Friday, July 17, 2009
BOTTOM OF THE HEAP
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Todd Solondz'
Welcome to the Doll House (1995)
I remember this when it came around. It was highly praised but I just couldn't bring myself to watch a dark comedy about the most despised girl in her school. Everyone, teachers and kids, put Dawn down.
I am glad that I saw it today. It is actually LOL funny in many spots and it is very painful to watch.
Solondz pulls the situations to the near breaking point and never, ever falters. There is real pain here but it is relieved by laughs sometimes too dark to mention.
Dawn's family is the worst. The acting is so good though that I want to see more of them. The mother. God.
I lived enough of Dawn's life to identify with her. Perhaps everyone has such moments in intermediate school but Dawn has them all for us to see.
I was smart enough to suck up to the teachers and to protect myself with wit and a savage determination to detach from all the shit. I had no friends.
Dawn also has some relief. She has a crush. She has a good younger friend. A gay boy. She finds affection from another loner low bottom kid.
At times, her brother is nice to her.
And I liked this part of what Ebert wrote about it:
Scene after scene, "Welcome to the Dollhouse'' piles on its details, re-creating the acute daily misery of being an unpopular adolescent and remembering, too, how resilient a girl like Dawn can be--how self-absorbed, how hopeful, how philosophical, how enduring.Speaking from my own experience, this is exactly what happened. After high school, often, everything reverses. The down and outers win and the sports stars and cheeleaders lose.Dawn's revenge, we hope, is that someday she will be rich, famous and admired, while the snotty little cheerleaders who persecuted her will have been sucked into the primeval slime of the miserable lives they deserve.
The irony of fate.
I have not mentioned the visuals here. Costume. Dawn is a wreck but a thoughtful wreck. Someone went to great pains to get the clothes right. She never wears the same outfit twice. Ever. And they are all, well, a wreck.
Her house. Suburban horror show. Little rooms. Little yard. Little people.
The scenes are short. At times, it is almost like blackout sketches in a review. Short bits. Ta-dum.
I would gladly see this again. A Solondz film fest anyone? I didn't like his Happiness. He has only made eight films and one of these is not yet released. Also, one look at his face and you know that this film is totally autobiographical. Only the gender has been changed to protect the innocent.
I will give this a 4 out of Netflix5.
Labels: best films