![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Review: Happiness (1998)
This movie was messed up but really good. Wow. I would recommend it, but only to certain people. I can see some people watching this and being totally disgusted because there are SO MANY trigger and content warnings in this movie.
Otherwise, the writing was terrific, the story was interesting, the acting is great, and the way the movie was edited was just really interesting.
Spoilers.
There was so much going on this movie. Truth be told, this write up is more of a first impressions write up than a comprehensive review, but I will try to be as comprehensive as possible with the thoughts that were flying through my mind during this movie. I am sure that I'll still be thinking a lot about this movie after I've posted this.
Story
The movie follows a family of two parents and three daughters, and their associates, and their struggles with happiness, and more specifically, love.
I jumped onto /r/TrueFilm to see what people thought of this movie. While it is a black comedy-drama as Wikipedia calls it, I was surprised to find out that some people found this movie absolutely hilarious and hysterical. What made me find this movie comedic was the direction style and the editing choices (music and such), rather than the dialogue. To be fair, I could see the comedy in a lot of the story lines, EXCEPT for Bill's story line. That was the one story line that I found far too heavy to laugh at.
I'm going to do a quick overview of the story lines. I realized that I probably have a lot more to say in the characters section so I will avoid overcrowding this section.
Trish was the eldest sister of the family and she seemed to have been living the perfect life with a successful husband and three kids. However, her husband was actually a pedophile and a rapist. In the end, she left her husband for obvious reasons, but it seemed she recovered pretty quickly, being perfectly happy by the end of the movie.
Helen was the middle sister, and she was a famous writer. Her neighbour Allen was attracted to her, and he only got the nerve to talk to her by prank calling her and saying extremely sexual things to her, which interested Helen. However, after Allen finally visited her in person, Helen realized that she wasn't attracted to him.
Allen himself was also constantly being approached by another neighbour on their floor, Kristina, who was later revealed to have killed their doorman because he'd raped her. That being said, Allen and Katrina did seem to have built up something of a relationship, that is, before Katrina got arrested.
Joy was the youngest daughter. She was a romantic but extremely unlucky in love. The movie started with Joy breaking up with her boyfriend. He took it very badly, and he later committed suicide, stating her as the reason. She quit her job and started teaching at an immigration center because she wanted to do some good. There, one of her students Vlad started getting close to her, but Joy later realized that he was only using her to get money. Joy ended up quitting her job and breaking ties with Vlad.
The daughters' parents were also going through relationship troubles of their own. The father Lenny said that he wanted to be on his own. His wife Mona thought that he was in love with someone else, but even when approached by a woman who liked him romantically and sexually, Lenny wasn't aroused. He just didn't want to be in a relationship.
As for Mona, she struggled with not being wanted, but she later met some people who were divorcees, and I assume they helped give her a new outlook on life.
All of these stories were crafted so well, and what also impressed me was how detailed and thoughtful the dialogue was. For example, there was a scene in which Johnny Grasso's dad Joe was confiding in Bill that he thought his son was gay. The conversation was so incredibly layered because both parties were thinking certain things, and the other guy would interpret their words in a completely other way. Bill was trying to assure Joe that nothing was set in stone, but even if Johnny was gay, there wasn't anything he could really do. Joe was thinking of hiring a female hooker to get Johnny into the idea of having sex with a woman and Bill was like "but he's only eleven." That part stuck out to me because there were so many interpretations to that. Joe's response was not what I expected lol. He figured that eleven was too old to change a kid's sexuality and that he could only accept it. The average person would think that eleven was way too young to be having sex. Meanwhile, Bill was absolutely taken with this eleven year old boy. There was just so much going on in this one conversation, and I love how many different ways it went.
I also really appreciated how well structured the story was. In a very short amount of time, I was able to grasp all of the family dynamics and who knew each other how. I will credit that to good writing with an organized structure.
Because this movie had so many story lines, it's hard to say what the final thesis was, as each of them reached different conclusions throughout their journeys. But this movie did ultimately end on a happy note, with the family gathering together happily, even if Billy did ruin it by awkwardly telling the adults that he finally came.
Production
I thought it was interesting how this movie with extremely dark topics was presented almost like a normal dramacomedy. For example, after a scene where Bill did really creepy things, we might get a shot of his house, like what we see in normal sitcoms. The music was also reminiscent of a family TV show. The juxtaposition was so wild to me, and it made this movie so incredibly interesting, because even though all of these stories are crazy, they are happening to "regular" people who come from families and live in homes and such.
The acting was terrific. All of the actors did such a good job with their characters. Dylan Baker played a creep so well, and Lara Flynn Boyle was so good as the totally pretentious Helen. The great all around acting made this such a good enesemble movie.
Characters
Trish
Trish was the oldest sister of the family. She seemed to have been living a perfect life. She was married to a successful husband and had three kids, and she was proud of it too.
According to her husband Bill's therapy sessions, I think he said that they weren't really having sex anymore, but that didn't really seem to bother Trish, even when she said she felt like she was being insecure and clingy.
Trish was also a bit condescending to her sisters, especially Joy, because she was so aimless in her life. She even told Joy that the family never thought she'd amount to anything, but she didn't even see it as a bad thing. It was something like ignorant condescension.
