Happiness: A Film Analysis

The film being analyzed is rated NC-17, reader discretion advised

            “…Because I’m champagne, and you’re shit. Until the day you die.” One of the final lines uttered by Jon Lovitz’s character in the sleeper 90s film Happiness, written and directed by Todd Solondz. While simplistic on the surface, once given a bit of context and compared to the rest of the film and its successor, Life During Wartime, it’ll appear a rather concrete perception of relationships gone awry and the silent trauma we all carry with us, in ranging capacities.

            The 1990s were a renaissance in Hollywood, similar to the 70s but more developed in their acceptance of international influence. Take anything between Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and you’ll find a whole collection of filmmakers making it big off homages and clear inspiration from the Europeans, the French especially. I mention the French, in particular, for their strong influence in the introduction to real sensual filmmaking in the American mainstream. Not that we didn’t have our own version, with the Bogart types beating some poor woman up and then kissing them like they’re trying to suck their souls out. The French are much gentler in all aspects (White Flag Folk), especially with their film-making approach. Mr. Todd Solondz was one such filmmaker to take a bit from the French and Europeans in general in his exploitative approaches to the darker sides of humanity.

            Solondz has had an unconventional relationship with Hollywood and the film industry as a whole, one that I personally identify with far more than most. Born in the suburbs of Newark, New Jersey, in 1959, he would spend a lot of his childhood writing screenplays and stories between odd delivery boy jobs. This setting would serve as the background for the majority of his later works. He earned a bachelor's in English from Yale and then attended NYU, aiming for a master’s in film and television, but dropped out before completing the degree. Following this, he spent several years working on short films. It was in 1989 when he broke out with his first feature film entitled Fear, Anxiety & Depression. The story follows an ambitious young playwright played by Solondz himself, as he struggles to interact with women and the world around him (also stars a young Stanley Tucci, for fans of his such as mine).

            The industry’s reaction to the film was not pleasant and mean-spirited at times, and the reviews left much to be desired despite its realistic and uniquely funny approach to the character-study genre. Solondz got frustrated and decided he would no longer pursue the dream of filmmaking. That was until a few years later when a close friend of his offered to fund a project of his. What followed was Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), a brutally dark comedy about a pre-teenage girl struggling through puberty, bullying, and the overall coming of age in a cruel world. The film won the Grand Jury Price at Sundance that year’s festival, critics loved it, and it performed decently at the box office. This was enough to motivate Solondz to give filmmaking another go, and thank goodness he did.

            Happiness (1998) was Todd Solondz’s next film and his magnum opus. Developing off of his previous themes of the horrors of humanity committed beneath the guise of quiet suburban America, the story follows an ensemble cast of characters, all of which deal with their own twisted and often disturbing quirks. One, a pedophile, a husband to a mother of his three children, and a therapist. Another, nervously sex-crazed phone pervert who calls any woman he can find to pleasure himself. A family of sisters, all silently resentful of one another, deal with the consequences of their actions as they can’t help but dig themselves deeper into fantasies producing more harm than good. What culminates is a series of climaxes that are respective to each character: Solondz’s writing is pitch-perfect in its ability to smoothly wrap up each of the characters’ arcs without missing a beat.

            If it wasn’t clear already, Solondz’s films’ themes and contents are not for the faint of heart. The film was originally released under the X-rating, but as times have changed, so has the system to be NC-17 now. There is no shying away from the depictions of sexual content, especially the scenes involving pedophilic characters and their urges. The camera work is gentle and delicate (again, part of why this film deserves all the merits it’s received), never going too far or being discourteous to those real victims of such crimes. But simultaneously, he is not afraid to get in your face with the portrayals of debauchery and depravity. He showcases this early on with a sudden sequence of intense violence: one of the characters fantasizes about shooting up an entire park full of people, he seems completely unfazed by the dream, in fact going as far as to admit he felt okay with it.

