Palindromes (2005)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Fantastic!

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Palindromes is just about the antithesis of anything that is mainstream in cinema. Sure, it has a couple of actors you have may have seen before and even loved - Ellen Barkin and Jennifer Jason Leigh - but this is filmmaking that is out there to ask some stark, provocative questions and challenge its audience about assumptions regarding abortion, women's choice (even if that choice is by a 13 year old, when a mind is not fully formed), and faith. The problem with though with an approach that confronts us is that we need someone to latch on to throughout all of the madness that surrounds the lead character. What do you do when a) the person we see the rest of this world through is a 13 year old girl obsessed with getting pregnant and having a baby, and b) this girl is played by nine different actresses? In short, the movie didn't work for me, but I can see why it would for others. It's experimental and dark and dreary but it also has the camp sensibility of a John Waters, just poking a dirty finger and wiping the glass with the graffiti of a man out to say that people who say one thing is exactly one thing should be ashamed. But, for me, whatever messages here are muddled and because Solondz is most concerned really with breaking down the form of a narrative and loses some kind of grip on reality.This is all going through the mind-set of a 13 year old who, I guess, sees herself as different forms at different times. Why does she see herself as a skinny white girl one moment traipsing through the woods and then as a fat black woman the next and then later on Jennifer Jason Leigh? The latter part I almost get as it comes near the end of the film when she's been through so much that she's grown a little... maybe, but not really. What's the context of her visualizing this? It doesn't necessarily have to be explained exactly of course, and the main inspiration I'd suppose would be Bunuel and That Obscure Object of Desire where the filmmaker cast two women to play one love interest. Yet while that was a little more random as to which woman would come along in whatever scene, it had more to do with how uncertain the male protagonist saw here. Here, there's not quite as much rhyme or reason to it - why would she be a big black woman vs her younger white self or a variation on that or with red hair? And yet still there's some kind of structure that Solondz is still imposing with the title cards of names (maybe like those 'Chapter' headings that are hit or miss on von Trier movies or something).But I shouldn't compare too much to other directors since Solondz only makes Solondz movies, and in this case he made one where the messages trump having compelling characters. In the three movies that really put him on the map - Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling - there's some "touchy" issues and real challenges to the viewer when it comes to how you empathize with the characters, but there's more going on in how they're shown and how they relate to others. What do we know about Aviva aside from her pregnancy wish, and the sort of vague, overwrought cloud of depression hanging over her when she after her abortion (or maybe before)? Well, not much really, at all. It's less about having compelling characters here than having a compelling STATEMENT to make, about freedom of choice or faith or pedophilia or incest or... it's all over the place; what should I make of that Christian group that Aviva-cum-Henrietta comes to (the latter name for her unborn child), the mostly retarded children who have to sing about saving the un-born and the possible shady politics behind closed doors? I don't think Solondz is poking fun at the retarded, I certainly wouldn't criticize that, but there is this feeling in those scenes of having to draw out the abortion argument using, well, outcasts. This might be all well and good if there's more time to develop them, or if he saw these characters through to the end. But Aviva/Henrietta runs off once again and goes back to her, uh, "lover" who drives a truck, and then things go crazier from there. Ultimately what should I take away from the anti-abortionists? That they're easily manipulated? That there should be some, uh, empathy? If you're pro-life it comes off as cartoonish (see that breakfast scene with everyone laughing on cue at the table), and if you're pro-choice it's... a farce? Palindromes has certain shots and images that keep one's attention, like the blurred drama happening in ellipses as she is getting the abortion, or in a moment of sexual awakening (if it is that, and if it is it's certainly disturbing as hell, which is fine) when the various Avivas blur from one to another. I can see this working for others and I can see it working not at all - it's a piece of confrontational art that wants to draw out the viewer into a debate of some kind. Or maybe it's simply a character study of a girl caught up in that terrible time of being 13 (not unlike Dollhouse, and this is sort of in the world of that movie by the way as Dawn Weiner is dead to begin with). For me it didn't really work as comedy - there are a few scattered laughs, but even when they come it feels ugly, by Solondz standards I mean - and as a drama it's more like a series of short plays or vignettes that don't quite tie together.

I really enjoyed Solondz film Happiness, even though it was pretty disturbing. I looked forward to seeing Palindromes when I heard about it and was pretty disappointed. The main character is played by 7-8 different characters throughout the film which can be very hard to keep track of what's going on. Outside of this it really seemed as though the point of the movie was just to offend as many as possible. From sodomizing a young kid, to finding an aborted fetus in a bag, to just terribly depressing dialog the film was just one after another with it's attempt to shock. I rarely take this stance, but it's one of very few films that I would say isn't even worth the time of watching. I felt totally robbed of my time after watching it and I can usually find at least some small redeeming quality in a film

Solondz's most recent film (he's supposedly returning later in 2009) is about a 13 year-old girl, Aviva, who wants nothing more than to have a baby. The plot line of the movie is quite surprising, and I don't want to spoil anything. Much like his other films, Solondz is a master of manipulating the audience's emotions, and also a master of making the audience examine exactly why they feel like they feel. This might have been his best work, but the central gimmick of the film is too confounding and doesn't strike me as anything besides an art-house gimmick: Aviva is played by eight different actresses who generally exchange roles from chapter to chapter. These actresses range from a six year-old black girl to Jennifer Jason Leigh. For the life of me, I never could think of a good reason for Solondz to have done it this way. Various critics have expressed their theories, none of them the same, it seems, and none of them satisfactory to me. The DVD could really use some kind of participation from Solondz, just so he could have defended this concept (perhaps he did have a reason), but there's nothing. With that major flaw, it's quite amazing that the film succeeds so well. The film is also a semi-sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse, and some of that film's characters return in surprising ways.

Let's get one thing perfectly straight before continuing in what is about to be a well-balanced and thorough beating-about-the-brow of this movie: There is literally *no* reason for anyone to watch this mess. It has been mentioned that the director, Todd Solondz, spent his *entire life's savings* to create this film, because no studio would back it. And why wouldn't those awful, money grubbing, corrupt SOBs back it?Why, because "Palindromes" is utter, festering drivel. Quite truly, its one redeeming quality is that it ends.Let us forget the fact that the main character is bewilderingly played by eight different actresses, that the cinematography is a step below what you'd expect to find on Youtube, and that the entire plot basically takes the audience on a snore-inducing non-adventure. What truly drives me to hate this movie is that not one single cast member can muster up the ability to actually act. I felt like I was watching cardboard cutouts with dumbstruck little faces scrawled on them.If there was ever supposed to be a deeper meaning to this rubbish, it was lost somewhere between Solondz's inner thoughts and what he actually ended up producing. There are people moving, talking, partaking in awkward sex scenes, and being shot to death, but when it's all said and done, there is truly nothing to be gleaned from this movie save for the ice-cold assurance that you just wasted an hour and forty minutes of your life.