robert Wisdom).

The classroom setting provides an unusual venue: a story writing workshop within a story. Solondz puts one of the characters through a perversely traumatic experience, which we witness as viewers of the movie. Before we have a chance to pass judgment on Solondz, his character writes about the event in the 3rd person and reads the story in class. All accusations one might level against Solondz (namely: bad taste, plus every "ism" in the book) get made by the fellow students, who detest the story. But in the context of the movie, they're condemning an account of an event that actually happened! Very clever...

In spite of some of the grotesque twists, I found myself laughing out loud fairly often. Solondz has a gift for rendering subtle ironies that become overwhelmingly funny.

The lead characters are fascinating and multi-layered. Vi seems innocent, but if you pay close attention, you'll notice she's not particularly sincere. One would like to root for Marcus, but his condition doesn't excuse him for being a lousy writer and a self-absorbed a**hole. The professor may be a monster, but he is also very frank.

The second part Nonfiction is also highly self-aware. It covers the making of a two-bit documentary. In the process, the dialog once again anticipates many of the charges some will make against Solondz (that he exploits his subjects and creates a sensational freak show for us to snicker at). There's a cameo role with Mike Schank, who was featured in real life in American Movie. The similarities between the documentary American Movie, the fiction Storytelling and the documentary within a fiction (tentatively titled American Scooby) are uncanny.

Scooby (Mark Weber) is the ultimate apathetic suburban slacker teen. While very much spoiled and sheltered, he is also alienated from, and resentful of, his elders. He perks up a bit when there are no grownups around, but most of the time the "stupid" barrier is up and his eyes are half-closed and red from smoking pot. He's such a lost cause, he attracts the attention of an aspiring documentarian (Paul Giamatti).

As you might expect, the rest of Scooby's family is a real piece of work. Scooby's dad (John Goodman) is loud and domineering. His mom (Julie Hagerty) is idiotic. His younger brother Brady (Noah Fleiss) is a jock, perhaps the closest to what we'd like to consider "normal".

The brainy youngest brother, Mikey (Jonathan Osser) is a real standout. He tags around with the overworked El Salvadorian housemaid Consuelo (Lupe Ontiveros) and asks her lots of questions. His curiosity is cute, but his conceited insensitivity truly boggles the mind.

Solondz definitely favors the sordid, but I'm not sure he does so gratuitously. I think he simply refuses to pretend, as so many other do, that the world is a tidy, simple place. (Those who seek to preserve such a notion are guaranteed to abhor his work.) But is it fair to berate Solondz just because he dares to present what others systematically avoid? Whose vision is more skewed: Solondz for pointing out the dog***t on our shoes, or the mainstream for ignoring it?

I wish I could agree that his writings are contrived and distorted, but I don't think they are. Through the media, through the grapevine and sometimes with my own eyes, I've seen events that are every bit as twisted and "wrong" as those Solondz creates. Everywhere I look, I encounter people who could easily be incorporated into a Solondz script.

Every storyteller recreates the world according to his/her own vision. Todd Solondz just happens to be vastly more perceptive and talented than most. Storytelling is one of the most insightful, clever and thought-provoking films I've ever seen. Watch it multiple times for maximum yield.

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13 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
An unpleasant, unsettling, and most importantly, necessary film, 25 July 2006

Author: Grann-Bach (Grann-Bach@jubii.dk) from Denmark

After reading about Palindromes and finding myself oddly attracted to the subject matter of several of Todd Solondz's features, I bought this film. It would seem that it has a reputation as being his worst work to date(at least as far as theatrically released movies go)... I must say, if the rest of what he's done is this powerful, I will have to keep my eyes open for it. You seldom see movies that are this unpleasant. There are films that are far, far harder to watch... but this is still not one you put on to enjoy yourself. As many other viewers, I didn't care much for the first half(well, part... it's a third of the projects full length, with a running time of about 25 minutes), "Fiction". I felt I had gained little after it was over, though I will say that the concept and themes explored are quite interesting. "Non-Fiction" proved to be far more worth-while, in my opinion. The writing and direction is excellent in both. The pacing works well... I was never bored, and while it wasn't exactly a "good" time, it moved along as it should, never really too slow or too fast. The characters were incredible... the sheer amount of development, through so little time spent on each... that's talent. As its title indicates, Storytelling goes into different methods of telling a story... and displays some of the most impressive storytelling that I've seen to date. There is some humor, but it's quite black, and throughout the film, I was unsure of whether I should laugh out loud... or cry my eyes out. The film is strongly satirical, very direct and seemingly almost aggressively anti-PC. Dealing with several subjects of taboo, Solondz pulls few punches, if any. Certainly not a film for everyone. Both parts seem to end somewhat abruptly, but that may be intentional. I will say that my rating would almost certainly have been higher had the first part been improved upon... or removed entirely. It's difficult to say who I'd recommend this to... cynics or realists with a strong threshold for the some of the ugliest sides of human nature, I suppose. From what I understand, though, it's less provocative than the other films of Todd Solondz. 8/10