            Solondz’s direction and writing are fantastic, as already established, but the casting of the characters is what impressed me the most. Given the subject material, the low budget, and the independent nature of the film, one might expect all unknown actors to accommodate such a situation. That is not the case with Happiness. The following characters are going to be analyzed in connection to the significance of the themes of humanism through depravity at play; the actors will be listed after. Bill, played by Dylan Baker. Helen, played by Lara Flynn Boyle. Allen, played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Lenny, played by Ben Gazzara. Joy, played by Jane Adams. And finally, Billy, the son of Bill, played by Rufus Read. Note that these aren’t all the characters, just the ones of the most considerable significance to the story and its related themes. In fact, my favorite sequence of the film is the opening, in which Joy breaks up with her boyfriend, played by Jon Lovitz, but we’ll get to that.

            The objective is to showcase the genius of Solondz’s writing choices and the direction of the characters toward their respective final acts, to analyze his approach to studying the human condition, and to identify the core meaning of Happiness through each of the main characters. Even the coarsest, crudest, and most unnerving scenes of the film shed light on realities all around us, and that many of us turn a blind eye to in the hopes of being wrong…

Bill Maplewood

            Arguably (and a pretty strong argument if you ask most rational people), the most disturbed and disgusting of the characters in the film. Bill Maplewood is a psychotherapist who listens to the problems of everyday people as they struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives. The first and only patient of his that we get to see outside of dialogue is Allen, a sexually frustrated loner who’s desperate to be seen by his crush in the building where he lives. Bill, while nodding along to Allen’s droning, quickly finds his train of thought nowhere near the task at hand. While for many this could be forgiven as being bored at one’s job, it’s what he’s daydreaming about that shows who he really is.

            Immediately following this appointment, Bill is wired to the gills, red in the face, and tense beyond belief, and there seems to be no stressor triggering this. We follow him as he parks at a convenience store and runs in. Looking around pensively, as though someone may be watching, he scours the magazine rack and picks out a children’s promo magazine, one of those designed to keep a pre-teen entertained on the car ride home from the doctor’s office. Bill wastes no time getting back to his car to pleasure himself with its contents. A mother and her children walk by the car as he does so. He shows no remorse or guilt, simply a raw, animalistic desire to hurt.

            In another sequence, it’s revealed that Bill attends a therapist himself, a common practice in the work, but it’s what he reveals in his sessions that showcases his self-awareness and ability to perform mental gymnastics to convince himself he is a victim of the world. This is the scene in which we see Bill fantasize about shooting up a park of innocent people as a dream and then recount it to his therapist. His recollection comes off, again, remorseless and almost innocent-like, as though pretending he doesn’t realize the weight of the thought will recuse him of the sin. As the story progresses, Bill’s perspective on what he can get away with grows enormously, to the point of raping multiple children by the time the final act concludes. While these instances aren’t shown, they are heavily alluded to and punctuate the horrific nature of not only his character but the crimes themselves. Where Bill feels happy, there is no true happiness in the world it is the direct antithesis of good, instead, he harms.

            This is Bill’s real life. What he comes home to, his wife and three children, he treats as a distraction from the horrors of his thoughts to keep him amused. He goes through the motions of parenting his kids, much to the complacent displeasure of his wife, who also notes on numerous occasions the strangeness and secretness of his behavior. Despite them being husband and wife, as close as you’d think those would be. So, it comes as no surprise to the viewer that when Bill is outed for his heinous and disgusting crimes, his wife is blindsided because she couldn’t look past the surface of the happiness she thought she had.

Helen Jordan

            An interesting contrast to Bill, Helen is disturbed in a much different capacity, and arguably to not nearly the same degree. An accomplished poet and writer, she spends her days smoking cigarettes, writing poetry, and engaging in casual sex with her many suitors. She’s a daughter and a sister to two others, but she spends very little time with any of them despite often criticizing the way they lead their lives. For everyone else, she holds her head up high and looks down even harder. In this respect, it is passive aggression to the tenth degree; she goes a step beyond by using her sexual prowess to convince those around her that she is better than them. Think of that exhausting mean girl from high school, except she never grew out of that phase, and somehow, it only got more disturbed. She spends a scene musing about her childhood, and how she didn’t experience any trauma. “If only I had actually been raped,” she says to herself. She actually believes it, biting her lips and rubbing her temples as she parades around a naked partner.