We didn't see Trish's immediate reactions to finding out about Bill being a pedphile rapist. We only saw her getting the packed up into the van. However, by the end of the movie, six months later, Trish seemed to have recovered rather well. She was already ready to start dating. Perhaps it was because Trish always found the most joy in being a mother, and she still had guardianship of her three kids, and that gave her enough motivation.
Bill
While Trish had probably one of the most optimistic journeys here, Bill definitely had the darkest timeline. Bill's timeline alone is responsible for why I found this movie so messed up, because otherwise, all of the other story lines were relatively tame and could even be considered comedic. For Bill's however, his story line was far too dark for me to find any of it ha-ha funny.
The first time we met Bill, he was opening a gun on couples at a park. The first couple I saw at the park was a gay couple, so I originally thought this was a popular meetup spot for gay couples and that Bill was a repressed gay man, but it turns out that it was just a normal park open to anyone, so that didn't hold up. But I think it was supposed to be a dream, as Bill explained to his therapist that the only thing different about this one was that he didn't kill himself. Perhaps this dream was the okay that pushed Bill to act on his pedophilia, because now he realized he didn't have to die.
Later we saw Bill buying a kids' magazine and jerking off to it. I originally thought that Bill was a closet pedophile who wouldn't hurt actual kids, because of how we were introduced to his relationship with his son. His son was asking him all sorts of questions about sex. There were at times when the conversation would go into uncomfortable territory (as most parent-child sex conversations do), but it usually didn't go further. Later, I realized that it was almost always Billy who stopped the conversation from going further and not Bill. So I was under the impression that Bill would not hurt actual kids, but that was proven false when he saw an opportunity to rape Johnny Grasso, and later Ronald Farber.
Bill and Billy's relationship was absolutely fascinating to me. What does Bill feel for Billy? Does he feel protective of him because he's his father? It's clear by the end that he doesn't, but I kept wondering during all those conversations they had about sex. In the one Reddit thread I read, someone mentioned that Billy simply wasn't Bill's type which was absolutley horrific to think about. But perhaps it did explain why Bill never really spoke to Billy differently from how an adult typically would with a kid.
That last conversation between Bill and Billy, wow. I didn't expect it to go where it did and yet it kept going further and further. I'm still glad that Billy asked the tough questions because I think he needed to know. Anyway, Bill admitted to Billy that he had done all the things he was accused of. Billy wanted to know in detail, and when Bill told him he made love to the kids, Billy didn't understand. That definitely added to the idea that Billy and his classmates were so young that they didn't even understand why people had sex. The final most damning question that Billy asked was whether his dad would do those things to him. I had expected Bill to say no, because Billy was his son. Bill said that he would've jerked off instead. Some people found it hilarious, but I didn't at all. In hindsight, I see the comedy in that, implying that Billy totally wasn't Bill's type. However, my initial interpretation was that Bill meant he would've jerked off to the sight of Billy, which horrified me because it meant that he still would've taken advantage of him and sexually abused him, but just not go all the way.
This is the single story line that messed me up the most. Every other story line in this movie has not had the impact that this story line had to me.
I guess it's safe to say that Bill was thrown in jail for his crimes, which is good and great, but wow, the way that we got to see Bill up close was so chilling. For Bill, his happiness was in hurting others, and unfortunately, that shit can under no circumstances fly.
Billy
I just wanted to talk a bit about Billy, because through Billy, we learned about Bill. Billy had typical preteen questions, asking about sex and such.
As I mentioned, that last scene where he asked his dad the tough questions was really intense. While some people thought the conversation was interesting or even hilarious, I couldn't help but think about how Billy was feeling. His father whom he trusted so much turned out to be a monster who would hurt all of his friends and him too. It was extremely jarring to find that out about his own father.
At the end of the movie, Billy finally ejaculated after watching a sunbather. I think it's supposed to be, like, funny? To Billy, I think it was like, a personal triumph, which I can understand would be the case for a preteen boy. But I also wonder if it's a sign of personal triumph for Billy, showing that he's moved on. He used to rely on his dad for guidance on sex and now he's discovering things on his own.
Helen
Helen was the middle daughter. She was a beautiful confident woman, and a famous writer. On the surface, she was beautiful and mysterious, but as we got to know her, we see that she's like, fake pretentious lol.
Helen would complain about how HARD it was to be soooo loved by men, probably sort of rubbing it in the face of Joy, who was so unlucky with love. Helen had a lot of lovers, and she would bemoan the fact that nobody loved her for her mind. She wanted an emotional connection with someone, though I don't know if she really wants that.
At one point, Helen felt so frustrated because she thought that her poetry was superficial. She'd written poems about trauma despite not having experienced trauma herself. It was definitely very ironic (and terrible) to wish that she'd been raped as a child so that she would have had something to write about. So I wonder if she only wanted the experience of love so that she could have something to talk about, but even then, I couldn't imagine her actually falling in love because of how self-absorbed she is.
Her neighbour Allen was very attracted to her, but she would not give him the time of day, probably because he wasn't super attractive himself. One day he called her and said something super sexual to her (which is his...hobby). That intrigued Helen a lot, and she would not stop calling him back. I'm not sure that Helen was interested in Allen, I think she was just really interested in the idea of someone doing something messed up because at least she could write about it.
