Life During Wartime: The Criterion Collection [Blu-ray] Reviews

A decade after uncomfortably entertaining audiences with Happiness, director-writer Todd Solondz revisits his characters in Life During Wartime. Unlike most sequels, however, he has cast completely different actors in all of the singular roles from the previous film, and that recasting in effect offers different shades and alternative interpretations to the people who both amused and revolted us in that earlier film. The film retains that droll sense of the absurd that Solondz is noted for, but the array of broken people struggling with their recovery is somewhat overwhelming in the film making it less interesting than the first movie. The themes of unhappiness and forgiveness are paramount in the film, but it’s cinema that questions deeply without providing even a clue to the answers making it thought-provoking to be sure but less satisfying than it should be.

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