Palindromes, the latest from Todd Solondz, has a Christian family called the Sunshines.

And a whole lot more that suggests it will be worth discussing...

Oh, goody.

Oh ho!

Wow.

Won't lovers revolt now?

I heard it's the sort of film that ends pretty much the way it begins...

Deals with abortion, eh? Between this and that upcoming Mike Leigh film, there could be a theme piece in this...

From MereComments, the weblog of Touchstone magazine, on Ellen Barkin, starring in this film:

I caught this at the Toronto film festival and enjoyed it quite a lot, though I really, really doubt it will clear the Ontario ratings board and be permitted to play in commercial theaters here.

Is it pro-choice? I don't really think so. The abortion in the film is certainly not presented as a positive thing. It's not really pro-life either, though. Solondz really doesn't seem to be interested in debating any of the issues involved in the film, all he's really trying to do is make these people and these circumstances understandable. It seems to me that his only real aim is to humanize everybody - on all sides - and he accomplishes that pretty well. There are moments - both with Barkin's character and the Christian family - where it's hard to seperate the satire from the genuine intent but the film seems to handle all sides with a basic degree of respect, which is something Solondz said was a very clear aim in the Q&A session afterwards ... not an easy film, but I think it's a fairly important one and definitely worth a viewing ...

Dogma: I am God

No, it never propagates if I set a gap or prevention


Hannah

I actually missed yours the first time through - it was ponly after I posted that I realised you beat me to it. (And yours were better)

Matt

Well, you shouldn't be embarrassed. We both had the good idea and yours are pretty cool too. I like the dogma one a lot.

Very nice, guys. I've gotta admit, SZPT, yours were so subtle that I didn't catch the meaning. (I was thinking you were part of some secret "in-club" of movie critics and had some clever take on the movie's hidden meaning ... either that or you were out on a bender the night before and were nursing a hangover.) Now I get it.

A belated "bravo" to you both!

Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog.

Right down the semicolon...

Takes no stand: Todd Solondz says it's hard to keep an open mind
"Movies operate in a funny way," the director said yesterday at a press conference promoting the film's screening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal. "You tend to identify with a protagonist, who may be very handsome or beautiful or behave in a heroic way and make the right choices. At the end of the film, you feel much better about yourself for having made a certain kind of identification. It's a beautiful kind of narcissistic experience. The difficulty with my films is that if you're looking for that kind of an experience, you're not going to get it. There are no heroes or villains." . . . "The movie is the story of a young girl suspended between a pro-choice family that gives her no choice and a pro-life family that kills," Solondz said. . . . Solondz also courts controversy with the film's premise that people don't change, that there is no free will and that, like the palindromes in the film's title, they pretty much end up where they started, looking for the same things. Race, sex, age and attractiveness make no difference to that -- hence the use of different actors to play Aviva. "If I say I'm pro choice, it is, on some philosophical level, an illusion to say that I made that choice," Solondz said. "My whole life experience dictated that I would have to make that decision. If I had grown up in a Mama Sunshine family, it's very possible I would have absorbed that whole philosophy and it would have been inconceivable for me to be anything but pro-life." Both the homicidal right-to-lifers and the abortion doctor see themselves as heroic, Solondz said, and his film, in the end, is about trying to understand the other side. "Just because you have a liberal mind doesn't mean you have an open one."
Montreal Gazette, October 20

Saw it, blogged it.

More thoughts on Palindromes, stimulated by J.R. Jones's review.

I appreciated the guts it took to make something like this, but I neither enjoyed nor disliked it. I felt uncomfortable many times while watching, but that was absolutely the point. Definitely made me think about a lot of things. It doesn't really allow you to pick sides and I always kind of appreciate that in a film. The acting in this movie is nothing spectacular and some of the dialogue is just too over-the-top, even if meant to be satirical.

5/10

(copied from a duplicate thread, soon to be deleted)

Palindrome releases on home video September 13, 2005. It didn't do anything much in theaters, so I imagine few have seen it yet. But, oh my goodness... what a strange, complex, bitingly satirical film. I saw a screener last night with some friends, and our jaws were on the floor numerous times. It's both artful and philosophical, sweet and disturbing, a bit fair and a bit mean. And funny.

For one thing, Joyce Victor (Ellen Barkin) offers a picture of a liberal, pro-choice mother that is clearly intended to be a poke in the eye to liberal pro-choice audiences. But as an equal opportunity offender, director Todd Solondz goes after a strongly (even over-the-top) Christian family whose relationships and on-screen praying -- and performances of Christian music ("we've been on the 700 Club!") --are obviously mean to skewer conservative sensabilities. It seems to be that only someone who knows Christian culture from the inside could offer such such an effective parody.

But is Solondz tweaking both sides? And if so, is he merely being mean? I don't think so -- as one official site comment reads: In his latest film PALINDROMES, we find the work of a more mature artist who is clearly savoring the profound flavor of moral complexity.

I may add more later, but thought I'd start by urging A&F members to dig into it. It is a cultural criticism that speaks directly to issues confronting the church, including it's own hypocrisy, as well as a reproach to western values at large.



Alexander Brickel as Peter Paul and Sharon Wilkins as Aviva- Photo Credit: Macall Polay

Surprised there isn't more on this, and disappointed I haven't got much time to add to it. I appreciated a few bits of this film, particualrly the over the top Moma Sunshine scenes, ut found it a bit contrived. The way it hurried through the actresses at the end was just a bit unsatisying.

What I did appreciate was how the different actresses gimmick really worked. It made the story and the fact that these things do happen to people all over the place (even if not all to the same person) a little more real.

And I thought it was fairly even handed in it's criticism of both sides of the abortion debate. 'Twas just a shame it never went in to why she wanted to get pregnant in the first place.

Matt

I have to say I really liked this film. It certainly goes into the list of "wow that's really good, but I don't think I want to see it again for a long time."

Solondz is always over-the-top. You can't like anyone in his films, and yet you find yourself kind of liking and identifying with everything, no matter how horrifying.

Aviva is an "every woman" of sorts, signaled by the changing of actresses. We are all Aviva. Even if we personally do not have the troubles she faces, we are surrounded by those who do: no (wo)man is an island.

I thought her family came across just as bad as the Sunshines. Her mother seems to care, but doesn't listen to her daughter. She reveals herself as incredibly selfish and, perhaps, needy. She wants her daughter all to herself.

The Sunshines seem genuinely loving, but certainly have their own "dark side."

In the end, we -- like Aviva -- don't know who to trust. Neither "side" is perfect -- perhaps not even good. And yet, in some small degree, perhaps we find ourselves in both camps.