Because Helen would not stop calling Allen, he finally showed up at her door, and obviously Helen was incredibly let down because she wasn't attracted to him at all. People always say that they don't care about physical attraction, but that's just not true a lot of the time. Helen was complaining about no one connecting with her emotionally, but it wasn't that she wanted it over physical attraction. She wanted emotional connection on top of physical attraction.
At the end of the movie, Helen was back to being herself, and she was helping her mom and sisters find guys to date. She was telling her family about Pedro's dismembered body being found in Kristina's freezer, and Helen was saying how it was such a pity that she never really got to know Kristina. Joy mentioned that maybe Helen could write a poem about it, and Helen laughed in her face, even though it wasn't funny.
We know why Helen is laughing though. Helen is fake deep who likes to think that she cares about who people are on the inside, but she is so incredibly superficial. She wants to believe that she's a romantic, but she very is not. Helen's thing is that she wants to suffer because she thinks it would make her interesting. I can't imagine her falling in love because I feel like Helen would just find another thing to complain about, or she would cause some fake drama or twist everything to make it about herself. She wants to be in pain so bad so that she can write things about it and so that people can praise her for being such a tortured artist. I thought it was really interesting how this movie broke down her facade to show that she was a phony. She was so afraid of being a phony because she is.
Allen
Allen was a neighbour who was very attracted to Helen. However, I don't think he ever felt anything more than sexual attraction to her. Allen had a habit of calling anonymous women and jerking off while he spoke to them. At one point, he called Joy, which is ironic because Helen wanted to introduce him to Joy at the end of the movie.
I think Allen was thrown off course when Helen kept calling back because no one ever does. Why would they? Allen was harassing them. But of course, we know Helen wants the drama.
Meanwhile, Kristina, another neighbour on the floor, would keep approaching Allen. I'm not sure if Kristina was actually crushing on Allen, or whether he was the only man who she could talk to on a regular basis. They had a date, where Kristina confessed that she'd actually killed Pedro, but Allen just seemed like he didn't know how to respond instead of completely freaking out. What I think was one of the keys of this conversation was that Kristina said she didn't want sex, and it's clear that Allen never had sexual attraction for her.
After Allen's awkward in-person meeting with Helen, he went over to Kristina's apartment, and they just lied down on the bed. I think Allen realized that just because he doesn't want to have sex with Kristina doesn't mean that she has no place in his life. They could be just friends, that's cool too.
I don't know if Allen's going to grow out his sexual harassing via calling strangers on the phone though. That does have to go.
With regards to Allen and his relationship with happiness, I think this movie documented his realization that life and love was not just about sex. That he could enjoy things that were not sexual in nature.
Kristina
Kristina was a neighbour on the same floor as Helen and Allen. He would keep coming to Allen's apartment, looking for reasons to talk to him, and Allen would brush him off. One time he got super angry that she went into his apartment, but they later made up when they agreed to go on a date.
It was interesting that Kristina and Allen had that slow dance. It really looked like they were enjoying it, just being close to another person. I think it was a good experience for them both and helped them warm up and open up to each other.
Kristina revealed to Allen that he had actually killed the doorman, because he had raped her. That was obviously very traumatizing, especially since Kristina said she herself did not like sex at all (so I guess on the spectrum of asexuality). I felt like the movie tried to put a comedic spin onto the story line with the whole murder and dismembering stuff, but that rape scene, even just the narration of it was very rough.
Pedro was taking advantage of Kristina, 100%. He knew that Kristina was likely a lonely woman. No one was looking out for her, and he probably expected her to give in to him easily. That didn't happen though, and to get Pedro away from her permanently, Kristina snapped his neck and killed him.
The dismemberment is where I think the show tried to make the situation surreal and funny. I don't know Kristina enough to be able to discern whether that would be in line with her character. Presumably she dismembered him in an act of self protection because more than anything she just didn't want Pedro to exist ever again.
It was revealed that Kristina was caught. We don't know how she was caught, but I guess it isn't important.
For Kristina, she only ever wanted company. She said that she didn't want sex, which I can see turning people off, unfortunately. And Kristina acknowledges that she's not traditionally pretty like what most dudes wish for. She said that she always tried to be nice to the doormen, and I sympathize with that. The doormen are the only people, the only guys, who probably talk to her. Even if it's just a greeting, even if they're paid to pay attention to her, she will take that chance in case any one of them starts to see her for herself and not just how she isn't pretty.
Joy
Joy was the youngest daughter. She was sensitive and timid, but because of that, she was often unlucky in life.
At the beginning of the movie, she broke up with her boyfriend Andy, who took it extremely badly. After their first date, he'd bought her something incredibly expensive, and he took it back because he was so incredibly bitter about the breakup. Of course, he insisted that he was like fine champagne and Joy was and always will be shit.
When Joy was working in her job in telephone sales, she found out that Andy committed suicide, which upset her. Andy's mother had called her saying incredibly mean things to her, as Andy's suicide note had named her specifically as the reason for his death. Apparently Andy used to work at the same place as Joy. After Joy told her coworkers that Andy died, they were super preoccupied by trying to remember who Andy was, and which celebrity he looked like, and meanwhile, Joy was sobbing. Despite having broken up with Andy, she remained the person who seemed the most sympathetic to him. I don't doubt that like Kristina, Joy is nice to everybody because she's lonely, but unfortunately for Joy, she attracts the bad ones because she's nice to everyone and so naive and unsuspecting.
