Tag: Alexander Payne

Side by Side: Happiness and Election

Todd Solondz and Alexander Payne’s breakout films have a lot in common in depicting suburban life.

Of all the depressing, pitiable people in “Happiness,” Todd Solondz’s absolutely disturbed black comedy of suburbia, sex, sickness and sadness, the one I feel the worst for is Trish Maplewood.

Wait, which one is Trish (Cynthia Stevenson)? Is she the sister caught in arrested development, the smug, narcissistic poet who secretly suspects she’s talentless or the woman who described a case of rape and murder over an ice cream sundae?

No, Trish is perhaps the only one in “Happiness” without a crippling sex addiction, perversion, loneliness or self-destructive tendency. Her fatal flaw seems to be that she’s too normal, and worse yet that she managed to fall in love with a monstrous creep.

Trish is like the control group in Solondz’s examination of twisted individuals, the least interesting and noticeable figure of the bunch. We arguably identify with her the least because there’s the least to latch onto. Part of what makes “Happiness” so affecting though is that there’s a little bit of something we can relate to in each of the other dark characters because each has a little bit of normalcy.

She’s not unlike Jim McAllister’s wife Diane (Molly Hagan) in Alexander Payne’s “Election,” a simple house wife who exists in the background. We learn some about her, her desires, her sex drive and what she loves about her fairly awful husband. But for all intensive purposes, she’s nobody.

Released a year apart in 1998 and 1999, “Happiness” and “Election” are both complex satires of those nobodies, simple people in ordinary middle American neighborhoods, people who in their own strange ways feel universally relatable. For those who have levied claims that Payne is mocking and trivializing the simpleton schmucks in his films, that’s absolutely accurate, and it feels no less honest.

Continue reading “Side by Side: Happiness and Election”

Nebraska

Alexander Payne’s latest film stands to be a hilarious crowd pleaser.

“Nebraska,” Alexander Payne’s black and white road trip comedy of middle America, has a habit of demeaning and humiliating the simpleton white folks who fill out the ranks of this country. Their mouths are slightly agape, they’re overweight, they lack ambition or much to say as they sit uniform in front of a small television with their cheap beer, and the marquees and sign posts in town feel modest and bland with words like “Sodbuster” and “Bankman” serving as the Midwestern town’s only landmarks.

It’d be easy to say that Payne’s movie feels slight and that these people are too easy of targets, but America as a country is a bit humiliating. That doesn’t mean that the film and the people can’t harbor a sense of kindness and pride that gives this country its character.

“Nebraska” is great Americana. It’s a warm, funny, wholesome film that captures the comical family dynamics of ordinary people. Perhaps this isn’t your family, but we seem to know families like this, and it can be a beautiful sight to see. Continue reading “Nebraska”

Sideways

I watched “Sideways” at least three times before I decided I liked it. The characters are smug, entitled, loutish, pretentious and depressing, and yet like a good bottle of wine it required a delicate aging until I savored it for its maturity, beauty and perfection.

Miles (Paul Giamatti) is the Pinot Noir of pricks, a rare survivor of someone who’s likeable, clever and dopey all at once. Divorced for two years and scraping to find a publisher for the lengthy novel he keeps in not one but two shoe boxes, he goes on a trip to wine country for his best friend Jack’s (Thomas Haden Church) bachelor party.

Miles listens patiently as Jack announces his plans to get laid one last time before a life of marriage. Because he’s only tacitly unsupportive, we get the feeling we shouldn’t feel pity for either of them. Miles is in such a rut and yet still notoriously sarcastic, pitiful and righteous in everything he does we hope he might act up if he just gets laid too.

Alexander Payne’s film is darkly funny in this way, overwrought and pretentious at times but sincere and touching in a way we wouldn’t expect.

“Sideways” is a wonderfully well-crafted love story and coming of age drama for a group of middle aged men little seen in the movies. Miles and Jack’s courtships with the locals Maya (Virginia Madsen) and Stephanie (Sandra Oh) are lovingly relatable.

In one instant Miles can give a crash course on snobbish wine tasting, systematically examining its smell and its color before hilariously berating Jack for chewing gum. But contrast that with his and Maya’s theories on when a bottle of wine is at its best: even drunk they are mature adults capable of generating thoughtful metaphors on how drinking reflects mortality and the possibility of missing out on life’s luster and flavor if you don’t enjoy it at its peak.

“Sideways” matches its characters’ level of pretension with a trendy window panel montage and a jazzy soundtrack. It stays distant from these people and their tendency to embarrass themselves, and in the process finds pitch perfect comedy in some wonderful set pieces on the side of a hill, on a golf course and in the house of a local couple having sex.

This is a terrifically heart wrenching, intelligent and sincere film with a great ending that doesn’t last a second too long. Its tricky characters may be an acquired taste, but my pallet has developed the maturity to appreciate their charms.

4 stars

The Descendants

“The Descendants” is a complex family drama that provides lots of inner details without ever delving into them and becoming bloated

“The Descendants” is a film filled with bitterness, resentment and judgment. And yes, I would say it’s a comedy and that it’s quite lovely.

If the film’s idyllic Hawaiian setting or quirky indie comedy trailers seem deceptive, that is exactly the point. “The Descendants” is a film about appearances, and with each character there is a long lineage of Hawaiian heritage who show us that with every meeting and action, we carry along with us emotional baggage and sins of the past that skew our perception of the present.

We want to be honest about the here and now, but in others we only see the past. Sometimes what we see seems unfamiliar, and it’s tough to forgive. Continue reading “The Descendants”