HAPPINESS (1998) Reviewed by Jerry Saravia Originally viewed back in Fall of 1998
"Happiness" is one of the richest, darkly complex, and ironically funniest portraits of American life since "Short Cuts." It is tinged with irony, deadpan humor, and some severely unpleasant subject matter, though always treated in a respectful, artful manner by a promising writer-director, Todd Solondz. Solondz previously directed "Welcome to the Dollhouse," a provocative statement about growing up in Jersey, but who would have thought he would helm a multi-layered, disturbing portrait of Jersey like this one.
The film begins with a date at a restaurant. The curly-haired brunette Joy (Jane Adams) is sitting at a table with a man (John Lovitz) whom she has just dumped. He questions her, trying to discover why the relationship is over. He shows her an engraved ashtray, and tells her it's for the person who will love him for who he is.
Afterwards, we meet the orange-haired Allen (the great Philip Seymour Hoffman), a guy who masturbates on the phone while arbitrarily picking names off the phone book and asking the women what they are wearing. Not only does he stalk people on the phone at home, but also at his office where he works. When he confesses his explicit sexual fantasies to a therapist, Bill (Dylan Baker), we recognize boredom is settling on the therapist's face. We hear his thoughts in voice-over. We see a strange dream where he kills everyone in a playground with a machine gun. Then he masturbates while looking at teen magazines, and we realize his true nature: he's a pedophile.
Then we are introduced to Joy's sisters, which include Trish (Cynthia Stevenson), a bland, perfect housewife unaware of her husband's (Bill's) clandestine sexual nature, and Helen (Lara Flynn Boyle), a poet who writes about rapes, and finds that New Jersey is the ideal place to live to prove you're not a showy writer. There is also Joy's unhappy parents, Lenny (Ben Gazzara) and Mona (Louise Lasser, a long way from "Bananas"). Lenny wants out of the marriage so he can live his life, yet Mona understandably thinks that it is because of her and that she's too fat and needs a facelift. When Mona asks for advice from a real-estate dealer (amusingly played by Marla Maples) about her marriage, the dealer responds: "Divorce is the best thing that ever happened to me."
Joy needs and wants love desperately, but doesn't know what love is. Her sisters berate her about their perfect, exciting lives yet she feels cast out of the family. When not being sexually harassed on the phone (by Allen), she confides in a thick-accented Russian taxi driver (Jared Harris), who has sex with her and patiently listens to one of her guitar-playing songs. Of course, he turns out to be a thief, and is married!
Everyone in "Happiness" has difficulty adapting to their lifestyles, and they are all inadequate about their loved ones. Interestingly, they all feel a brink of happiness when they are alone. Allen lives by himself in a bland apartment and is giddy when making anonymous calls; Joy feels better when playing the guitar to herself; Lenny can't bring himself to have an affair and chooses to be left alone; and Bill wants to be left alone with his son's male friends by drugging everyone with sleeping pills. Only a secondary character named Kristina (Camryn Manheim), Allen's neighbor, needs solace when she admits her own secrets to Allen.
"Happiness" is an exemplary combination of flawless writing, directing and acting. It is shrewdly written by Solondz, and he never makes it easy for the audience when he wavers between drama and comedy with unusual results. At times, you don't know whether to laugh, cringe, or both. The most obvious example is when Bill admits his secret sexual desires to his son - it is so painful to watch that we are not sure how to respond to it. This is true of Kristina's secret, which causes one to laugh because it is so unexpected.
The performances are so adeptly attuned to the material that you can't separate one actor from the other - they fit the roles perfectly. One lasting impression is left by character actor Dylan Baker (who should be remembered at Oscar time) as the disturbed pedophile. His face is so haunting and etched with so much pain that he becomes unforgettable - he also brings a sense of humanity to Bill that makes it harder to judge him as a person. He tries, in one scene, to tell his wife that he is sick, yet he can't help his nature.
Solondz has not crafted an exploitative fantasy where the freaks are on display for everyone to identify - a modern-day Jerry Springer-like movie where the audience can boo the loveless characters off the screen. Instead, he addresses these characters as normal, everyday people facing their own crisis, their own lack of understanding, and their own inability to love. He looks at everyone with a sympathetic eye, including the pedophile, and cuts deeply into our consciousness about our human needs.
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at http://moviething.com/members/movies/faust/JATMindex.shtml
E-mail me with any questions, comments or general complaints at faustus_08520@yahoo.com or at Faust668@aol.com
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