Joy quit her job in telephone sales, wanting to be a teacher at an immigration support center. I only found this out later, but she was a substitute for a teacher who was on strike, which was what all that strike and scab business was about.
One of her students, Vlad, started getting close to her. Vlad was a taxi driver, and one time he saw Joy very sad, and he spent time with her and drove her all the way from New York back to New Jersey. He came into her house, and he had sex with her and left, and never went to class again.
Later it was revealed that Vlad was actually married, and his wife was very upset that Joy had slept with him, which of course was a bit unfair to Joy because she didn't know.
Anyway, Joy went to apologize to Vlad's wife Zhenia, and she was invited into Vlad's house, where she saw that he'd stolen her CD player and her guitar. He was also very dismissive towards Zhenia and said that they weren't married (though Zhenia was obviously very devoted to Vlad). And later, Vlad asked to borrow money. Joy agreed on the condition that Vlad would return her CD player and guitar.
The experience definitely left Joy very jaded, but she took the $500 she "lent" Vlad as a parting fee, as a price to pay to cut her off from Vlad. Joy also said that she was planning to leave her job at the immigration center because she was starting to sympathize with the strikers.
I think Joy felt that her sense of romanticism was putting her in very dangerous positions. She was vulnerable to be taken advantage of, as she was by Vlad, or she allowed herself to be stepped on, as Andy did. As for her job at the immigration center, I think Joy realized that doing good could hurt her, seeing as how the strikers would throw things at her, and how she even got attacked because of someone she met at the lessons.
At the end of the movie, Helen wanted to introdue Joy to someone, asking whether she would prefer that he call her or that she call him. Joy said that she would call, which basically gave her an out because she didn't necessarily have to make that call. I think that at this point, Joy was taking a break from relationships, or she realized that relationships were maybe not the best thing for someone like her, and she seemed perfectly happy about it.
Vlad
Vlad was a scumbag. I got such bad vibes when he walked into Joy's house, because he was looking in all of the cupboards, apprising the place. He even said that he used to be a thief, so I don't know why Joy wasn't already on her toes.
Anyway, he was a scumbag who cared not for his wife who was extremely devoted to him, and he probably gave her that black eye. Joy saw who Vlad really was, which was nothing more than a cheat. He was not interested in Joy, he just saw that she was a wealthy and lonely woman.
Lenny
Lenny was the daughters' father. He wanted to split up with Mona, and it was a running "joke" that he never used the word divorce. His wife Mona suspected that he wanted to get with their neighbour Diane, but Lenny didn't seem attracted to her. He even tries to have sex, but he doesn't feel anything. At the end of the movie, he tells his family that he isn't looking into dating, and that's the truth. Like it is with Joy and maybe even Helen, I think he understands that a romantic relationship isn't the basis of happiness.
Mona
Mona was very rattled when her husband wanted to split up with her. They'd been married for forty years, so I think it was more that Mona was not used to this new kind of life.
The real estate agent, who was a divorced woman herself, eased her in to the new single life, though we didn't get to see a lot of what reassured Mona.
By the end of the movie, Mona was ready to start dating again, showing that she was now comfortable with this new setup she had with her family.
Themes
There are probably a lot more themes than I could think of in this movie, but I think that I was just so caught up in the individual characters.
Working for happiness
Trish was talking shit about Joy behind her back to Bill, saying that Joy was lazy and didn't work for happiness. We don't know how much or how little Joy worked for her music career, but I don't know that Joy is a lazy person. She did try to do things to reach her dream, like changing her job because she wanted to help people.
It's hard to say that happiness is something you can work for. Trish is definitely looking back on her own luck and mistaking it for hard work. And not everyone's definition of happiness is something that can be achieved through hard work. In fact, in many cases, it cannot be.
For many of the characters in this movie, I felt that this movie was more about them coming to the realization of what happiness meant for each of them, but that attaining happiness was actually not as difficult. Happiness can come from enjoying the state you're in. Despite being a romantic, Joy can enjoy that there are benefits to being single. Despite longing to be a tormented soul, Helen probably enjoys the attention she gets to some extent.
Hiding yourself
Is it better to hide who you are to make the people around you happy? I think this movie says that the world says yes even if it wants to say no.
If Bill hid his attraction to children, he would not be going around hurting children and his own family. If Allen had hid who he was, then Helen would probably find him more fascinating.
But I think this movie has also tried to express that people will be okay even if their hearts are broken. Trish was hurt by Bill's revelation, but she can get over it with the help of her family. Joy was hurt by the men she thought were giving her the good kind of attention, but she's recovered from it. That happy ending at the end of the movie does give me hope that this movie isn't just dark topic after dark topic, though the way it ended with Billy's sexual revelation did dampen the mood a lot.
Overall
This was an excellent movie. It is definitely not for everybody because of how dark the topics are, and it might actually be triggering to people.
But I really liked the unique way that Todd Solondz approached these controversial topics, and portrayed them in a way that was easier to grasp. The dialogue was very well crafted and not in a pretentious way either.
