#574: SOLONDZ, Todd: Life During Wartime (2010)

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SOLONDZ, Todd (United States)
Life During Wartime [2010]
Spine #574
Blu-ray


In Life During Wartime, independent filmmaker Todd Solondz explores contemporary American existence and the nature of forgiveness with his customary dry humor and queasy precision. The film functions as a distorted mirror image of Solondz's acclaimed 1998 dark comedy Happiness, its emotionally stunted characters now groping for the possibility of change in a post-9/11 world. Happiness's grim New Jersey setting is transposed mainly to sunny Florida, but the biggest twist is that new actors fill the roles from the earlier film — including Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, and Ally Sheedy as alarmingly dissimilar sisters, and Ciarán Hinds hauntingly embodying a reformed pedophile. Shot in expressionistic tones by cinematographer extraordinaire Ed Lachman, Solondz's film finds the humor in the tragic and the tragic in the everyday.

97 minutes
Color
5.1 Surround
1:78:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2011
Director/Writer


Todd Solondz was 51 when he wrote and directed Life During Wartime.

The Film

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-page booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Sterritt.

Commentary

None.

Ask Todd

An audio Q&A with director Solondz in which he responds to viewers’ questions.
Making Life During Wartime

A documentary featuring interviews with actors Henderson, Hinds, Janney Lerner, Reubens, Sheedy and Williams, as well as on-set footage.
Interviews

With DP Ed Lachman.
Original theatrical trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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