Happiness (1998)

 Todd Solondz's "Happiness"


After watching Todd Solondz's 1998 film "Happiness," I've got to say that I don't think I've ever felt more disturbed by a film in my life. I'm not going to take the time to fully elaborate on all the intricacies of its characters, but I will say that it centers on 3 sisters, their respective families, and people they know. The array of characters mimics that of a Robert Altman film or Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 film "Magnolia." Each character is depraved, pathetic, and unsympathetic in their own way and I felt an emotional lack of empathy or even sympathy for each one. 

"Happiness" is very much a 90s film, in that it leans on the themes that quite a bit of 90s film seem to center around. Namely, the boredom and malaise of a middle class utopia (before 9/11 and the destruction of the middle class through the '08 crisis). In a bit of 90s films, like "The Matrix" or "Fight Club," characters have a boring well-paying job, are bountiful consumers in a enriched market, and spend their lives in their quaint middle-class domesticities being utterly bored by the lack of anything going on in their lives. The characters in "Happiness" are no different. However, the way in which they 'act out' against their suffocating empty lives is utterly self-destructive to the point of moral depravity. 

I've read several reviews of the film in which critics have said that Solondz makes these horrifically depraved characters 'sympathetic.'  I completely disagree. I found there to be an emotional emptiness at the heart of each character and a completely detached affiliation of these characters by any sort of plot device or exploration by the director. To me, these characters are to be pitied, if even that; not sympathized with. Through this pity, there is supposed to be a pitying of ourselves and the darkness that lies at the heart of the human condition. These characters can't seem to get out of their own way and even are actively trying to find something, a 'happiness,' to satiate their immense displeasure of life and their immense discomfort with simply being alive. Their actions and behaviors should discomfort us, unnerve us, and disquiet us. Because of this, I found the film to be a completely pitch black film. There is no moral virtuousness, there is no hope for the human soul, and our very existence is blackened by our own sick and pathetic attempts to find some self-seeking pleasure fulfillment. 



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