|
|
|
chicago home
events calendar
bars & clubs movie clock restaurants specials best of chicago 
art
film and video food and drink music and clubs stage style words sports features |
|
|
 What Do You Believe? Todd Solondz plays with "Palindromes"
"Palindromes" is a drama, a lecture, a provocation, sometimes a
musical, often an outrage.
Would Todd Solondz have it any other way? In his fifth, stark
feature, the maker of "Happiness" and "Storyteller" worked on a
miniscule budget. His movies haven't ever been fiscal runaways, and he's
said that he drew down his own life savings to make "Palindromes."
("What am I going to do? Move to a bigger apartment?")
Aviva is a 13-year-old girl who, pregnant, runs away after her mother
(a magnificently fierce Ellen Barkin) tries to coerce her to have an
abortion. Aviva is played by eight actors, including a young boy,
43-year-old Jennifer Jason Leigh, and a massively obese black actress
(Sharon Wilkins) in her twenties. There are complications involving a
pedophile truck driver and a Christian woman called Mama Sunshine who's
collected a brood of disabled children who sing and dance even as the
murder of an abortion doctors is conspired in her basement. (The musical
number with the children is both startling and joyous.)
Early reviewers have eagerly taken sides. Is Solondz more coroner
than physician of the body politic, with the driest of graveside manner?
A brave truth teller who cannily keeps his convictions to himself,
presenting several sides of an issue with deadpan fervor? Or a
base-covering controversialist?
The 45-year-old writer-director is a slight, unfussy man, his answers
tending to the preemptively expansive. His short hair starting to
silver, contrasting with his gray cashmere sweater, Lemon Heads-colored
Chuck Taylors and Nantucket-red jeans, we spoke the afternoon after the
President had flown from his Texas vacation home to the White House in
order to sign legislation taking the Terry Schiavo case out of the hands
of the Florida courts. The early critical notices for "Palindromes," I
tell him, seem to boil down to, "What does Todd Solondz believe?"
"I think it's always more important, what do you believe?
What's the movie doing to you? That's much more interesting." He
pauses. "But... Do I believe? It's like a commercial, a billboard, `Do
you believe?' and then it's AT&T. It's so open-ended, believe."
It seems to be the rhetorical device of choice both for reviewers who
are skeptical and the ones who like the film. He pauses. "I know... I
am toying, I suppose... working with material that is of a volatile
nature. There aren't any other countries in the world where they kill
abortionists and bomb clinics. To be an abortionist in the United States
is like to be a fireman or a policeman, to take on a heroic profession,
but of course, it puts your life on the line. Regardless of one's
political convictions, you have to respect the integrity of someone who
is willing to risk his life to perform this kind of procedure. You can
make a good living doing other sorts of procedures.
"I guess it makes me bridle a little bit if there's any sort of
complacency, which is the side stop before smugness, that people carry
with them. We all carry our prejudices and biases and so forth, and I
guess I need to shake it up a little bit. So it's a question. The movie
is exploratory, just the moral dimension--moral consequences--of what it
means to take a position."
For example? "Take Ellen Barkin's character. [There are] those who
think she's a terrible mother, others say she's a very sensible one. I
think if you gave her the form, she'd certainly check off pro-gay
rights, pro-gun control, antiwar--she'd check off all the real things.
But then, confronted with a real-life crisis, her daughter comes up,
she's 13 and she's pregnant, and not only is she pregnant, she wants to
keep the baby. It's kind of an impossible dilemma. A lose-lose
proposition, particularly if you are of the liberal persuasion. I don't'
think that she handles it in the appropriate way, and in the end she
breaks down, `Am I a terrible mother?' I think therein lies her dignity,
but it's funny. To get people to reassess, to reevaluate, to question
where one exactly stands at any given moment..."
Solondz trails off, takes up a different fight. "I saw `Vera Drake'
and Mike Leigh is a masterful filmmaker. I think it's indisputable. He
works with actors like no one else. It's beautifully shot and
beautifully played. And yet at the same time, I just want to scream! I
say, would it have been a sin for her to take money for a job well done?
Does she have to be sanctified? I can't take it, just how all the
liberals, we all go in to see the movie and in a sense it turns us all
into martyrs for the good fight. But it's clearly not an examination of
the ethical nature and so forth, it's just a given that this is the good
fight and we are martyrs for this cause. There's another movie, a lovely
film, wonderfully directed, `Maria Full of Grace.' There's a scene in
the movie where you have this 17-year-old pregnant girl in Queens and
she sees Women's Health Services, and she goes there. What's the purpose
of the scene? All it does is tell us that the baby is okay. I just want
to scream! She stays in America, 17, pregnant, no money, no friends,
doesn't speak the language. I mean, really, the only thing she's
equipped to do is be a prostitute. To me, it's just the falseness of
that stay-on-in-America, land-of-hope and so forth, the falseness just
makes me want to scream. It's faux-liberal, in fact. I guess it's just
being patted on the back, being told, `You're doing the right thing.'
There's no questioning. There's no examination. There's no stopping to
think." "Palindromes" opens Friday at Landmark Century.
Also by Ray Pride Glossed in translation
Tip of the Week
Burp of a nation
The welcoming of chance
Tip of the Week
Tip of the Week
Unconsummated
Tip of the Week
Interesting Times
Reality shows
Tip of the Week
Father knows guest
|
|
about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment |
