Greenberg

Despite appearances, this film is a romance that celebrates the existence of true love. The film approaches this subject matter obliquely, and comically, but the impact is powerful.

Greenberg, a man "trying to do nothing", winds up caring. The only infelicitous choice here was making the basis of his cynicism, at least in large part, his pathology. This adds little to his struggle to overcome solipsism and detracts from his triumph.

Le Bonheur

It would be easy to dismiss this film as incredibly simple in its ambition, especially given how exhilarating Cléo from 5 to 7 is.

The film's flaccid subject matter is working class marital infidelity and it seems to condemn reckless male desire by demonstrating how tragic the consequences are if it goes unchecked.

But this is too easy a target for Varda. I want to believe that she's somehow satirizing this simplistic reproach of masculinity. I want to believe that she's complicating a sad vision of the world proposed by moralists who try to tighten their grip on other people's behavior. An ironic reading of this film, however, is implausible.

A more likely interpretation is that Varda wants to elevate the irritatingly trite content of this narrative by blessing it with cinematic splendor. This film is, if nothing else, a colorful experience.

Le bonheur

Un Conte de Noël

This is a schmaltz free French Royal Tenenbaums, and this film's virtue is that it never lets a single character become completely accounted for, as if everyone is continuously evolving or unraveling and exploring themselves throughout the drama. Indeed, self knowledge is a major theme of the film and the family's problems are to a certain extent based on the frustrating paradox of kindred mis-recognition (i.e. your family's known you forever but being around them only causes you to wonder how well they actually know you, and whether you even know yourself as well as you assume). In addition, the film's own numerous self-conscious peaks--the best of which is a family production of a play called Zorro while arch rival siblings torment each other a few floors above--raise the fascinating question that all wonderful cinema does: how much in our own lives is authentic? Are we merely fools on some social stage slavishly reciting scripted lines that seem appropriate? The other great lesson here is that mirth is sometimes buried beneath catastrophe, and only the French could avoid brutalizing this lesson with too much reconciliation or a high minded conclusion. Instead there's enough alcohol abuse and tobacco in this film to give the characters credibility but the right amount of confession and debate to keep them interesting.

Synecdoche, Happiness

'We're all alone' says the worn-down husband in Todd Solondz's "Happiness". More than a decade after this wry, melancholy film showcased Philip Seymour Hoffman as a repressed onanist he returns as Caden Cotard in the brilliant Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York.

Solitude is a central theme in Happiness, and as the misery of each character becomes increasingly developed it is obvious that Solondz's point is that the standard ways of coping with solitude are futile. By systematically exposing the emptiness and inauthenticity of marriage, household, career, literary art, care-free retirement, and self-improvement, it seems Solondz argues for a universal recognition of how pathetic we all really are. Seems pretty clear that Solondz wanted us to believe that no matter where we stand on the life cycle we're actually tumbling into tragic meaninglessness. I like it.

The supposed conclusion of happiness studies is that relative wealth and well-being produces the greatest self-reported happiness. Bullshit says the live metaphor in Kaufman's recent film. Happiness is not only unattainable, but a complete illusion, the grandest fiction which, in addition to love, exists only in the hyperbolic narratives that drench our vulnerable humanity from beginning to end. Try to win by controlling others, try to win by creating a controlled environment like a play, try to win by discerning order amidst chaos, and you only end up with maps that contain smaller maps that contain smaller maps...

In other words, the real synecdoche is Cotard-for-everbody, not his magnum opus for New York. We all derive assurance from stupid projects; if we could risk abstracting ourselves slightly then there's no telling how much more difficult (and then enjoyable) it all becomes. So the real reward comes from figuring out how to relate to each other despite the inauthentic scripts running amok in our consciousness, self-descriptions, and conversations.

Synecdoche New York