Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus

Has there even been a truly great movie released in the last 10 years? First sign there’s trouble is how long it took me to come up with an answer to this question, which ended up being I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020, Charlie Kaufman). Although this does tell me a lot about my taste. Ordinary, plain, flawed characters inhabiting domestic spaces charged with fear or sadness? Yet still funny at times. Or formally experimental. Like Luis Buñuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Woody Allen, David Lynch, Alan Clarke, Hal Hartley, Todd Solondz, Lars von Trier, Claire Denis and Michael Haneke.
     I don’t think I’ll ever give up on the state of contemporary movies. I’m just really picky. And it’s one thing if a personal favorite, a great movie, holds up over time. It’s another when you come back to a movie you enjoyed and over time you find it to prove itself to be even better.
     In the 90s I’d seen Todd Solondz’s first few films on vhs. But I was living in Portland, OR at the time it came out and saw Palindromes (2004, Todd Solondz) at the Fox Tower theater. It’s been so long since I’ve seen it since. So when I saw a new 4K restoration was screening in my neighborhood I wondered what it’d be like to see it after all this time in a theater again.
 

Palindromes is an abortion-pedophile comedy. Its protagonist is a child named AVIVA, who’s portrayed by several different actresses. But there’s nothing cringe about it. Its tone vacillates between tender, sad, shock, jawdropping, and hilarious. 

     Seeing the new restoration on a big screen for the first time I noticed right away that it’s shot on 16mm. I never noticed that before in all my years. It wasn't until later in life that I was able to recognize the difference between 16 and 35 projected. Something else I noticed for the first time: almost all of the actresses playing Aviva speak in a wispy babytalk withdrawn kinda way. I guess it's fitting because if this movie’s about anything, it’s children. 

 
I can’t believe I’d never wondered if the structure of Palindromes is a palindrome. Duh of course it is. I mean I don’t think it’s overt. Okay it’s made up of 8 chapters, right? Chapter 1 “Dawn,” and Chapter 8 “Mark,” each have a moment where Aviva asks if she’ll end up like Dawn Wiener; in “Dawn,” we hear Dawn Wiener killed herself because (according to Missy Wiener) she was pregnant from a date rape, and in “Mark,” we find Mark Wiener has been recently accused (according to Missy Wiener) of being a child molester.
 
In Chapter 2 “Judah” Aviva wants a baby (not love) and offers herself sexually to some dude, and in Chapter 7 “Bob” Aviva falls in love with some dude and offers to have sex (not to get pregnant) with him.
 
In Chapter 3 “Henry” Aviva’s forced to get an abortion, and pro-life protesters yell at her. Also in this segment Aviva’s mom warns her against having the child because of risks children of young mothers very often face: “What if it’s deformed? If it’s missing a leg or an arm or a nose or an eye? If it’s brain damaged or mentally retarded?” In Chapter 6 “Mama Sunshine” Aviva boards in the house of a pro-life Christian family, where there’s a scene with Peter Paul who prays for all of the unborn babies in heaven “even the ones that aren’t wrapped in plastic bags; even the ones that were strangled, suffocated, drowned, or incinerated; even the ones whose bodies were pulled apart limb by limb and cut off, eyes plucked out; even the ones who had no fingers or toes, missing ears or noses, no brain or heart.”
 
In Chapter 4 “Henrietta” Aviva runs away and hides in the back of a semi as a stowaway. In Chapter 5 “Huckleberry” Aviva runs away and drifts down the river in a boat.
 
I remember at the time it was first released I’d picked up on how it was the first Solondz film that didn’t have one of those surreal fantasy scenes, y’know (everyone loves Dawn, Maplewood mass shooter in the park, Scooby on Conan). But Palindromes instead has this kind of children’s story aesthetic thing going on throughout, with the lullaby, and pastel hued chapter cards.
     Palindromes also could be the first Solondz film to feature a scene with his philosophical dialogues. And who better but Mark Wiener to deliver them? It’s that scene at the end when Mark gives his speech about genes and randomness. That’s what sticks with me. That counterpoint. At one point in his speech, Mark mentions the “depressed type,” and the “mindless happy type.” Aren’t these 2 the only types found in all of Todd Solondz’s films? But in Palindromes, it’s clearly Aviva who’s the mindless happy type. And when depressed nihilistic Mark says: “You might lose some weight. Your face might clear up. Get a body tan, breast enlargement, a sex change. It makes no difference. Essentially, from in front, from behind, whether you’re 13 or 50, you’ll always be the same.” And I don’t need to put it into words, but in the “Huckleberry” chapter, times having changed quite a bit, when I saw that little boy actor playing Aviva, it meant a little more this time.
 
