Word: solondzã
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...criticism surrounding Todd Solondz??s equally loved and hated film Happiness (1998), was his employment of fringe subject matter which included rape, pedophilia, murder and masturbation, and of characters whose misery and deplorableness are put on display for the viewing public’s pleasure and disgust. With Solondz??s latest effort Storytelling, the indie director is more concerned with responding to that reproach with his own lashes and cheeky irony, rather than building upon his incisive look at suburbia in Happiness. Instead of investing time and injecting complexity into his characters as in past works...
...fiction.” The whole of Fiction clocks in at around half an hour, and with the short running time, it suffers from a lack of character development, a wooden plot construct and bland cinematography. The students in the class never become more than voiceboxes for criticism of Solondz??s previous work, and the provocative questions involving Vi and Scott concerning the environment of political correctness in pedagogical relationships and the slippery nature of exploitation only become muddied and lost when grounded upon cultural cliches...
...worldview, and one is left wondering why even indulge them? There is even a sequence in Oxman’s documentary that is a send-up of American Beauty, where Oxman comments over images of the New Jersey suburbs that there is beauty in a lamp post. Here again, Solondz??s can’t help himself and he ridicules American Beauty the tamer, watered-down version of Happiness. As Nonfiction draws to a close, we find out that Scooby has gotten into Princeton, even though he wrote “FUCK YOU” in bubble letters...
...unfortunate result of Solondz??s self-indulgence and revenge tactics is that both sections of the film fall flat and stay on the surface of the issue that is at the heart of his filmmaking: exploitation. Storytelling is a misstep for Solondz, but even on his off days, he is still a more provocative and fascinating filmmaker than any of the hacks Hollywood has to offer. Hopefully his concern with the critical reception of his work rather than the work itself will be flushed out his system. But hope is something we shouldn’t anticipate...