Palindromes Movie Review:


Some movies bring members of the audience together, and some divide them. “Palindromes” is a movie that no one seems to agree on; even the people who love it seem to love it for different reasons (‘Sickly great!’ claims one review on IMDb; ‘Strange and ugly but original and necessary’ says another – though I’m not sure I particularly want to see ‘necessary’ films). It’s directed by Todd Solondz, whose controversial “Happiness” invoked everything but happiness. This time, he is taking on the subject of teenage pregnancies, with hilarious consequences/heart-breaking results (depends on
whom you listen to). I didn’t find it heart-breaking or hilarious; by trying to be both, it’s neither.

The central character of “Palindromes” is Aviva. She becomes pregnant aged thirteen and runs away from home after her parents force her to have an
abortion. Throughout the movie, she is played by different actresses, most of whom are relatively unknown, except for – all too briefly – Jennifer
Jason Leigh.

Aviva (whose name, as you may have spotted, is a palindrome) discovers a little commune of Christians which is happy to take her in. It is run by
Mama Sunshine, who bakes the best Jesus Tear Drop cookies in the state. The children she looks after are all disabled in one way or another. She is
played by Debra Monk as a caricature of a kind, conservative Christian, but how else could the role be played? I am relieved to discover that Monk’s
next role is as one of the Little Old Ladies in the new musical film of “The Producers,” a character with much more scope for development.

You may notice what Solondz is doing here; he is reversing the stereotypes. We have Aviva’s mother (played by Ellen Barkin), who is not only in favour
of abortion; she demands it, almost violently, of her daughter. And we have Mama Sunshine who represents the American religious Right, but she is full of, well, sunshine; why get angry when you can make such good cookies?

Among the other colourless characters Aviva meets on her journey are Judah, who prefers to be called Otto (can you guess why?) another thirteen year old
whom she has sex with, and a paedophile lorry driver who sleeps with her, and later turns out to be working for Mama Sunshine’s family as a hired
assassin to kill abortion doctors. Subtlety is not this film’s strong point.

There will be some who interpret the film differently from me and think I’m missing the point.Personally, I was disappointed to see someone of Solondz’s talent resort to this crowbar satire; if pro-life people get annoyed at the way the Mama Sunshine character is shown, I can hardly blame them. Of course, humour is the most subjective of things, and you’ll either laugh or you won’t. I admired the way that Solondz does not give an easy answer to the extremely tricky issue of abortion, and I think the film may provoke useful discussions on the subject. I also sort of liked the device of using different actresses in the same role; it blurs the boundaries between the characters and extends the story to all young girls in this position. And I was surprised by the ultimate message of the movie; that we are who we are, backwards and forwards (like a palindrome), and that no one really changes.

All this time though, the movie is devoid of characters. Aviva, her mum, Mama Sunshine, the paedophile; none of these is a character. They’re all
caricatures. Despite the movie’s intelligence, I never got emotionally involved at all, and I never laughed at the humour (when Mama Sunshine mourns the fact that one of the girls has run away, despite the fact ‘she didn’t have any legs,’ I didn’t laugh; I averted my eyes from the screen in embarrassment). In “Happiness,” an equally tricky movie, I was emotionally involved; is there a more painful scene in recent memory than the one where
Dylan Baker has to explain to his son why he is being called a paedophile in the neighbourhood? His character, along with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s and
the others, were, for all their faults, human beings. In “Palindromes,” the actors are never really given an opportunity to act; they all wear the same
expression all through the movie. That may well be Solondz’s point, but it is at the expense of our empathy for them.

I’m not saying all movies have to do the same thing. I agree with Pauline Kael when she said ‘movies can give us almost anything; almost everything.’
But what does “Palindromes” give us, really? Solondz takes a tricky problem, presents it, and lets us make up our own minds. In that sense, the
movie is admirable, but it’s not much else.



Adam Whyte

Solondz continues to engage us with real characters who do hideously real things to each other. And he also continues to venture into more surreal, twisted territory with his intelligent but often baffling approach to storytelling.

Aviva (played by eight actresses of various age, size and race) is a 12-year-old struggling with the concepts of birth and death. Her parents (Barkin and Masur) continually brush such topics under the carpet, even pushing Aviva toward a hush-hush abortion when she gets pregnant by a family friend. But she runs away from home and takes a warped fairy-tale trip through a variation on her mother's emotional blackmail scenario ("You might have a deformed child! People will think you're a slut!").

A palindrome is a word that reads the same forwards as backwards, like "Aviva". Solondz's main question is whether people really change, or do we stay the same inside. He addresses this from a bewildering array of angles in the film's nine chapters, examining fundamentalism and moral relativism through such issues as disability, abortion, terrorism and paedophilia. And with his blackly hilarious approach, he also gets us laughing--often uncontrollably--at the most taboo things imaginable.

Having eight actresses play the protagonist is extremely gimmicky, but Solondz inventively uses this to add resonance to the character. Intriguingly, the extremely varied actresses all play the role the same way. Wilkins' sheer physicality gives her scenes an astonishing subtext; Jason Leigh's aging face adds an emotional punch in the penultimate episode; and Freiman is the other standout, a gawky redhead with braces in the film's most gruelling scenes.

The stylised, fable-like acting is especially noticeable in the amazing central chapter featuring the chirpy, religious Mama Sunshine (Monk) and her 10 foster children, all of whom have some sort of disability and embrace the simplistic fundamentalism of their adoptive parents. But of course dark shadows lurk everywhere, especially as Solondz brings up al Qaida and extreme anti-abortionists (although he lets us make the connection). Yes, Solondz is far too clever for his own good, but the film is surprisingly moving on an emotional level, and it'll certainly spark a lively post-film deconstruction.

Rich Cline

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