Solondz Infuses ‘Wartime’ With Singular Satire

Peering from behind oversize green-framed glasses, dressed in rumpled khakis and yellow sneakers, Todd Solondz looked the part of independent cinema’s reigning nerd incendiary as he discussed his new film, “Life During Wartime,” which turns his caustic lens on assimilated American Jewry.

“Life” is a kind of sequel to his suburban despair comedy, “Happiness” (1998), which revolved around the dysfunctional Jordan clan and included characters such as a nice doctor dad with a predilection for little boys. While the Jordans in “Happiness” were Jewish only in Solondz’s mind, he makes them explicitly MOT in “Life During Wartime,” which he calls his “post-9/11 film.”

The new movie opens as the pedophile emerges from prison while his ex-wife, Trish Jordan (Allison Janney), prepares for her son’s bar mitzvah and falls for a homely new beau (Michael Lerner) who attracts her because — like her — he wishes to be buried in Israel.

“Many Jews want to live the good life in the States and then get the good life in the afterlife by being buried in Israel,” Solondz, who is also known for “Welcome to the Dollhouse” (1995) and “Storytelling” (2001), said in his gravelly nasal whine. “But what about all the people who died in the Holocaust — they don’t get as good a ‘seat’ as the people buried in Israel? And you’ve got such a small piece of land to begin with; why would you want to take up space there? It’s perverse.”

The writer-director has been reviled in some quarters for this kind of satiric perspective. But as The New York Times noted in its laudatory review of “Life,” “To dismiss his attitude as cruel or contemptuous is to miss the compassion and the almost rabbinical ethical seriousness that drives his inquiries.”

Solondz, 50, is almost talmudic in his discourse. He grew up in a kosher home in New Jersey and attended yeshiva during elementary school but now describes himself as a “devout atheist.” (Asked why he peppers his speech with “Thank God,” he retorts, “It’s a metaphor.”) Yet he is considering a “Chabad-type” nursery school for his 18-month-old son, Elroy, so the child can feel part of the community if he so chooses.  Solondz’s mother fled Nazi-occupied Antwerp, Belgium, as a girl, and that trauma permeated his childhood home. It also inspired a segment of “Storytelling,” in which a daughter of survivors mouths platitudes about the Shoah in order to raise funds for Jewish charities, while mistreating her Salvadoran maid. When the housekeeper gasses the woman and her family to death, it is punishment “for trivializing and exploiting the tragedy of the Holocaust,” Solondz said.

Not that he is oblivious to modern-day anti-Semitism. “Jews have flourished in this country, so it seems unseemly to talk about it,” he said. “But in the larger world, it’s like the monster you can’t beat down; it’s tireless and endless and goes from Europe to the Arab world.” 

In “Life During Wartime,” the bar mitzvah boy, Timmy, is writing a speech inspired by his Torah portion, which deals with “Joseph forgiving his brothers for having screwed him,” Solondz said. Timmy asks his mother whether one should forgive terrorists who have a good reason for their actions; she is mortified and responds with clichéd answers.

“The movie also deals with how isolated Americans are from the reality of war — which also serves as a metaphor for the war within ourselves, the way we all have the capacity for kindness as well as cruelty or evil,” Solondz said “One of the things that troubled me about the response to ‘Happiness’ was that some people felt sympathy for the character [of the child rapist],” he added. “While I found him to be a tragic figure … sympathy I could never have for someone who succumbedto such instincts.”

Solondz envisions the pedophile as non-Jewish; in “Life During Wartime,” we learn that his ex-wife, Trish, has tried to distance herself from him by “becoming almost ba’alei teshuvah,” Solondz said. “In her mind, she married the gentile, and see what happened?” 

But just as Solondz pokes fun at the Zionist Trish, he satirizes Jordan’s pro-Palestinian sister Helen (Ally Sheedy), a rebellious screenwriter who has acquired a tattoo that reads “Jihad” in Arabic.

“It’s the best thing she can think of to appall her Jewish parents,” Sheedy quipped.

Solondz joked that his upcoming film, “Dark Horse,” is “the first time CAA likes my script, because there’s no child molestation, rape or masturbation in it. I’m hoping it will be a success, God will …” and he stops himself. “Knock wood,” he substituted, with a laugh.

“Life During Wartime” opens July 30 in Los Angeles.