In case the title “Life During Wartime” seemed indicative of a feel-good film, writer-director Todd Solondz’s new work – the sequel to his pitch-perfect “Happiness” – is droll, puzzling and deeply depressing. But what is most depressing is that it isn’t nearly as good as its predecessor.
It’s been more than a decade since the release of “Happiness,” (1998) though only a few of the recurring characters in “Life” show a visible wear and tear from these past 10 years. Solondz’s conception of time proves fluid in the transition into his new film, and while some characters have aged 20 years, others have only aged by five. They’re less familiar, now waxing less hopeful, and more complacent. They look different, too: New actors have assumed roles from the original cast members, and Solondz has allowed for the reinterpretation of old roles, as some characters have now changed race and backgrounds. This loose transition from prequel to sequel shows Solondz’s lack of obligation to strict timelines or original plot circumstances, as he’s found fresh perspectives with which to handle his old material and world-weary characters.
“Life” follows the three sisters originally portrayed in “Happiness” – Helen, Trish and Joy. While all are more successful on paper than 10 years before, underneath the surface is a more insidious discontent that speaks to mid-life crises, and the build-up of years of bad choices and perceived victimhood. Trish (Allison Janney) has made a new start in South Florida, after leaving her life as a happy-go-ignorant housewife in New Jersey. She had it all – the house, the kids, and the psychiatrist husband. Now, she’s highly medicated and engaged to settle with a retired, pro-Israel divorcee. (Apparently, she didn’t know that her ex-husband was jacking off to teen mags and raping little boys.)
Purported failure Joy (Shirley Henderson) is married, after having been set up with one of Helen’s rejected suitors-cum-pervert. She finds, in the opening scene, that after Allen’s supposed reformation, he’s relapsed into making sexual tirade-laced calls to strangers.
“Life” takes on “Happiness’s share of perverts and perversions. The film opens in a scene reminiscent of the beginning of “Happiness,” with Joy meeting her husband at a dinner rendezvous. Her husband (the pervert) hands her a gift – the exact one given to her nearly 10 years ago at a similar dinner date. He found it on eBay.
The film – and its characters – are haunted by visions of “Happiness,” which leaves an indelible mark upon this film and the memory of the Solondz-savvy viewer. The original film is bitingly melancholy, and Jane Adams’ Joy accesses a vulnerability with which it’s difficult not to commiserate and pity. Despite everyone’s dismally wretched lives, they’re all just trying to convince themselves that they’re happy. But happiness is just a hope that you’ll die before it gets any worse.
In “Life,” the characters are more aware of their depression and no longer striving for personal fulfillment. Instead, they’re content to settle for normalcy – if they can get it. It’s a struggle against their “arrested development,” as Solondz says in an interview. It’s what Solondz deems a “post-traumatic stress disorder drama film” in which everyone is recovering and “struggling to connect.”
Peripheral characters also internalize this struggle: Bill Maplewood, Trish’s now-estranged ex-husband, has just been released from jail and goes in search of his older son. In one of the film’s most emotionally potent scenes, he finds his son at college in order to verify that he doesn’t share pedophilic fantasies. It’s a portrait of striving for normalcy as a means to cope with the world.
Solondz’s sympathetic handling of unsympathetic characters often arouses curiosity as to whether he holds any affinity for his characters. “They’re all troubled. And they move me,” he says. “(Bill Maplewood’s) not a sympathetic character but he’s a tragic father … he’s a great father.” But it’s in this distinction that Solondz finds his stories: “It’s the complications that make it more compelling for me.”
Because the themes “Life” is concerned with are big ideas such as forgiveness and finding oneself, it can be difficult to parse through the allegorical tendencies of a film that sometimes seems to speak about people in general, though it’s actually self-contained. “I leave that to the audience. The characters are talking to each other,” he confirms. “(The film’s) a mixture of comedy and pathos that are inextricably intertwined. It touches me and I hope it touches others.”
But while the film deals with serious subject matter, the darkly satirical nature prevalent in “Happiness” has turned “Life” into a sometimes unintentionally mocking portrait of its characters. Even the bright shades of Roshelle Berliner’s set and the sacrifice of believability for humor are proof of a film often more concerned with laughs and aesthetic, and less concerned with the truthfulness of its characters. Whereas “Happiness” soared in its depressing-because-it’s-so-true spirit, “Life” has lost that bite. According to Solondz, “You don’t need to see ‘Happiness’ to follow the narrative at all.” But if you have, you might feel a little less than happy with “Life.”