Palindromes and Welcome.

To elaborate, I have a bad habit of yelling at movies for being poorly written, directed badly, or for simply not living up to the genre or hype. 

I've put the post below on my first blog, and I did have this idea at the time only to get distracted. But now I've been exposed a myriad critics via their vlogs about movies, I've remembered how analytical I was about films. And now I'm critiquing these critics on their methods. Some gloss over so many points, others are so in depth you basically want to hold their opinion as the most correct one.

And if you think I have no background myself, you are wrong. My minor in university was Film and Video, so I have had some genuine education in this subject. I have essays. I may even post them here at some point.

So to begin, here is my review/critique of Todd Solondez's Palindromes. I might come back and do Welcome to the Dollhouse later.


Palindromes:

The unofficial sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse, Palindromes reintroduces us to the Weiner family, sadly at the funeral of Dawn, who has committed suicide. Terrified she'll end up exactly like Dawn, her 12 year old cousin Aviva becomes determined to bring a child into the world that will be loved and cherished. While she becomes successful in her mission, her over-protective mother convinces her to terminate the pregnancy, though the operation comes at a cost. The parents protect Aviva from the truth, and believing she can still be a mother, Aviva runs away from home, eventually coming to stay with Mama Sunshine at an orphanage for disabled, unwanted children. The father of the household becomes aware through the family doctor that Aviva is not as innocent as she first appears, but then neither is he. He has hired an assassin to execute abortion doctors, who ironically transpires to be the trucker Aviva slept with during her travels. Aviva accompanies him on the assassination of the doctor who terminated her pregnancy, but soon after the pair become separated in a dramatic conclusion to the crime and Aviva ends back at home. There she learns her cousin Mark, Dawn's geeky older brother, has been arrested for molesting his younger sister, Missy's, baby. Aviva once again meets up with the boy she lost her virginity to, this time certain she will be a mother.

Todd Solondez has an amazing talent for making us feel for characters that in reality would be spurned by society. Much like he did in Happiness, he creates a mood that connects us with the human side of these otherwise perverted and misguided people. Mark says to Aviva, people don't really change be they 13 or 50, essentially they come back to themselves and remain as they were when they began, hence the notion of palindromes. What differenciates Palindromes is that the character Aviva is played by several different young actresses, each giving fantastic performances as the ingenue desperately trying to become a mother against all odds, including her physical disadvantage. One particular actress became so mature in her demeanor, you could mistake her as a woman.

At the crux of the movie are the two main issues, abortion and pedophilia, and Solondez has brought all the key aspects of these themes to light, most importantly the human ones. Aviva is not a poster child for pro-life, nor is she the misguided and enamored participant Joseph Gorden-Levitt played in Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin. Despite her ignorance to the truth, she still has an immense understanding of the situation, concluding in her guise played by Jennifer Jason Lee that she knows her cousin is not a paedophile because a paedophile loves children. Only Solondez would bring this to the front, a fact neglected to be discussed in an issue as touchy as child molestation.

Powerful and painful, but with Solondez's usual penchant for tragic humour, Palindromes isn't a slap in the face so much as a careful reminder that there are human beings in the middle of these heated societal conundrums. Of course, nothing illegal is advocated, just presented in a light that makes us realise we are all human with the desire to love and be loved in spite of our darker aspects. Solondez has succeeded once again in bringing this home to the viewer, and Palindromes is worth the moments of discomfort and pain to reach this inalienable truth.