            There are two other distinct instances of sociopathic behavior on her part that shine through as examples of when she is truly happy. The first is through a series of dialogues between her and her sisters Trish and Joy. They are both flawed in their own respects, but Helen is aware of their flaws more than her own and exploits them to generate drama in the family. She meets with Trish for lunch one afternoon, complaining about the travel, sex, and money that her career garnishes her. Trish almost seems offended but decides to write it off as sincere jealousy of her own life. This might seem plausible when Helen begins talking about everything that Trish’s “normal” life has brought her, but the tone of her voice is unmistakable: she looks down on her sister and the way she leads her life.

            The second instance is far more overt, Solondz clearly played it for laughs but further solidifies the nature of Helen’s character. At a family dinner with her sisters, parents, nieces, and nephews, she makes a heavy joke insulting her youngest sister’s intelligence. Her sister, Joy, makes a wholesome comment regarding a crime they knew about and how she might be able to use it as inspiration for one of her poems. Helen responds by laughing exaggeratedly and mockingly, insisting that she isn’t laughing at her but with her. Joy’s deadpan response, “But I’m not laughing?” seals the timing of the moment but simultaneously reminds us who the jerk is in this situation: her sister, Helen. This is Helen’s source of happiness, a cruel and cynical perspective on the world where she is always the best and would be remiss if she didn’t remind everyone around her of that fact.

Allen U.

            Allen, who is a patient of Bill’s introduced early on in the film, and weirdly, the throughline connecting all of the characters together, has a dirty hobby of rummaging through his phonebook seeking out all of the women’s names and then calling them to get himself off sexually. Outside of his apartment, he is a boring loser obsessed with his neighbor (who happens to be Helen) but can never muster up the courage to speak to her. In his appointment with Bill, he admits what he thinks about doing with her, the sexual fantasies clearly inspired by watching too much pornography. In the next scene, he is alone in an elevator with her. Helen, aware of her seductive nature, leans into the tension, and even then, Allen is unable to get a single word out to her. His other neighbor, Kristina, a slightly overweight young woman with an extroverted personality is obsessed with Allen, coming over often throughout the story to ask him to hang out, always very innocently.

Later, when the two finally get together, Allen’s perspective of women changes dramatically when he finds out that Kristina was raped and beaten by their doorman and that she can no longer fathom the idea of being with a man intimately. Their relationship maintains a relatively innocent nature throughout, offering a grounding way for Allen to separate his feelings from the reality of how things are.

What’s especially interesting about Allen’s psychology is his passive nature. It might be easy to compare Bill and Allen because of their surface-level similarities being rooted in sex, however, is that not the case for most human beings? Allen’s misdeeds are fatal flaws, no doubt, but they’re not physically harmful in the violent way Bill is. He’s insecure and weak and takes it out in the form of forced phone sex. Explored later through the sequel, Life During Wartime, we see that he’s unable to change his bad habit but can connect with human beings on a more rational and sane level. In Happiness, he’s in the early stages of this path of self-discovery and thus appears far more gross and unseemly. At the end of the day, Allen’s happiness was never found but was never more than wanting to feel connected to other human beings. The way he carries himself and interacts with women especially implies some level of trauma that, as an adult, he never recovered.

Lenny Jordan

            The patriarch of the Jordan family, Lenny, has a relatively simple arc but one that encompasses the wide array of themes of the film. When we are first introduced to him, he is in the middle of a rather uncomfortable three-way phone conversation between his wife, Mona, the mother of his three adult children, and his eldest daughter, Trish. Mona just dropped the bomb on Trish that Lenny wants to leave her. What ensues is a debate over the semantics of whether he wants to leave her or get a divorce. Mona becomes convinced that there is someone else, but the altercation concludes with Lenny declaring he “loves nobody.”