The overall production quality of the movie was great as well. It looked good, and the actors were terrific.
Otherwise, the writing was terrific, the story was interesting, the acting is great, and the way the movie was edited was just really interesting.
Spoilers.
There was so much going on this movie. Truth be told, this write up is more of a first impressions write up than a comprehensive review, but I will try to be as comprehensive as possible with the thoughts that were flying through my mind during this movie. I am sure that I'll still be thinking a lot about this movie after I've posted this.
Story
The movie follows a family of two parents and three daughters, and their associates, and their struggles with happiness, and more specifically, love.
I jumped onto /r/TrueFilm to see what people thought of this movie. While it is a black comedy-drama as Wikipedia calls it, I was surprised to find out that some people found this movie absolutely hilarious and hysterical. What made me find this movie comedic was the direction style and the editing choices (music and such), rather than the dialogue. To be fair, I could see the comedy in a lot of the story lines, EXCEPT for Bill's story line. That was the one story line that I found far too heavy to laugh at.
I'm going to do a quick overview of the story lines. I realized that I probably have a lot more to say in the characters section so I will avoid overcrowding this section.
Trish was the eldest sister of the family and she seemed to have been living the perfect life with a successful husband and three kids. However, her husband was actually a pedophile and a rapist. In the end, she left her husband for obvious reasons, but it seemed she recovered pretty quickly, being perfectly happy by the end of the movie.
Helen was the middle sister, and she was a famous writer. Her neighbour Allen was attracted to her, and he only got the nerve to talk to her by prank calling her and saying extremely sexual things to her, which interested Helen. However, after Allen finally visited her in person, Helen realized that she wasn't attracted to him.
Allen himself was also constantly being approached by another neighbour on their floor, Kristina, who was later revealed to have killed their doorman because he'd raped her. That being said, Allen and Katrina did seem to have built up something of a relationship, that is, before Katrina got arrested.
Joy was the youngest daughter. She was a romantic but extremely unlucky in love. The movie started with Joy breaking up with her boyfriend. He took it very badly, and he later committed suicide, stating her as the reason. She quit her job and started teaching at an immigration center because she wanted to do some good. There, one of her students Vlad started getting close to her, but Joy later realized that he was only using her to get money. Joy ended up quitting her job and breaking ties with Vlad.
The daughters' parents were also going through relationship troubles of their own. The father Lenny said that he wanted to be on his own. His wife Mona thought that he was in love with someone else, but even when approached by a woman who liked him romantically and sexually, Lenny wasn't aroused. He just didn't want to be in a relationship.
As for Mona, she struggled with not being wanted, but she later met some people who were divorcees, and I assume they helped give her a new outlook on life.
All of these stories were crafted so well, and what also impressed me was how detailed and thoughtful the dialogue was. For example, there was a scene in which Johnny Grasso's dad Joe was confiding in Bill that he thought his son was gay. The conversation was so incredibly layered because both parties were thinking certain things, and the other guy would interpret their words in a completely other way. Bill was trying to assure Joe that nothing was set in stone, but even if Johnny was gay, there wasn't anything he could really do. Joe was thinking of hiring a female hooker to get Johnny into the idea of having sex with a woman and Bill was like "but he's only eleven." That part stuck out to me because there were so many interpretations to that. Joe's response was not what I expected lol. He figured that eleven was too old to change a kid's sexuality and that he could only accept it. The average person would think that eleven was way too young to be having sex. Meanwhile, Bill was absolutely taken with this eleven year old boy. There was just so much going on in this one conversation, and I love how many different ways it went.
I also really appreciated how well structured the story was. In a very short amount of time, I was able to grasp all of the family dynamics and who knew each other how. I will credit that to good writing with an organized structure.
Because this movie had so many story lines, it's hard to say what the final thesis was, as each of them reached different conclusions throughout their journeys. But this movie did ultimately end on a happy note, with the family gathering together happily, even if Billy did ruin it by awkwardly telling the adults that he finally came.
Production
I thought it was interesting how this movie with extremely dark topics was presented almost like a normal dramacomedy. For example, after a scene where Bill did really creepy things, we might get a shot of his house, like what we see in normal sitcoms. The music was also reminiscent of a family TV show. The juxtaposition was so wild to me, and it made this movie so incredibly interesting, because even though all of these stories are crazy, they are happening to "regular" people who come from families and live in homes and such.
The acting was terrific. All of the actors did such a good job with their characters. Dylan Baker played a creep so well, and Lara Flynn Boyle was so good as the totally pretentious Helen. The great all around acting made this such a good enesemble movie.
Characters
Trish
Trish was the oldest sister of the family. She seemed to have been living a perfect life. She was married to a successful husband and had three kids, and she was proud of it too.
According to her husband Bill's therapy sessions, I think he said that they weren't really having sex anymore, but that didn't really seem to bother Trish, even when she said she felt like she was being insecure and clingy.
Trish was also a bit condescending to her sisters, especially Joy, because she was so aimless in her life. She even told Joy that the family never thought she'd amount to anything, but she didn't even see it as a bad thing. It was something like ignorant condescension.