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Shocking, 31 March 2005

Author: FilmOtaku (ssampon@hotmail.com) from Milwaukee, WI

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

It's pretty rare when I am at a loss for words, particularly when I am weighing an opinion on a film. Even more rare is when I'm speechless about a film by a favorite filmmaker. And to further the irony, the film is titled "Storytelling". Written and directed by Todd Solondz ("Welcome to the Dollhouse", "Happiness"), "Storytelling" is actually two short stories within the same film.

Being a fan of Solondz's work, I can't possibly pretend to be surprised that "Storytelling" is depressing. Anyone who has seen his other work knows what he or she is in for going in. One thing that I felt about "Storytelling" more than any of the other two Solondz films I've seen is that it seemed a lot more personal. The character of Toby is clearly a representation of Solondz, and a depiction and answer to and of his critics who say that he is a horrible person for "mocking" his characters, etc. In the film, when a fellow filmmaker criticizes Toby, telling him it is "glib and facile to make fun of those people", Toby denies this, simply saying "I love them." Looking back on his past work, and looking back on reviews I have written of those films, there is a definite pattern with the characterizations and the situations that Solondz writes them into. The situations are painful and the characters are sympathetic (or pathetic, depending on how you look at them), but the pain comes from Solondz not turning the camera away from the subject when they are at their most vulnerable. Most filmmakers, in order to make a more commercially acceptable film do not inject the kind of honesty that Solondz does, which naturally ends up creating criticism for him because it is "different".

Also notable is his defiant decision to, rather than cut his film according to MPAA standards to give it an R rating instead of NC-17, create a ridiculously large red box to mask the sex scene in "Fiction". Apparently he was told that the scene either needed to be cut or he would get a higher rating, (an absolutely ridiculous notion because the action itself was not overly graphic, it was the details of the scene that were disturbing) so in his refusal to cut it, he decided to throw it back in the MPAA's face and call it what it was: Censorship.

Out of many "disturbing" scenes, there was one scene that I found so profound that it has not left my mind since I watched this film last night. Scooby decides that he wants to see the footage that Toby has shot thus far, so he travels into New York City to see him. Mike, who tells him that Toby is actually screening the footage elsewhere as they speak, greets him at the door. When Scooby gets to the screening, where various intelligista are gathered, he sees himself on the screen, giving his inner thoughts, while the audience is laughing. Other than to turn to the footage on the screen, the camera does not leave Scooby's face, which has been transformed from a look of hopefulness to a mask of grief. Later, when he returns home to an unexpected tragedy at home, among the various policemen, etc., Toby runs up to Scooby with Mike, camera in tow, saying, "Oh my god, Scooby. I'm so, so sorry." To which Scooby, providing the last line of the film says, looking right into the camera, "Don't be. Your movie's a hit." That scene, those words, and the rest of the film made "Storytelling" shockingly and almost unbearably good. Solondz, who has made a career out of turning his eye to the fraying suburban ideal, is at his bleakest with this film. I've read criticism that he is "too" dark, which make his films somewhat unwatchable; a notion I find absolutely ridiculous. True, his films are like repeatedly ripping scabs off of a wound, never allowing it to heal, but their profundity is almost tangible. "Storytelling" was so thought provoking and effective that I found myself too numb to fully react until I actually began to put my thoughts into words, at which point I felt like I wanted to cry my eyes out. In a society where films like "Guess Who" and "Miss Congeniality" rule the box office, I find this to be a really difficult film to universally recommend, but there are definitely those out there who will appreciate this film. An extremely strong 8/10.

--Shelly

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11 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Dark Woody, 17 November 2003
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Spoilers herein.

Solondz is a modern Woody Allen. Both are obsessed with how film fiction and life reinforce each other. But where Woody filled his empty spaces with love and gentle angst about love in a slapstick context, Solondz cavorts darkly. He sees the penalties.

In both cases, most viewers really think the reason for the films to exist is the stuff used as filler: that Woody's films for instance are about city life and love.

Nah. And many people will be similarly distracted here and comment on matters of race and generational distance and various exploitations. Nah, again.

The very point is that we are so easily distracted and enmeshed in narrative that we cannot tease out the mechanics of life from that of film. The notion of `race` is a fiction made real by popular art. The notion of sex in love as well. The notion of truth is a deliberate fabrication of fiction in order to give itself power.

I give credit to Solondz. He hits the same sweet spot Woody often does by proving his point by using that point to confound us. Where Woody entertains, Solondz distracts.

Watch this only if you are interested in thinking about film.