            At the surface level, Lenny simply has an existential crisis at his later stage of life. Upon further inspection, however, one can see the moral lessons being taught about his character. Just as the previous have had lessons to be pulled from, Lenny is a walking narcissist, unable to grapple with the consequences of his life that have led him to the point he is at. He desperately wants control, and when it appears he’s cornered by the life he’s built for himself, he runs away, figuratively speaking. The control he gains is through living alone, day drinking, playing golf, and ultimately hooking up with a woman he promised his wife he wasn’t interested in.

            The woman in question, Diane, lures Lenny into her orbit very fast following the separation. It’s obvious to the viewer, and likely to Lenny too, that she is and has been very interested in him sexually. At first, he denies her advances, although somewhat reluctantly. This is the good side of him still fighting somewhat. It doesn’t last. Alcohol, golf, infidelity. When the two finally rendezvous, the tone of each of them has flipped. Diane is suddenly cold and uninterested in anything other than sex, while Lenny is more interested in making conversation and learning about her interests. Again, an arguably wholesome approach even. Once the deed is done, Lenny lies on top of her, out of breath to the point of fear and heart trouble (of which he already has anxiety about, again, later stage of life crisis), the guilt, and self-loathing seething off of his face. She begs him not to feel that way, but the whirlwind experience can do nothing but that. Lenny’s happiness was fleeting but strong in his desire to feel young again. And all at the cost of his long-time wife and family’s loyalty.

Joy Jordan

            The main protagonist of Happiness is Joy Jordan. The film opens with a scene between her and her boyfriend, Andy (played by Jon Lovitz, and fun fact, my all-time favorite cameo), where Joy hesitantly breaks things off. It is tense, especially when Andy retorts against her calm demeanor, something she clearly wasn’t expecting from a man she saw as docile and harmless. He takes back a gift he’d just given her, an ashtray with her name engraved on the bottom. He scolds her and delivers the infamous line referenced at the beginning of this piece. Shot and performed like a theater play, the framing adds to the intimate and awkward setting of the dimly lit restaurant. Joy is so shocked she can’t say a word, simply allowing Andy to sound off on her and all the things he thinks are wrong with her perception of himself. Depressed and considering the words he’s saying, she doesn’t fight back, it’s not the kind of person she is, she just takes it. A little while later we find out that Andy committed suicide over the break-up.

            What’s ironic about this sequence of events is that it incites a dramatic shift in worldview for Joy, but all the things said by Andy only apply to himself. He was insecure, like Allen, and had a difficult time interacting with women. The key difference between these two characters is that whereas Allen internalized his self-hatred, Andy acted on it. Joy reacts not only alarmed and saddened, as though she was responsible, but that her life must change radically. Through a series of conversations between her and her sisters Trish and Helen, we learn that this has been the pattern throughout her life. A struggling musician who never found her place in life past high school. She dates around, and when she gets bored, she breaks up with them. Hence, Andy is the catalyst for this cycle.

            Following the tragedy of the first act, Joy spends the rest of the story desperately trying to figure out who she is and what her place is in the world. She quits her stable call center job to cross the picket line of city teachers for immigrants to do “more good” in the world. It’s here that she develops a rapport with a Russian immigrant named Vlad, with whom things grow romantic, or so she thinks. Blinded by a night of seduction on Vlad’s part, she falls for a con scheme where he begins stealing her things and asking for money for them in return. Her kindness and naivety bend to his will, fully aware it isn’t right or just in any sense of the words, but she tricks herself into believing it is. The real tragedy of Joy’s character arc is her inability to see the love in herself and how she subsequently does not give it to herself, instead always focusing on others. She’s hyper-fixated on the world around her instead of her own autonomy and emotions. Just like the others, she never truly finds happiness, but for her, it was the closest to grab.

Billy Jr. Maplewood

            Mr. Solondz contrasts the horrors of the rest of the characters, but specifically the therapist, Bill, with his son, Billy. Billy is an elementary school-aged boy whose main struggle in the film is to be on par with his peers in their paths of puberty. He goes to school, hangs out with his friends, plays little league baseball, and has hoops to jump through to fit in with his friends. The writing and direction are so gentle in dealing with his development, making sure never to step over any lines, whereas the rest of the film so clearly does. Even in the most disturbing moment of the film, in the final act, when Billy confronts his father about the rape accusations against him, and his father confesses. The actor portraying Billy does so with such realism that, in that moment it’s hard to not gag in the cuts between them.

