♥♥♥♥♥
+ Best Feel-Bad Movie of the Year
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| A comics-styled poster of an assortment of the film's anxiety-ridden, secretive, unhappy characters beneath a sun-colored background for Todd Solondz's Happiness |
Extreme loneliness and its ramifications, unaddressed pedophilia, substance abuse and permanent identity crisis are some of the problems of modern America that are probed in Happiness.
Happiness is written and directed by Todd Solondz (Fear, Anxiety & Depression (1989)).
The dialog in the film, - and in fact the entire script and the handling of suspense in its mostly separate character-centered stories, - are incredibly intelligent and pregnant with meanings and subtext. The film has a bold use of compositions, music, language and issues.
There are also fantastic performances, among others from Dylan Baker (Two Days in New York (2012)) as a child-rapist father, for most people the film's most disturbing character. There appears to be no taboos for Solondz here. My only reservation towards the film is that it leaves its audiences in a radical state of hopelessness and despair about the human condition - and nothing else.
Related post:
1998 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 2.2 mil. $
Box office: Reportedly 5.9 mil. $
= Uncertain but likely a box office success (reportedly returned 2.68 times its cost)
[Happiness premiered 15 May (Cannes Film Festival, out of the main competition) and runs 139 minutes. Shooting took place from August - October 1997 in Florida and New Jersey. The Sundance Film Festival found the film's portrayal of pedophilia "too disagreeable" and refused to accept it. The film's original US distributor dropped the film, which was eventually released unrated, after having gotten an NC-17 rating from the MPAA. It opened #15 to a 130k $ first weekend in 6 theaters in North America, where it widened to 60 theaters but didn't attain a higher ranking, grossing 2.9 mil. $ (49.2 % of the total gross). The-Numbers.com claim that the film made 3 mil. $ internationally (without any details to back it up), and if true, this makes it a box office success. It won a prize in Cannes, was nominated for 3 Independent Spirit awards and a Golden Globe, and it won a National Board of Review award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Solondz returned with Storytelling (2001), and later made the semi-sequel to Happiness, Life During Wartime (2009). Baker returned in Oz (1998, TV-series) and theatrically in Celebrity (1998). Happiness is certified fresh at 81 % with a 7.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Happiness?
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