`Safe' is a much more subtle and effective essay on this same matter. It actually enlists the actress (the multilayered Moore) in the endeavor, something that Solondz apparently cannot do.

`Death on the Seine' is more stimulating to my mind because it explores restoring reality.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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18 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
The "Non-fiction" story is the superior fiction., 6 January 2003

Author: Stefan Stenudd from Malmo, Sweden

I was fascinated by Todd Solondz's HAPPINESS, a spell-binding drama every minute of it - sometimes terribly naked. There are such tendencies also in STORYTELLING, but only in the second of the two independent parts.

The first part, called "Fiction", is significantly shorter than part two, "Non-fiction". This is as it should be, but the best would be to exclude it completely. The story about emotional tension between a college girl with ambition to become a writer, her frustrated CP boyfriend and their impressive/monstrous teacher, the successful writer, is just as conventional as the stories the students write in the film. This may be intentional, to cause multiple layers of meta-effects, but it doesn't save this part of the movie from being pretty predictable and boring.

And the story ends before it should. A sort of coitus interruptus (if the term is allowed), which demands some kind of return or closing-up later on in the movie - but there is none. I got the strong impression that this part was only included to make the movie full-time.

The second story, "Non-fiction", is clearly stronger, and told with much more passion from the writer/director. Here, many facets are explored, the characters are complex, the drama intricate - and the tension builds, right below the drab suburban surface. It is impressive how elements common in just about any family life, here add to the suspense and the sense of doom. The thrill of trivial life, but not at all trivially portrayed.

This might be the reason for the title "Non-fiction", since the lives and fates shown in the story feel so real - contrary to what happens in "Fiction".

Still, this story, too, has been told insufficiently, as if abbreviated, or halted at points where it was about to erupt into infernal drama. Pity. Did Solondz retreat from his own vision? Did he censor himself to get more of a general audience?

I hope that it's not the case. His portrayal of human life, although unpleasant indeed, is fascinating and uniquely his. So he must be true to it.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Storytelling Is Supposedly About Storytelling, 17 November 2008

Author: CitizenCaine from Las Vegas, Nevada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Todd Solondz' follow-up film to Happiness and Welcome To The Dollhouse is not as successful as those two films. Solondz divides the film into two sections: fiction and non-fiction. Selma Blair stars in the fiction section which turns storytelling on its ear when a creative writing student borrows from real life experience to tell a story, only to have her peers criticize her for its pretentiousness and unbelievability. The story opens with Blair being manipulated by her college lover who has has cerebral palsy. When his story is ripped by the class as well as the professor, He breaks up with Blair. Blair, whose own story was trashed off camera, is determined to succeed in the class, so she goes home with her instructor and subjects herself to a degrading sexual escapade in order to write something honest fiction. While doing so, she discovers the class intellectual has been involved in kinky sex with the instructor as well.

The non-fiction portion of the film stars Paul Giamatti as a loser, would-be documentary filmmaker who attempts to portray a suburban family with a troubled high school senior, played by Mark Webber. The portrait turns into an exercise in self-indulgence for everyone involved, including the Giamatti character. Giamatti of course is acting as Solondz' alter ego. He vacillates between making a "meaningful" documentary and accepting changes along the way as it suits the would-be success of the film. Initially, the film attempts to get at what makes the teenager click, but we discover there isn't much to explain it. He's just another typical teen slacker. We also discover the ignorance and bankrupt values of average America. Some of the dinner table conversations are sure to remind some viewers the banality and stupidity of their own experiences with family and friends.

As in the fiction section, Solondz seems to be saying that storytelling, whether fiction or non-fiction, is entirely subjective and the success of any story told often relies upon luck and/or factors out of one's control. In fiction, the author's attempt to fictionalize a true story went awry, possibly due to the limited, politically correct mind-set of her peers. In non-fiction, the documentary's focus was modified as other events occurred throughout filming: the teenager being an inappropriate focus, his family's lack of character, his brother's accident, etc. Mike Schank from American Movie fame has a cameo even, underlying the notion that luck plays a part in any storyteller's success, just as it did with the film American Movie. The audience must be willing to accept the storyteller's premise. In American Movie, the audience accepted the premise of a loser filmmaker with no talent thinking he could produce a film. In this film, audiences failed to accept the premises in the fiction and in the non-fiction sections.