            In many ways like this, Billy is the moral compass of the film. The one tiny aspect that even, despite the quiet suburban terrors, maintains some level of innocence. He’s also the comic relief through his father’s decrepit sequences, Allen’s crude phone assaults, and his mother and aunts’ dysfunctional relationships. His happiness is the bliss of the age he’s at. His coming of age is the greatest obstacle to the happiness he desires, and even that isn’t enough in the end.

            When Happiness arrived in theaters in October of 1998, it shocked audiences around the nation with its unabashed approach to displaying the disturbing underbelly of contemporary American suburbs. Its subject matter was the topic of all those who saw it, but the critics saw something more in it. They saw the deeper truths Solondz was peeling the curtain at. The success of this release inspired the previously disillusioned director and writer to give filmmaking another go altogether. He would make several films in the following years, but the sequel to his magnum opus remains the best since. In 2010, he released Life During Wartime, a follow-up to his acclaimed 90s cult hit.

            What stands out about Wartime compared to its predecessor is the pacing and tone. Where Happiness was in your face and shocking, Wartime is subdued and quiet. It takes place some years after the events of the first film, with all the characters returning. The catch with this was that all the main characters were cast to fit the new aesthetic, a change that some disliked but others could understand as a creative choice to distinguish the two from one another. The tighter runtime combined with the smooth juxtaposition of almost randomly seeming scenes creates a dream-like feeling while you watch. The dialogue leans heavily into comedy over drama, even more so than before, and there are merely references to the terrible crimes committed in the first film rather than creating new trauma for the characters. There are two primary arcs occurring in the script: Joy had gotten with Allen and the two are on the rocks following the reveal that he is still phone sex calling to this day, and Timmy, the youngest Maplewood coming of age himself and having the family secrets come to light. Just as Billy was the moral compass of Happiness, his younger brother, Timmy, is now the moral voice of reason in Life During Wartime.

            In these respects, Life During Wartime feels more like an epilogue to the previous than anything else. A compliment in that it truly feels a part of the universe of the first while simultaneously feeling so otherworldly – like we’re watching the dreams of the characters instead of their real lives. One scene goes as far as to do exactly that but with lingering elements remaining in their real world. What’s interesting is its approach to the themes, as it generally goes in a different direction, being centered on the changes to the post-9/11 nuclear family and how divorce and past traumas can remain a damaging rift to any family.

            Happiness, despite being an X-rated black comedy indie film from the 90s, has remained relevant and impactful to American cinema to this day. Todd Solondz crafted a mirage of disturbing realities that exist all around us, which, while sometimes we can’t see, doesn’t mean they aren’t there. There are so many more layers to this film one might see that I haven’t, and I’m confident those would be just as valid. The fluid nature of the character-study subgenre is part of what makes it so alluring to the auteur. Solondz’s efforts, even in the indie realm, were still recognized on the national level beyond the box office. The Independent Spirit Awards nominated Solondz for best director and Hoffman and Baker for their respective acting. Mr. Solondz also got a nod from the Golden Globes for his original screenplay as well. Internationally, he got a win from Toronto, Sau Paulo, and the British Independent award for best foreign film, calling back to the international markets typically being more progressive and accepting of avant-garde and controversial ideas.

            Being as controversial and repulsive to so many as it was, as well as being independently produced, besides a brief DVD and VHS release, the film was virtually unwatchable other than dirty bootleg copies and a potato-quality one on YouTube (don’t ask me questions but I definitely bought a $90 bootleg). That was until the ever-coveted Criterion Collection finally released it last fall in 4K and Blu-ray. It is now readily and actively available to watch for anyone interested, and for all the reasons discussed, and many not, I cannot begin to encourage it enough. It’s one of those films that sits with you and forces you to consider the lives around us that we can’t see on the surface. From pieces of cinema like this, we can look into the darkest corners of reality from the safety of our homes. Why not take advantage?