Posted: 04/20/2005

Palindromes

(2005)

by Jason Kordich

When you hear the name Todd (“Happiness,” “Storytelling”) Solondz, you think of a director who has created films that promote an unsettling atmosphere due to his bold approach toward the subject manner of his films( rape, pedophilia, abortion etc…al). With the release of “Palindromes,” Solondz has created a film that delves deeper than any of his previous work into this unsettling world.

The film revolves around Aviva, a 13-year-old Jewish girl living in New Jersey, who happens to be the cousin of Dawn Wiener from “Welcome to the Dollhouse”. Aviva gets pregnant and is forced by her mother to have an abortion. After a complicated procedure, which will prevent her from having children in the future, Aviva runs away from home. She eventually ends up living with a Christian family in Kansas for sometime before she returns to New Jersey with her pedophile lover to kill her abortion doctor.

Throughout the film, Aviva asks, “Do I remind you of Dawn?” to a variety of characters. Solondz’s Dawn Wiener from “Welcome to the Dollhouse” desired to receive acceptance from soceity. She didn’t want to remain an outcast; however, the end of that film left the viewer feeling that she realized that everyone is an isolated voice, a group of disconnected outcasts. Solondz develops this idea further in “Palindromes” with Aviva.

The character of Aviva is played by 8 different actors: 4 of them are teenage girls, one is an overweight African-American woman, an androgynous boy, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. However, this complexity isn’t convoluted or without purpose. Having Aviva played by 8 different actors, allows Solodnz to stress that the experience felt by this girl is not exclusive to her but rather a universal problem that effects people of all shapes and sizes.

The universal problem that she is experiencing goes beyond the simple motif of Aviva wanting a child, but rather it directly relates to her desire to experience life. Solodnz carefully sets up this pursuit for life in a variety of ways: There is Aviva’s mother, Joyce Victor (played incredibly by Ellen Barkin), who believes that an abortion can help people live life free of misery, there is Mama sunshine ( Debra Monk played this role with such an eerie sincerity that the scenes with her and her “children” feel unsettling and raise suspicions of a hidden agenda) and her husband are zealot Christians, who act as “saviors” to children with disabilities by taking them into their sunshine home and by fervently standing up against those who have/perform abortions, and then there is Earl(Stephen Adly-Guirgis) the truck driver who because of his love for young girls hooks up with Aviva and even murders the doctor who performed her abortion, which brings about his poignantly driven remark, “how many times must I be reborn.”

This idea of birth or rebirth is the theme that progresses the film forward; however, Soldonz seems to suggest that such journeys of self-discovery will only cause the individual to end up where he or she started( just as Aviva story starts and ends in New Jersey).

Matthew Faber returns to his role as Mark Weiner(“Welcome to the Dollhouse”) in this film, makes this clear to Aviva near the end of the film, when he stresses that free-will does not exist. He proclaims that people are how they are, and there is nothing they can do to change. He lets Aviva know that she is just like her name, a palindrome. No matter how her appearance changes, she will always remain the same inside.

In this world where Dawn Wiener and Aviva search for meaning and acceptance, life is best understood in Joyce Victor’s description of an untimely pregnancy: “It’s like a tumor”-a growth that brings about death, not life.

Unlike “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Palindromes” does not seem to offer a solution to this problem. Instead, he seems to satirize zealots who believe that their position is the correct stance on how to truly live. In fact, the humor in this film, as well as all of his films, is grounded in the irony that his characters provide (Joyce trying to convince Aviva how happy they are because she aborted her baby brother Henry to the Sunshine band performing a Christian pop song about Jesus making them the way they are just a couple examples.) However, beyond this humor is an poignant film that deserves to be watched more than once due to its subtle texturing and unnerving boldness. “Palindromes” displays Todd Solondz’s continued desire to unravel the inner workings of society, and in doing so, displays his continued desire to find his place within it.

Jason Kordich is a graduate from Berkeley who regularly writes pieces for Jive Magazine.

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