We didn't see Trish's immediate reactions to finding out about Bill being a pedphile rapist. We only saw her getting the packed up into the van. However, by the end of the movie, six months later, Trish seemed to have recovered rather well. She was already ready to start dating. Perhaps it was because Trish always found the most joy in being a mother, and she still had guardianship of her three kids, and that gave her enough motivation.
Bill
While Trish had probably one of the most optimistic journeys here, Bill definitely had the darkest timeline. Bill's timeline alone is responsible for why I found this movie so messed up, because otherwise, all of the other story lines were relatively tame and could even be considered comedic. For Bill's however, his story line was far too dark for me to find any of it ha-ha funny.
The first time we met Bill, he was opening a gun on couples at a park. The first couple I saw at the park was a gay couple, so I originally thought this was a popular meetup spot for gay couples and that Bill was a repressed gay man, but it turns out that it was just a normal park open to anyone, so that didn't hold up. But I think it was supposed to be a dream, as Bill explained to his therapist that the only thing different about this one was that he didn't kill himself. Perhaps this dream was the okay that pushed Bill to act on his pedophilia, because now he realized he didn't have to die.
Later we saw Bill buying a kids' magazine and jerking off to it. I originally thought that Bill was a closet pedophile who wouldn't hurt actual kids, because of how we were introduced to his relationship with his son. His son was asking him all sorts of questions about sex. There were at times when the conversation would go into uncomfortable territory (as most parent-child sex conversations do), but it usually didn't go further. Later, I realized that it was almost always Billy who stopped the conversation from going further and not Bill. So I was under the impression that Bill would not hurt actual kids, but that was proven false when he saw an opportunity to rape Johnny Grasso, and later Ronald Farber.
Bill and Billy's relationship was absolutely fascinating to me. What does Bill feel for Billy? Does he feel protective of him because he's his father? It's clear by the end that he doesn't, but I kept wondering during all those conversations they had about sex. In the one Reddit thread I read, someone mentioned that Billy simply wasn't Bill's type which was absolutley horrific to think about. But perhaps it did explain why Bill never really spoke to Billy differently from how an adult typically would with a kid.
That last conversation between Bill and Billy, wow. I didn't expect it to go where it did and yet it kept going further and further. I'm still glad that Billy asked the tough questions because I think he needed to know. Anyway, Bill admitted to Billy that he had done all the things he was accused of. Billy wanted to know in detail, and when Bill told him he made love to the kids, Billy didn't understand. That definitely added to the idea that Billy and his classmates were so young that they didn't even understand why people had sex. The final most damning question that Billy asked was whether his dad would do those things to him. I had expected Bill to say no, because Billy was his son. Bill said that he would've jerked off instead. Some people found it hilarious, but I didn't at all. In hindsight, I see the comedy in that, implying that Billy totally wasn't Bill's type. However, my initial interpretation was that Bill meant he would've jerked off to the sight of Billy, which horrified me because it meant that he still would've taken advantage of him and sexually abused him, but just not go all the way.
This is the single story line that messed me up the most. Every other story line in this movie has not had the impact that this story line had to me.
I guess it's safe to say that Bill was thrown in jail for his crimes, which is good and great, but wow, the way that we got to see Bill up close was so chilling. For Bill, his happiness was in hurting others, and unfortunately, that shit can under no circumstances fly.
Billy
I just wanted to talk a bit about Billy, because through Billy, we learned about Bill. Billy had typical preteen questions, asking about sex and such.
As I mentioned, that last scene where he asked his dad the tough questions was really intense. While some people thought the conversation was interesting or even hilarious, I couldn't help but think about how Billy was feeling. His father whom he trusted so much turned out to be a monster who would hurt all of his friends and him too. It was extremely jarring to find that out about his own father.
At the end of the movie, Billy finally ejaculated after watching a sunbather. I think it's supposed to be, like, funny? To Billy, I think it was like, a personal triumph, which I can understand would be the case for a preteen boy. But I also wonder if it's a sign of personal triumph for Billy, showing that he's moved on. He used to rely on his dad for guidance on sex and now he's discovering things on his own.
Helen
Helen was the middle daughter. She was a beautiful confident woman, and a famous writer. On the surface, she was beautiful and mysterious, but as we got to know her, we see that she's like, fake pretentious lol.
Helen would complain about how HARD it was to be soooo loved by men, probably sort of rubbing it in the face of Joy, who was so unlucky with love. Helen had a lot of lovers, and she would bemoan the fact that nobody loved her for her mind. She wanted an emotional connection with someone, though I don't know if she really wants that.
At one point, Helen felt so frustrated because she thought that her poetry was superficial. She'd written poems about trauma despite not having experienced trauma herself. It was definitely very ironic (and terrible) to wish that she'd been raped as a child so that she would have had something to write about. So I wonder if she only wanted the experience of love so that she could have something to talk about, but even then, I couldn't imagine her actually falling in love because of how self-absorbed she is.
Her neighbour Allen was very attracted to her, but she would not give him the time of day, probably because he wasn't super attractive himself. One day he called her and said something super sexual to her (which is his...hobby). That intrigued Helen a lot, and she would not stop calling him back. I'm not sure that Helen was interested in Allen, I think she was just really interested in the idea of someone doing something messed up because at least she could write about it.
