4/6/02
Well, the king of making people uncomfortable is back - Todd Solondz has a new movie called Storytelling. It's partially an exploration into the nature of relating a story but mostly it's (yet again) and exercise in putting characters in the most awkward situations possible. I really liked Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, so I was rather looking forward to this one. The movie is divided into two parts, labeled Fiction and Nonfiction.
The 'Fiction' segment is centered around a college writing class taught by a Pulitzer Prize winning author(Robert Wisdom) who happens to be a rather large imposing black man (this is important). One of students, Vi(Selma Blair), is dating another student Marcus(Leo Fitzpatrick) who happens to have Cerebral Palsy. It's suggested that she's only dating him for the twisted thrill of dating someone who's crippled. After being dumped by Marcus, she runs into the teacher in a bar and proceeds to go home with him. The ensuing scene is fairly unsettling. (Side note: I find it interesting that to keep an R rating, Solondz places a large red box over the actual sex scene. The red box is not there in foreign versions of the film. He could have simply cut the scene differently, but this draws attention to the fact that the ratings board would have found it objectionable. On one hand, I respect the politicizing of movie censorship, but on the other it kind of distracts you from the scene.) After her encounter with the teacher, she writes a story about it for the class. The story is of course met with harsh criticism due it's "racist" and "sexist" content. The segment ends with Vi wailing: "But it happened!".
The 'Nonfiction' segment is much longer, composing 2/3 to 3/4 of the movie. It focuses on stoner high school student Scooby(Mark Webber) and aspiring documentary filmmaker Toby Oxman(Paul Giamatti)'s effort to make a movie out his and his family's experiences with his college applications process. Scooby's very wealthy Jewish family consists of overbearing dad Marty(John Goodman), weak willed mom Fern(Julie Haggerty), football star younger brother, and naively intelligent youngest brother. They also have a hispanic maid Consueolo(Lupe Ontiveros) who is constantly being tormented by the youngest brother. Toby chronicles Scooby taking his SAT's, talking about his talk show host aspirations, and dealing with his brother getting into a coma-inducing football accident.
Now most of this all very funny. Solondz savagely rips into college and suburban life with no mercy. Much of this humor comes from the bits of truth you can see shining through in his characters. He calls his movies "Sad Comedies", which I think for the most part is a pretty accurate description. Of all the characters, none of them really have any redeeming qualities whatsoever. While you laugh at these pathetic characters, there's a little voice in the back of your head pointing out that this is really messed up and you're not supposed to be laughing at it, that it's really quite sad. I think this all worked really well in the 'Fiction' segment and in his other films, but the 'Nonfiction' segment kind of fell short. What made the first segment work was the fact that even though he makes fun of the characters, you still get the feeling that he cares about them. I didn't get that feeling in the second part, largely due to the very abrupt ending which felt very tacked on and a rather stupid (albeit funny) subplot about the youngest son hypnotizing the dad. Without that sense of feeling, it felt somewhat mean spirited and that kind of bothered me. There's a part in the movie where Toby takes the footage he has and puts it together in a way that makes the family seem stupid for comic relief, not as a chronicle of their struggles. Solondz may have put this in there to make a point about people view his work, or as self parody, but it just made it seem more callous.
The first segment provides a nice point about how supposed fiction can have more truth than people see, and how "real life" documentaries don't really show what's going on. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, but was left with kind of a sour taste towards the end. Don't get me wrong - this movie has some of the funniest moments I've seen on film recently....it just felt....off.
LinksImages courtesy of The Internet Movie Database.