Storytelling
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Movie Reviews of Storytelling
Movie Review: Too meta
Summary: 3 Stars
Let me start by saying that I'm not a big fan of "movies within movies", Adaptation being the most recent popular example. They always seem very arch and self-consciously clever, and forget to actually involve you in the characters you're watching.
As described below, 'Storytelling' consists of two shorts, one labeled 'fiction', the other 'non-fiction'. Ironies abound here. It's often said of literature that all fiction is unintentionally truthful, while non-fiction is filled with lies. James Frey is an embarrassing example of that phenomenon. Similarly, the 'non-fiction' short has a much more fantastical plot line than 'fiction' does. The 'fiction' short revolves around a college-level creative writing course, while 'non-fiction' shows a schlub (clear stand-in for Solondz) making a documentary about... something, if he can just figure out what that is.
This movie appears to be a direct response to criticisms of Solondz's earlier works. The song played as the credits roll asks pointedly what the audience expects of the story teller, what responsibility he has to them, and to his characters. 'Fiction' seems to address the first part of that question. One character asks the main character, 'Vi' why she must write about such ugly characters. Vi plaintively responds that she's writing about things that have really happened to her. For the millions who ask Solondz, or any other artist, why their creations are so insistently nasty, this appears to be the answer: because this is how Solondz experiences the world. I'm grateful that I only have to visit his world for an hour or two every few years. I wouldn't be able to bear much more. Of course, while we sympathize with Vi as she insists on the truth of her experience, at the same time, wink wink, we know she's a fictional character. How gratingly clever.
'Non-fiction' addresses the relationship between an author (or documentarian) and his subject. Paul Giamatti plays a schlub who is even more helpless than usual. He can't settle on a topic to shape all the footage he's taken of a particularly insipid teenager. He ultimately decides to go for some cheap laughs at the family's expense, rather than focus on the terrible tragedies that occurred during filming. So we, the audience, see a fictional audience jeering at this hapless teenager, and are reminded that we were laughing at him too just an hour ago. Wink, wink, see how clever and intertwined it all is?
Ultimately, I can't give this movie high marks because I was not invested in any of the characters. I appreciate Solondz and his willingness to break taboos, but there needs to be more there for a really great movie. For the record, 'Welcome To the Dollhouse' is one of my all-time favorites. Solondz's nihilism and despair seemed appropriate to that film, because teenagers lack adult perspective. It seems more jarring to me in a film like 'Storytelling' or 'Happiness'. Another reviewer expressed doubts that Solondz knows the first thing about sexual tensions between white women and black men, and I'm inclined to agree. I felt the same way about 'Happiness' - as I watched it, I asked myself, does Solodnz really know anything this topic, or is he simply trying to make our heads explode by portraying a sympathetic pedophile? I could be wrong, but it felt like the second to me. My (limited) understanding of pedophile psychology is that a pedophile would not recognize that it's wrong to molest children, or to draw a distinction between his son and other boys. Again, maybe I'm wrong - but I found 'Happiness' unconvincing.
To sum up: interesting, reliably shocking, pretty much what you'd expect from this director. I found it interesting, even illuminating, but not at all moving.
Movie Review: Into Solondz's murky world
Summary: 3 Stars
Some filmmakers like to deal with the 'supernormal'--super heroes, space travel, etc. Other filmmakers (like Neil LaBute's early work) deal with the 'extra-normal.' These characters exist outside the boundaries of real life, as in most other films. But extra-normal characters exist in some muted universe where there is no hope. Basically, on one end of the film spectrum is the hope and humanity-filled escapism of Indiana Jones and Spider-Man and on the other, distant, end is "Happiness" or "Storytelling"--films by the less optimistic of us like Todd Solondz. Somehow I've seen all three of Solondz's films, even though I'm not a big fan of his style. In a way, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" is still his best. It introduced the world to Solondz's way of shocking his audience with...people. All of his films have a way of shocking you with yourself. On one hand you're surprised at what you will laugh at (I saw "Happiness" in a packed theater and the house was rolling--not snickering, but all out stomach cramping laughter) and on the other you're shocked at what the people on screen are doing. These things aren't shocking in a way that makes an evening newscast. The shock is in the familiarity. Through Solondz's version of reality you discover things about the one you live in. That's why many are so unnerved by this writer/director's material. They're the kind of films that make some really squirm in their seats.
Solondz's skill as a filmmaker is obvious. What he craves more than anything is to get the audience to REACT. I watched the Storytelling DVD (It was only released in NY and LA and I live in neither) by myself but I could almost hear the audience react at certain points. You can pick up the cues and know Solondz has put that reaction shot, or written that particular line, for a specific reason.
"Storytelling" is really two films. The first, shorter film, titled "Fiction" gets your attention quickly. Don't expect to find anyone to like. Some of the best films (or books, stories, plays) feature an ensemble of characters who all have drastically different perceptions of each other. You're going to hate everyone in "Fiction." I did. But you're also going to laugh a few times and find the characters interesting. The audience has the advantage of seeing everything everyone does, so we can see the contradictions the characters can't. The writing class is like a microcosm of a Solondz film audience. The class, like Solondz's films, weeds out the most pretentious of its members.
"Fiction" comes and goes quickly enough, and is a good primer for the next chapter, "Non-fiction." This film explores the life of a documentary filmmaker who decides to do a piece on high school students' outlook on things after the Columbine massacre. He changes it to a piece about getting into college, settling for Scooby, the first student he comes across (in a bathroom) as the subject. Solondz finds new ways to plumb the depths of cruelty and does it through, for one, a 15 year-old kid (Scooby's youngest brother). The things these characters do to each other are fascinating and shocking, but ring true all the same.