4/13/2025 Plaza Theatre
Atlanta, GA

Dirty Black Summer

There are two kinds of movies I go to see: first, there're the latest releases of my favorite directors and secondly, there's everything else. Right now my favorite working filmmakers are Todd Solondz, Steve McQueen, Claire Denis, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, and Harmony Korine; and my favorite director is David Fincher.

When I go to see a new movie by one of my favorite filmmakers my response is wholly esoteric. I view the film through the lens of auteur criticism. I place the film within the context of the director's entire oeuvre. I project what I believe is the director's identity somewhere, engulfing what is most vital and worthwhile in the work. And then, I look for what's most pertinent and topical current society, and what's most pertinent and topical to my own current state of being in life in general.

Todd Solondz has not only been my favorite filmmaker for the longest--14 years counting back to a vhs of Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996, Todd Solondz) I copped while still in high school--but, I've also found every film he's completed to date to be a masterpiece. 1998 was a watershed year for the development of my critical taste in films because it's the year I saw my first Woody Allen movie in a theatre, and quickly built on this fancy by seeking out other movies released theatrically at the time that amounted to what I found to be classy adult highbrow melodrama like, Your Friends & Neighbors (1998, Neil LaBute) and The Last Days of Disco (1998, Whit Stillman). These types of films are still the closest model to what I am aiming to make with my own films.

Todd Solondz is the new Woody Allen. Of course, despite the fact that Woody Allen is still alive and making movies. The new Woody Allen movie was actually playing in the same theatre last week when I went to go see Dark Horse (2011, Solondz).

Palindromes (2005, Solondz) marks a shift in Todd Solondz trajectory. It provides a coda for his first three films in the way its multi-actored-single-protagonist device turns the movie into a surrealist work. Before Palindromes, Solondz would puncture the prosaic world of his Jersey misanthropes with a single surreal shocker scene. I like to think of the first three Solondz movies as, to appropriate the label thrown at Woody Allen, "his early funny ones." I find Solondz to have matured after Palindromes, which is why Dark Horse came as no disappointment.

To get the Woody Allen comparisons over and done with, one final note about the parents of Abe (Jordan Gelber) is that the actors portraying them are both remnants from an earlier time in Allen's career. Christopher Walken is practically a Solondz prototype playing Annie Hall's brother in Annie Hall (1977, Woody Allen) and Mia Farrow starred in 12 films directed by Allen.

Abe's parents are the most adorable, cuddly, even stylish 65+ year olds I can think of. Farrow's glasses and pastel accented outfits are youthful in a way that didn't seem ironically ridiculous.

Something that recurs throughout the films of Solondz is the dilemma whereby his characters are incapable of attaining happiness, yet in ways that don't seem to be worthy of our genuine empathy. Solondz shows us how feeble we are and makes us feel guilty over having the nerve to express feelings of forlorn emptiness.

Dark Horse is also Solondz first foray into genuine surrealism. Not here and there, but as a whole Dark Horse places the viewer in unknowable states of subjectivism throughout the narrative. Who's view are we seeing this through? Is part of this imagined or a dream? Is all of it?

Surrealism has never had a more adequate form to support. Solondz is still in New Jersey and still concerned with an upper-middle class Jewish family. One of the most glaring tonal contrasts comes from Abe's chirpy demeanor in the face of his comically pathetic future. He's even challenged a few times by this when characters ask if it's ironic or not.

Dark Horse is intimate and engaging with the tiny little corner of the world it depicts. Among the details that stimulate audience conceptions are Abe's yellow Hummer, just like the one in Bad Boys II (2003, Michael Bay); his rhinestoned necklace with his name on it; his oversized brightly-colored jerseys and polos; his nerd layer, where seasons 1-9 of The Simpsons on dvd are on display; the innocuously braindead brand of twee bubblegum he jams out en route to his various errands; and of course the Lionel auction he's bidding on on ebay.

Hollywood is ruled by a conspiracy that commands its films to have sympathetic characters, a protagonist the audience empathizes with, a clear goal with obstacles that the protagonist pursues while experiencing some significant character change afterward, an uplifting ending, etc... However, Dark Horse avoids most of these obnoxious edicts by having Abe suffer the ultimate of tragic endings, accomplishing nothing, suffering for no fault of his own necessarily, and finally unable to do anything about it. But this provokes other questions like, "what could he have done different, really?"

The performances are so soft, as is the direction and writing. Solondz has huge balls to make these kinds of movies that would seem to be a huge red flag to any producer. Luckily, this played for a week here in Austin and I've never felt so enamored by something so seemingly slight.

--Dregs