Life Dur­ing Wartime

In 1998 Todd Solondz shat­tered the out­er lay­er of the indiesphere with his sav­age­ly dark explo­ration of Amer­i­can sub­ur­bia, Hap­pi­ness. Provoca­tive, trag­ic, yet stark­ly ten­der, Solondz set a bench­mark for smart cin­e­ma that has rarely been matched and nev­er bet­tered – indeed, the New Jer­sey native has strug­gled to fill his own shoes. Ten years and only two films on, he returns to his roots and the fam­i­ly that helped secure his cult sta­tus. The ques­tion is, has he redis­cov­ered his incen­di­ary touch?

From the out­set it’s hard to ignore how lazy and con­fused Life Dur­ing Wartime feels. Pick­ing up a decade after our deviant ensem­ble were left rot­ting in their own des­o­la­tion, the open­ing scene is a near shot-for-shot rehash from Solondz’s late ​‘90s orig­i­nal, with Joy (Shirley Hen­der­son) and now-hus­band Allen (Michael K Williams) engaged in the most awk­ward of din­ner dates. Once again Joy takes her place as the film’s frag­ile main­mast; rocked by her partner’s for­mer ​‘afflic­tions’ and splin­tered by appari­tions of for­mer lover Andy (Paul Reubens).

Seek­ing escape, she vis­its her estranged sis­ters, but finds Helen (Ally Sheedy) suf­fer­ing from her own self-inflat­ed celebri­ty, after mod­er­ate suc­cess as a screen­writer; and Trish (Ali­son Jan­ney) buck­ling under the strain of sin­gle-moth­er­hood. Mean­while, Trish’s ex-hus­band Bill (Cia­rán Hinds) is find­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion hard fol­low­ing his release from prison, as he tries to recon­nect with the world he left behind. Once again it’s a depress­ing state of affairs, but the real tragedy is how fruit­less­ly the foun­da­tions have been rocked.

The sharp-eyed cineaste will no doubt have picked up on a few cast changes. In fact, every char­ac­ter has under­gone a very lit­er­al trans­for­ma­tion, with results rang­ing from log­i­cal (Henderson’s Joy is a fit­ting rein­car­na­tion) to incon­gru­ous (Williams replaces the alto­geth­er paler Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man). Regard­less of whether this recast­ing works or not – and for the most part it does – it ulti­mate­ly detracts focus from the nar­ra­tive, as Solondz tran­scends sequel­dom and enters the spec­trum of the part-remake/­part-vari­a­tion.

While strong cen­tral per­for­mances go some way towards mak­ing amends for a weari­some plot, Solondz’s insipid script lacks the sub­tle­ty required when han­dling such sen­si­tive mate­r­i­al. Where Hap­pi­ness shocked in mea­sured spurts of excru­ci­at­ing, grip­ping dia­logue, Wartime is waste­ful; squan­der­ing gen­uine dra­mat­ic ten­sion with pro­fan­i­ty for the sake of shock val­ue. Tact was nev­er on the agen­da, but it was the shrewd expo­sure of the for­mer film’s razor-sharp edges that allowed the cuts to sink so deep.

This is a tired turn from a film­mak­er whose per­spec­tive has clear­ly become jad­ed. Yes it’s auda­cious, but it’s also igno­rant­ly con­struct­ed; alien­at­ing new­com­ers while instan­ta­neous­ly betray­ing fans. Per­haps it was wrong to expect more from a film­mak­er whose artis­tic vision has gone askew in recent years. In any case, it’s sad to see a once acer­bic mas­ter of sub­ur­ban spot­light­ing dis­re­gard poignan­cy and sin­cer­i­ty as spoils of a premise that has clear­ly over­played its strengths.