It's unclear what Solondz really believes about the world and its "smartest" species. His world isn't some twisted version of reality, nor is it an absolute truth. It's somewhere in between.
Movie Review: A Telling Story?
Summary: 3 Stars
The title of this film suggests the true target of Solondz's satire: America's depiction of itself.*
'American Scooby' is the documentary being made in the second half of the film, and many of the ideas of 'American Beauty' are held up for ridicule - the rather empty premiss of a bag blown by the wind being a moment of transcendent beauty becomes overtly pathetic when seen here as a scrap of paper doing the same; dinner table scenes lose their earnestness and slip into an even less 'acceptable' criticism of middle class aspirations; nostalgia for high school, be it through the bizarre (to non-American eyes) obsession with the yearbook and 'prom', or with sport and cheerleaders, is lampooned from several angles; homosexuality and drug use are robbed of their importance as transgressions (compare Scooby's nonchalant bedroom scene with the angst these issues generate in 'American Beauty') . Aiming more generally at American storytelling, the young child loses its status as canonical symbol of all that is good and innocent and worth preserving and becomes the mouthpiece of so-called 'conservative' values; the role of the child symbol itself is satirised by the child hypnotising the adult.
*
If all the above sounds a trifle abstract and theoretical, well, it is - and, unfortunately, so is the film. By being so self-conscious and meta-critical, the film distances the audience from the characters and their actions. There's humour, no question, but rather than unrestrained belly laughs it's more a case of polite chortles to acknowledge cleverness or daring.
*
The first section of the film possibly has another film in mind for satire - could be 'Finding Forrester' in part, but I'm afraid I haven't subjected myself to enough mediocre Hollywood films to be sure. In any case, the basic scenarios break taboos, but again the characters are only drawn in a rudimentary fashion, precluding any empathy - so the satire works only at a distance.
*
After seeing the film, I asked - Why did Solondz make this film? The best answer I could come up with is that he is disgusted by the dishonesty inherent in standard Hollywood representations of middle class America, even allegedly critical representations such as 'American Beauty'. Okay. Fair enough. But Solondz's own portrayal, or uncovering, of average life is not convincing, in fact, it's not even interesting (I don't think he wants to attempt such a portrayal in this film, although he did in 'Happiness') - most of the interest comes from recognising his satire of current conventions in American film itself. And then the question becomes - Are 'Amercian Beauty' and its ilk worth and hour and a half of feature film satirising? I'm not so sure.
Movie Review: 3 Stars for Part 2: "Non-Fiction"
Summary: 3 Stars
When I was a kid "story-telling" was a nice way of saying someone was lying. And even though I will not make the obvious jump and say the Todd Solondz is lying in "Storytelling," I will say that he is at least disingenuous and at worst a fraud."Storytelling" is broken up into two parts: "Fiction," starring Selma Blair as a college writing student in love with a fellow student, who has Cerebral Palsy and "Non-Fiction," starring John Goodman, patriarch of a family of mis-fits and neurotics; one of whom is his slacker son Scooby, who wants to become the next Conan O'Brian (!) but refuses to study and apply to college.
The "Fiction" section of the film is noteworthy only in that the writing professor states( and I am paraphrasing here): When you begin to write about something, whether it be "true" or not...it becomes fiction. A pretty interesting comment resonating with meaning and subtext which is totally unlike the movie that surrounds it. The acting is flat, non reactional and amateurish with Selma Blair coming off worst. This role and her performance in it is merely an extension of her histrionics and whining in "Cruel Intentions." Painful.
The "Non-Fiction" section of this film is another story: there's some meat here to grab on to with Paul Giamatti playing a down-on-his-luck documentary film maker who convinves John Goodman that his slacker son, Scooby would be the perfect star of a docu-drama centering on the "alienated youth of the suburbs" Solondz is at his best here and the dead-pan dialogue and situations ring true and yet are subversive and thought-provoking.
"Storytelling" would have been a much better film had Solondz decided to hack off the "Fiction" section and extend the second. "Storytelling" may tarnish the Solondz mantel a bit, but for those of us who can appreciate the incendiary nature of his wit, we still have "Happiness" and "Welcome to the Dollhouse" to keep us warm until the next Solondz film is released.
Movie Review: Its not on the same level as Happiness or dollhouse
Summary: 3 Stars
I was excited to recieve my copy of Storytelling because i am a recent fan of Todd Solondz and wanted to get my hands on some of his more recent work. Having just recently watched Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse i really expected more from this movie. Reading other reviews i see people complaining about fiction but i thought it was the better of the two stories. I mainly feel this way because nonfiction couldnt have moved any slower or been more boring. Not even John Goodman and Paul Giamatti could save this story. I dont mind slow stories if there is more going on than whats just on the screen but there wasnt with this tale and aside from the little corks thrown in that seemed out of place the story of a loser kid with no ambition being presured to go to college by his rich parents has been told many times better already so why bother telling it again if you dont have anything to add? I cant imagine that nonfiction was actually based on any real events and if it was then he should have told it better because it creeped along at such a snails pace that i barely made it through it. Fiction was the better story imo mainly because it moved at a better pace and the acting was much better. Selma Blair and Leo Fitzpatrick were great were as the kids in nonfiction stumbled over almost all of thier lines. I also found fiction to be more realistic than nonfiction which may have been the point of the two stories with contradicting titles. At any rate, if your new to Todd Solondz's work check out dollhouse or happiness as they are much better films. I have not seen Palindromes yet but hopefully its more on par with his earlier work.