Review of Happiness

Introduction

Simply revelatory. Todd Solondz`s intensely claustrophobic, torturously funny and heart-breakingly viscious black comedy/drama is a film you won`t soon forget. Set against a backdrop of tacky, deliberately vulgar New Jersey locations and featuring melodramatic use of lounge music over the soundtrack, Solondz creates delicate, bleak, sincere but not entirely sympathetic portraits of a trio of sisters, and their tenuously linked lovers, friends and associates.

Video

A beautifully shot film gets a surprisingly clean transfer to DVD, given its evocative use of light and shadow, I imagined something much more disastrous. The box informs us that the transfer is a 4:3 ratio when in fact the real feature is more like 1:85. There are a few niggles: the lamp in Lara Flynn Boyle`s apartment looks like its smoked a bit too much weed, but mostly the video quality does the film credit.

Audio

Simplistic dialogue driven transfer, hard to fault, but not much to get excited about either.

Features

An excellent menu screen, an animated version of the subversive comic strip style poster art: watch Lara Flynn Boyle`s self loathing, masochistic authoress never take her eyes off the fly buzzing around the screen, or the subtly paranoid glances of family man pederast Bill Mapplewood (Dylan Baker). Best of all is the animated Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose animated beads of languorous sweat lets you know right off what kind of movie this is. Unfortunately, the extras don`t match the quality of the menu, in fact, considering how long its taken to get here, its a massive disappointment. We get the theatrical trailer and 2 TV Spots that emphasize the controversial reaction to the movie when it was released (it was dropped by its US distributor), and that`s it. Very basic, such a great movie deserves more.

Conclusion

Daring, funny, shocking, embarrassing, cruel, intimate, compassionate and finally utterly devastating, ‘Happiness’ was not only the best movie of last year, it also cemented Todd Solondz (‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’) as the most exciting director around. Shot with demure understatement, but also an operatic elegance, ‘Happiness’ is more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it is a frank and profoundly honest look at the cosmetic purgatory of contemporary life. Great performances all round, from the brilliant Jane Adams as fragile, empathic songwriter Joy who’s compassion eventually turns to a quivering apathy; Lara Flynn Boyle as her scathing, beastly poetess sister who longs to be masochistically brutalized by life so she’ll have something to write about; Hoffman as a sleazy phone-sex abuser who has fight off the unwanted courtship of an obese neighbor (Catherine Manheim). Best of all however, is Dylan Baker whose plays family guy pedophile Bill Maplewood with a queasy and daring sympathy. The long, painful and ultimately pointless search for life’s happiness has rarely been so enlightening. A remarkable and utterly unforgettable film.