Because Helen would not stop calling Allen, he finally showed up at her door, and obviously Helen was incredibly let down because she wasn't attracted to him at all. People always say that they don't care about physical attraction, but that's just not true a lot of the time. Helen was complaining about no one connecting with her emotionally, but it wasn't that she wanted it over physical attraction. She wanted emotional connection on top of physical attraction.
At the end of the movie, Helen was back to being herself, and she was helping her mom and sisters find guys to date. She was telling her family about Pedro's dismembered body being found in Kristina's freezer, and Helen was saying how it was such a pity that she never really got to know Kristina. Joy mentioned that maybe Helen could write a poem about it, and Helen laughed in her face, even though it wasn't funny.
We know why Helen is laughing though. Helen is fake deep who likes to think that she cares about who people are on the inside, but she is so incredibly superficial. She wants to believe that she's a romantic, but she very is not. Helen's thing is that she wants to suffer because she thinks it would make her interesting. I can't imagine her falling in love because I feel like Helen would just find another thing to complain about, or she would cause some fake drama or twist everything to make it about herself. She wants to be in pain so bad so that she can write things about it and so that people can praise her for being such a tortured artist. I thought it was really interesting how this movie broke down her facade to show that she was a phony. She was so afraid of being a phony because she is.
Allen
Allen was a neighbour who was very attracted to Helen. However, I don't think he ever felt anything more than sexual attraction to her. Allen had a habit of calling anonymous women and jerking off while he spoke to them. At one point, he called Joy, which is ironic because Helen wanted to introduce him to Joy at the end of the movie.
I think Allen was thrown off course when Helen kept calling back because no one ever does. Why would they? Allen was harassing them. But of course, we know Helen wants the drama.
Meanwhile, Kristina, another neighbour on the floor, would keep approaching Allen. I'm not sure if Kristina was actually crushing on Allen, or whether he was the only man who she could talk to on a regular basis. They had a date, where Kristina confessed that she'd actually killed Pedro, but Allen just seemed like he didn't know how to respond instead of completely freaking out. What I think was one of the keys of this conversation was that Kristina said she didn't want sex, and it's clear that Allen never had sexual attraction for her.
After Allen's awkward in-person meeting with Helen, he went over to Kristina's apartment, and they just lied down on the bed. I think Allen realized that just because he doesn't want to have sex with Kristina doesn't mean that she has no place in his life. They could be just friends, that's cool too.
I don't know if Allen's going to grow out his sexual harassing via calling strangers on the phone though. That does have to go.
With regards to Allen and his relationship with happiness, I think this movie documented his realization that life and love was not just about sex. That he could enjoy things that were not sexual in nature.
Kristina
Kristina was a neighbour on the same floor as Helen and Allen. He would keep coming to Allen's apartment, looking for reasons to talk to him, and Allen would brush him off. One time he got super angry that she went into his apartment, but they later made up when they agreed to go on a date.
It was interesting that Kristina and Allen had that slow dance. It really looked like they were enjoying it, just being close to another person. I think it was a good experience for them both and helped them warm up and open up to each other.
Kristina revealed to Allen that he had actually killed the doorman, because he had raped her. That was obviously very traumatizing, especially since Kristina said she herself did not like sex at all (so I guess on the spectrum of asexuality). I felt like the movie tried to put a comedic spin onto the story line with the whole murder and dismembering stuff, but that rape scene, even just the narration of it was very rough.
Pedro was taking advantage of Kristina, 100%. He knew that Kristina was likely a lonely woman. No one was looking out for her, and he probably expected her to give in to him easily. That didn't happen though, and to get Pedro away from her permanently, Kristina snapped his neck and killed him.
The dismemberment is where I think the show tried to make the situation surreal and funny. I don't know Kristina enough to be able to discern whether that would be in line with her character. Presumably she dismembered him in an act of self protection because more than anything she just didn't want Pedro to exist ever again.
It was revealed that Kristina was caught. We don't know how she was caught, but I guess it isn't important.
For Kristina, she only ever wanted company. She said that she didn't want sex, which I can see turning people off, unfortunately. And Kristina acknowledges that she's not traditionally pretty like what most dudes wish for. She said that she always tried to be nice to the doormen, and I sympathize with that. The doormen are the only people, the only guys, who probably talk to her. Even if it's just a greeting, even if they're paid to pay attention to her, she will take that chance in case any one of them starts to see her for herself and not just how she isn't pretty.
Joy
Joy was the youngest daughter. She was sensitive and timid, but because of that, she was often unlucky in life.
At the beginning of the movie, she broke up with her boyfriend Andy, who took it extremely badly. After their first date, he'd bought her something incredibly expensive, and he took it back because he was so incredibly bitter about the breakup. Of course, he insisted that he was like fine champagne and Joy was and always will be shit.
When Joy was working in her job in telephone sales, she found out that Andy committed suicide, which upset her. Andy's mother had called her saying incredibly mean things to her, as Andy's suicide note had named her specifically as the reason for his death. Apparently Andy used to work at the same place as Joy. After Joy told her coworkers that Andy died, they were super preoccupied by trying to remember who Andy was, and which celebrity he looked like, and meanwhile, Joy was sobbing. Despite having broken up with Andy, she remained the person who seemed the most sympathetic to him. I don't doubt that like Kristina, Joy is nice to everybody because she's lonely, but unfortunately for Joy, she attracts the bad ones because she's nice to everyone and so naive and unsuspecting.
