I have to admit that at first I was a bit apprehensive about seeing this film. Perhaps all it would be was an exercise in letting off steam by an American with a midlife crisis.
However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. First there were my fellow visitors at this screening at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Their age ranged between 17 and 70 and as we waited for the doors to open, I heard their friendly chatter about this and that film, what they had liked or not and so on. Most of them seemed to know each other and they communicated so well.
The opening sequence of the film puts you right in the middle of a scene; there is neither preamble nor explanation. On top of that the film is, for most of the time, filmed in close ups, which makes the whole experience intimidating. At one point I can count the pores in Ciarán Hinds’ face.
There is a point to all this, Solondz wants us to be drawn into this world of despair and loneliness and it works well. There are moments I push my head back into my seat to create a distance.
The story is about 3 sisters: Joy, Helen and Trish. Joy is on the move to find solace and forgiveness with everyone. She lacks the strength to live her life without the approval of others. Henderson plays this with verve and conviction. As she travels through the storyline, we meet sister Trish (Allison Janney) who has convinced herself that she is in love with this nice Jewish man who’s fat and not rich and most of all, nothing like her first husband Bill. He is a convicted paedophile and Trish (together with her oldest son) has banned him out of her suburban life by proclaiming him dead to everyone.
Bill, played by Ciarán Hinds, is released from prison and he sets off to find his family. This is portrayed in a long, completely speechless scene with Hinds showing us a man totally lost and void of any emotions bar the memories of where it all went wrong. The overall silence accentuates his solitude and as it is in close up you do get the point. He indeed finds Trish’s new home only to find out that there is nothing in the house that reminds of him, he just doesn’t belong any more.
And this way of filming makes the film different; it lacks the smooth transitions between scenes as we are used to in most films. Solondz takes us from one to the other character and it is up to you what to make of it. As if he says go on then, I dare you, judge for yourself.
As the story progresses we witness Joy visiting Trish who appears to uphold middle class values but she manages to humiliate her sister and put her down as a 3rd rate person in such a villain way that it sends poor Joy straight off to sister Helen.
Now Helen, a four time Golden Globe winner, is the epitome of self absorbance and thus of no help at all to Joy’s cry for help and forgiveness. She is convinced that everyone is full of crap and she herself lives up to that notion to a T.
Trish is pretty full of herself too, and when her youngest son Timmy comes home one day to tell her he just found out his father is still alive and a convicted paedophile, he wants some explanation from her.
To her credit she tries not to be too brutal with all the facts and when Timmy asks her what it is exactly what paedophiles do to boys, she concocts a story which leaves him believing it’s all related to terrorists.
This misunderstanding will bite her in the ass at the end of the film.
Timmy is so endearing and innocent, begging to be treated as a man with his Bar Mitzvah coming up. He is at one point left in total confusion by his mother when she cries out that Bill was a good father and husband if you forget the paedophile tendencies.
Ciarán’s character Bill struggles on a daily basis for survival and as we watch him in a hotel bar, we come to what is probably one of the best scenes I have ever seen in a film. And I have, in my 50 years of watching films, seen a lot. Most of it is crap but this was absolutely brilliant!!
First it is very funny and the entire audience doubles over with laughter and then very soon after Ciarán manages to show us humility, shame and total loss of pride in 30 secs. That is the summit of great acting.
And with this lies the strength of the film. Life During Wartime is very funny, we all laugh frequently and loud and many I can feel smiling, especially when Timmy comes into view.
If there is a message, it is that when we are forced to look inside the lives of others, we discover that the bad things can happen to us too. Do we really see what’s going on or do we miscommunicate? So it’s easy to judge and of course you can blame it on the war (in this case the war on terrorism) but, in the end you need to pick yourself up and carry on. Even Joy comes to this conclusion.
All the performances are genuine and kept simple. It lacks the Hollywood pretence and glitter.
All in all I strongly recommend everyone to go and see this film when you can and perhaps (as my fellow viewers in fact did) give it a big applause!!
P.S.
It seems that the collaboration with writer/directors who are known enfants terribles of their trade may work out just fine for Mr. Hinds!
More
Dear Ciarán!
