Fraught with Ambiguity

By Matthew Scott Kelemen, AlterNet. Posted April 15, 2005.

Todd Solondz is in a hotel in Los Angeles. His calls are fielded by the front desk operator, who has no idea who he is beyond his "guest" status. Had she known that Solondz is the director of Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), Happiness (1998) and Storytelling (2001), there might have been a hint of wariness in her voice. Hints of wariness are standard operating procedure in Solondz' world.

But maybe she relates to his films. Maybe she felt as much empathy for Dollhouse's tragically awkward Dawn Wiener (played by Heather Matarazzo) as Solondz did. Maybe Dylan Baker's tortured Bill Maplewood in Happiness helped her see some shred of humanity within a pedophile. Maybe Storytelling tore down her pre-conceptions of liberal arts colleges, teen homosexuality and suburban privilege.

Or perhaps she just found Dollhouse exploitative, Happiness perverse, and Storytelling bizarre and unwatchable. Regardless, as long as she is affected by Solondz' films -- better yet, if she changes as a result -- then Solondz feels that he's done his job correctly and created relevant cinematic art.

Solondz returns to theaters this week with Palindromes. At its heart, according to Solondz, it is the story of 13-year-old Aviva's quest for love. Audiences are going to be more affected by the film's narrative thrust: her pregnancy and coerced abortion, her odyssey that brings her to a group home in which right-to-life activists care for special-needs children (who record and perform as the Sunshine Singers) when not plotting to kill abortionists, and her encounter with the late Dawn Wiener's brother Marc, whose philosophy about free will and predestination allows him to cope with being pegged as a child molester and provides the film's most transcendent scene.

But Solondz also went out on a limb by casting seven different actresses (including Jennifer Jason Leigh), and one actor, to play Aviva. What seems like a gimmick slowly makes sense, as Solondz wants his audiences to care about Aviva, not to identify with the actress playing her (or relate her to Aviva's cousin, the Dawn Wiener character from Dollhouse, whose funeral opens the film). It may be Solondz' last chance to prove that, yes, he does care about his characters, and no, he is not a misanthrope toying with audience expectations. But he also deals with the issue of abortion in a way that has never been presented in a film before, a topic ripe for debate among the punditry should Palindromes be sufficiently illuminated by the spotlight of controversy.

Matthew Scott Kelemen: I recently watched Storytelling for the first time, and I hope you don't mind my saying it this way, but I think Palindromes is a much better film.

Todd Solondz: I'm glad that you like Palindromes!

I was confused [by the casting method] for the first 60 minutes, although I was intrigued. But the scene at Aviva's party when Marc Wiener expounds on free will versus predestination blew me away. I felt I was watching something that pushed the art forward and was very relevant. We have the right to choose, but our choices are predetermined. It's the first time I've seen something like this addressed in film in that way.

Well, good, thank you! I try to put things out there, articulate things that I don't see articulated.

I think that sequence is going to strike a chord in audiences, about something they are aware of but don't think about that much.

Oh, wow. Well, these things are unpredictable. I'm just appreciative that anyone can sit through and watch, and show up at these things. I don't take [open-minded audiences] for granted.

So how did you approach directing eight different individuals playing the same role? Did you have an idea of which part you wanted to shoot first in order to ...

It was actually about logistics. We actually shot the Sunshine sequence first because that was the one that was the most involved in terms of having so many children all at the same time. And from there I don't remember the exact order. I'd have to think about it. But as I say it was all dictated by logistics.

How did you create continuity or synchronicity between the actresses?

Well, what I was looking for a certain quality, a quality of innocence, of vulnerability -- that this was her constant. So with each performer who was playing this character, I tried to extract, to elicit as best I could, that quality of innocence and emphasize that, so there would be a kind of cohesion to connect them all. If you speak to Ellen Barkin, I'm sure she will tell you that whether she was speaking to the Latina, the redhead or Jennifer Jason Leigh, it was all as if it were the same person.

When you get to Jennifer Jason Leigh's scenes, suddenly it seems as if all of the other Avivas are have been taking their cue from her. You see this winsomeness that she infused in her characters often in her career.

That's great. She is one of the best actresses of our time.

In recent weeks, when I've brought up your name, I often hear 'Oh, he hates his characters.' When I was watching Palindromes, I felt I was seeing two layers. On one hand, I thought I was watching a very respectful portrayal of those kids. The other side was that people would fall back on conventional Todd Solondz criticisms: "God, this is another way of hating his characters."

Matt Kelemen is Arts & Entertainment Editor at Las Vegas CityLife.

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