Joy quit her job in telephone sales, wanting to be a teacher at an immigration support center. I only found this out later, but she was a substitute for a teacher who was on strike, which was what all that strike and scab business was about.
One of her students, Vlad, started getting close to her. Vlad was a taxi driver, and one time he saw Joy very sad, and he spent time with her and drove her all the way from New York back to New Jersey. He came into her house, and he had sex with her and left, and never went to class again.
Later it was revealed that Vlad was actually married, and his wife was very upset that Joy had slept with him, which of course was a bit unfair to Joy because she didn't know.
Anyway, Joy went to apologize to Vlad's wife Zhenia, and she was invited into Vlad's house, where she saw that he'd stolen her CD player and her guitar. He was also very dismissive towards Zhenia and said that they weren't married (though Zhenia was obviously very devoted to Vlad). And later, Vlad asked to borrow money. Joy agreed on the condition that Vlad would return her CD player and guitar.
The experience definitely left Joy very jaded, but she took the $500 she "lent" Vlad as a parting fee, as a price to pay to cut her off from Vlad. Joy also said that she was planning to leave her job at the immigration center because she was starting to sympathize with the strikers.
I think Joy felt that her sense of romanticism was putting her in very dangerous positions. She was vulnerable to be taken advantage of, as she was by Vlad, or she allowed herself to be stepped on, as Andy did. As for her job at the immigration center, I think Joy realized that doing good could hurt her, seeing as how the strikers would throw things at her, and how she even got attacked because of someone she met at the lessons.
At the end of the movie, Helen wanted to introdue Joy to someone, asking whether she would prefer that he call her or that she call him. Joy said that she would call, which basically gave her an out because she didn't necessarily have to make that call. I think that at this point, Joy was taking a break from relationships, or she realized that relationships were maybe not the best thing for someone like her, and she seemed perfectly happy about it.
Vlad
Vlad was a scumbag. I got such bad vibes when he walked into Joy's house, because he was looking in all of the cupboards, apprising the place. He even said that he used to be a thief, so I don't know why Joy wasn't already on her toes.
Anyway, he was a scumbag who cared not for his wife who was extremely devoted to him, and he probably gave her that black eye. Joy saw who Vlad really was, which was nothing more than a cheat. He was not interested in Joy, he just saw that she was a wealthy and lonely woman.
Lenny
Lenny was the daughters' father. He wanted to split up with Mona, and it was a running "joke" that he never used the word divorce. His wife Mona suspected that he wanted to get with their neighbour Diane, but Lenny didn't seem attracted to her. He even tries to have sex, but he doesn't feel anything. At the end of the movie, he tells his family that he isn't looking into dating, and that's the truth. Like it is with Joy and maybe even Helen, I think he understands that a romantic relationship isn't the basis of happiness.
Mona
Mona was very rattled when her husband wanted to split up with her. They'd been married for forty years, so I think it was more that Mona was not used to this new kind of life.
The real estate agent, who was a divorced woman herself, eased her in to the new single life, though we didn't get to see a lot of what reassured Mona.
By the end of the movie, Mona was ready to start dating again, showing that she was now comfortable with this new setup she had with her family.
Themes
There are probably a lot more themes than I could think of in this movie, but I think that I was just so caught up in the individual characters.
Working for happiness
Trish was talking shit about Joy behind her back to Bill, saying that Joy was lazy and didn't work for happiness. We don't know how much or how little Joy worked for her music career, but I don't know that Joy is a lazy person. She did try to do things to reach her dream, like changing her job because she wanted to help people.
It's hard to say that happiness is something you can work for. Trish is definitely looking back on her own luck and mistaking it for hard work. And not everyone's definition of happiness is something that can be achieved through hard work. In fact, in many cases, it cannot be.
For many of the characters in this movie, I felt that this movie was more about them coming to the realization of what happiness meant for each of them, but that attaining happiness was actually not as difficult. Happiness can come from enjoying the state you're in. Despite being a romantic, Joy can enjoy that there are benefits to being single. Despite longing to be a tormented soul, Helen probably enjoys the attention she gets to some extent.
Hiding yourself
Is it better to hide who you are to make the people around you happy? I think this movie says that the world says yes even if it wants to say no.
If Bill hid his attraction to children, he would not be going around hurting children and his own family. If Allen had hid who he was, then Helen would probably find him more fascinating.
But I think this movie has also tried to express that people will be okay even if their hearts are broken. Trish was hurt by Bill's revelation, but she can get over it with the help of her family. Joy was hurt by the men she thought were giving her the good kind of attention, but she's recovered from it. That happy ending at the end of the movie does give me hope that this movie isn't just dark topic after dark topic, though the way it ended with Billy's sexual revelation did dampen the mood a lot.
Overall
This was an excellent movie. It is definitely not for everybody because of how dark the topics are, and it might actually be triggering to people.
But I really liked the unique way that Todd Solondz approached these controversial topics, and portrayed them in a way that was easier to grasp. The dialogue was very well crafted and not in a pretentious way either.
The overall production quality of the movie was great as well. It looked good, and the actors were terrific.