Both sections of the film indicate the role of the audience as one of the chief determinants of the storyteller's success. The creative writing class reacted negatively to Selma Blair's "true" story. The class intellectual was revealed to be a sell out herself for yielding to the instructor sexually. What price are storytellers willing to pay to succeed? The test audience trashes Giamatti's documentary and finds it unexpectedly funny, contributing to a series of cataclysmic events. The film is funny at times but less entertaining at other times. It is not as successful at illustrating the storyteller's dilemma in creating as it is at illustrating the mind-numbing ignorance of today's youth and the lack of character and direction in their lives. **1/2 of 4 stars.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
wonderful painful, 20 February 2002

Author: Jan (jan_bockaert@hotmail.com) from aalter, belgium

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Storytelling has two parts. Fiction and non fiction. In fiction Tod Solondz tells us how we have to watch part two, as soon as you start writing (filming in this case) everything becomes fiction. It is not surprising that the first part (fiction) seems to be more non-fiction than part 2 (non-fiction). The first part is the very raw and painful story about a young girl who is raped by her literature teacher. The second part is the story of a documentaire filmmaker who tries to make a film about teens in suburbia. The guy is a looser, and nobody believes his film will be succesful. But the family he follows (by accident) gets involved in a serie of dramatic events, and the film becomes a hit. When the filmmaker tells his subject he is sory for what happend to him, scooby tells him not to be sorry, because his film is a hit.

Tod Solondz is a genial storyteller. He doesn't follow the normal structure of a hollywood film, a protagonist with an dramatic purpose, an antagonsist with an invert purpose, ... Like the bad guy in part one tells us, the second story is way better, this one has at least a begin, a middle and an end. In fact Non-fiction has a begin, a middle and an end, but that is not the reason why you will like the movie. The dramatic events that will happen to the family livingstone are not the motor that makes this movie turn. As in happiness, it is the way Tod Solondz shows us how we really act in life, different than how we think we are acting. watching a Tod solondz movie is like when you watch yourself in the mirror early in the morning when you aren't completely awake. there is an ocean between where i live, an where tod Solondz films his movies, but everytime again, i see myself reflected in the personages of Tod Solondz. That is wath makes his films so wonderful painful, you see people doing stupid things, but you can't blame them, because you know you should do the same thing. You love the personages you are laughing with.

Well, i love Tod Solondz, in my directors all-time ranking i'll put him on the same level as lars Von Trier, just under Ingmar Bergman, and igmar bergman, that is the top.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
More Solondz brilliance, 10 August 2002

Author: Neil Amos (namos@hughes.net) from CA

Yet another masterpiece from one of the great indie filmmakers. Solondz again uses a lot of his trademark stark and unsettling characters to tell two separate stories. "Fiction" was short and to the point, the message being the utter subjectiveness of the art of storytelling. It was hilarious how the other kids in the writing class reacted to Vi's story, like it was improbable, racist and offensive. Solondz again displayed in this story that many people ARE racist and offensive, sometimes without even realizing it. It would have been impossible to make a whole movie out of "Fiction," and I think it was impressive that Solondz had the daring to just change over to another story without trying to link them, which would have been tedious. Solondz wanted to make two separate points, and the only way to do so was with two separate stories. The graphic sex scene between Selma Blair and Robert Wisdom is blocked out in the R-rated version; Solondz has a big red rectangle over the characters in a successful attempt to show how the MPAA censors can ruin a movie with their silly rules. I actually thought it added to the message of the first story, and the uncensored version is also on the DVD anyway. The second story is much longer and as a result has characters that are much more well developed. The Paul Giamatti character was a hilarious reflection of Solondz himself. Not just physically, but also in the way he was criticized for making fun of the characters in his documentary just as Solondz has been criticized for doing the same in "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness." Many people who dislike Solondz films just can't stand the often vicious or disturbing denizens that inhabit his works. These people should stick to watching "Titanic" and "A Walk to Remember" as they have no appreciation for the daring and honest way Solondz makes his movies.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Two fascinating stories that don't translate well on screen together, 29 December 2008

Author: mmara08 from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Now from reading the trivia provided by IMDb, it can be learned that their was originally going to be three stories. After learning this, I can somewhat understand the format of movie the director was going for. However, having only two stories (which are disproportionate in the amount of time spent on them) is completely distracting because you find yourself looking for the parallel between them. The theme was their but that wasn't enough. If Solandz would have just pulled one character from the first story and show a glimpse of them in the second, I would have found the movie a lot smoother around the edges. Since he did not do this, I am forced to evaluate the second part of the film more due to the time spent on it as well as plot development.

Format aside, I loved the second part of storytelling. All characters are lovable and easy to relate to, especially Scooby. Scooby represents a normal teenager trying to find his own with many confrontations with his parents. So much so, that he can almost be looked at as a theme more than as a character. The portrayal of the oldest, middle, and youngest child is dead on. Parents are a cliché but it only adds to the plot. *SOMEWHAT SPOILER* The beginning shot of the director makes you sympathize him which then leads you to trust his intentions. Everyone, even the viewer, is betrayed by his depiction of the family. The movie ended perfectly, as there was nothing else that could be said or done and I give props to Solandz for being able to leave it perfect and raw.

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