Palindromes (2005)

Sorry, this movie sucks

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Brilliant and touching

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I rarely comment on movies on IMDb but there are a few that I remember for all the wrong reasons. When I see they have a really high star rating I feel compelled to weigh in. I usually agree with IMDb's assessment (with the exception of "bad" horror films which I enjoy). The movie starts out with an interesting premise but it is a bit gratuitous and I would say a bit exploitative of the 13 year old character in this movie. It almost struck me as a film that was written by a pedophile. This movie was depressing and depicted a heck of a lot of depravity and even pedophilia. I love film noir, love gritty grindhouse films and stuff like that. This is VERY different from that. I got itchy watching it and as a parent, I was revolted with the sexual depiction of the young girl in this. I understand reality in films but this was just going too far to be enjoyable in my opinion. I was not entertained.

First and foremost, do not watch this movie, it's terrible.With that said, there are actually a few positives and I cannot say Todd Solondz is a completely worthless filmmaker. His films are always interesting. So, here's why Palindromes gets 1 star as opposed to 0: 1. An interesting and thought-provoking examination of abortion. I like the way Solondz examines this issue from several different perspectives and leaves us with no simple answer.2. Some funny moments. I laughed about 2 or 3 times.3. Bold. This is the best thing this film has to offer. But, when a movie is boring and the story is stupid and the character development is weak, then boldness is basically worthless.So, to go into a little more detail as to why this movie sucked: There are three qualities that must be present in a movie in order for me to find it good. They are, entertainment value, an engaging story and characters that I feel emotionally attached to. Palindromes fails on every level. The two or three times that I laughed in this film are not enough for me to call it entertaining. This movie was extremely boring, I was just waiting for it to end (although I do understand that this is just an opinion.) I felt no emotional attachment to any character in this film. I own Happiness and found it to be a phenomenal and very entertaining film with interesting characters that I felt attached to. But the character development in Palindromes just didn't draw me in. I understand what Solondz was trying to demonstrate with Aviva being played by several different actresses. I assume he's trying to demonstrate how the issue of abortion affects several different types of people regardless of their race, age, gender (one of them was a boy) or size. I also assume that each actress or actor playing Aviva is a symbolic representation of Aviva's self image at the time. Plus, it reinforces the Palindromes concept that no matter how much you seemingly change you will always come back to your true self. But, after a while this tactic took away from me becoming emotionally attached to Aviva. It was just distracting. This is the type of intellectual approach that sounds good on paper but takes away from the viewer becoming emotionally involved. And finally, story. There was nothing engaging to me in this story except for maybe a thought provoking examination of abortion. Not good enough. With the distracting actress-changing, the lack of character development and the boring tone, I gave up on this stupid story pretty early on anyway.So, I haven't even started on how vile, deplorable and sickening this movie was. I'm just wondering how Todd Solondz convinced so many underage actresses and their parents to allow him to place them in so many sexually perverse scenes. I'm not saying this is child pornography because it isn't. But, between a child sex-scene pretty early on, scenes of pedophilia and child anal rape and a final child sex scene that is just shocking, it's pretty damn close. I completely support freedom of speech, thought, religion etc... and I am in no way disputing Todd Solondz's right to express himself. What I really want to address is the soul of our cinema and what we as free individuals allow into our lives. If we allow this sort of disgraceful material into our lives then we are allowing sick thoughts into our minds. I don't even want to think about what sort of sick thoughts are inside the mind of the individual that came up with this film and directed these scenes. And now I am exercising my freedom to say, I think whoever came up with this movie must be disturbed in their own mind. I actually kind of pity a person that is this disturbed. And the rest of you that think this movie is "Amazing" and "Fascinating" and "Beautiful" should take a second to think about what sort of sick thoughts are swirling around your own head.Here is a list of 10 extremely disturbing films that are actually watchable. Some of these films examine the horror of pedophilia in an interesting and non-exploitative manner. All of these films have characters and story lines that you actually care about and they all deal with very heavy subject matter while remaining intelligent, entertaining and objective. L.I.E. The Woodsman Gummo Irréversible Leaving Las Vegas Bad LieutenantA Clockwork Orange Blue Velvet Funny Games Henry: Portrait of a Serial KillerThese ten films have something very crucial that Palindromes completely lacks... a soul.

I'd like to comment on some aspects of the movie that I have not yet found anyone commenting on.While this movie is ostensibly from the perspective of a pre-teen girl who wants to be pregnant, the content of the film shows less of the perspective of a pre-teen, or any realities of life as a pre-teen in middle America, as it seems to assert, and more about the filmmaker's world view and life experience.I'll admit, this is the first film by Solondz that I've seen, and I hope to not watch any more, so my depth of understanding of him as a filmmaker is shallow.The film features three different sex scenes, all involving the 12 year old Aviva/Henrietta, the protagonist of the film. As you may have surmised from other reviews of this film, Aviva/Henrietta is played by 8 different actresses/actors in the course of the film. Each sex scene shows Aviva laying flat on her back, being "done to", absolutely emotionless and reactionless. The final sex scene takes it a step further and cycles through many of the actresses who played Aviva throughout the film, each of them with the exact same expressionless face. From my take on the film, each of these encounters were encounters that Aviva desired and maybe even initiated, including the one with the adult trucker with whom she was hitchhiking. And yet she was clearly absolutely absent from each of the experiences. The final sex scene with multiple actresses with the same expressionlessness seemed hugely important to me as insight into the filmmaker himself. I was hit with a sudden sense that this must be the filmmaker's experience: looking down on face after expressionless, void face. As I know nothing about the filmmaker other than this film and the reviews I've read of it, I'm not presuming to accuse him of anything about his life. I am saying that this scene led me to question whether the film was actually his fantasy about what the life and choices and motivations of young girls who he either has had sex with or has fantasized having sex with might be.Interestingly, only one scene clearly alludes to non-consensual sexual contact, and it's none of the sex scenes. When Aviva/Henrietta is at the Christian fundamentalist "Sunshine" house, she overhears the family doctor, who examined her while she was asleep when she first arrived at the house, telling the father of the household that she is a "child whore". To back up his assertion, the doctor hands the father what looks like a whole roll of photographs, presumably with images of Aviva/Henrietta's vagina. The father asks, "You examined her?" The doctor answers affirmatively. And the father looks intently at the photos, saying, "I've never had a slut in my house before." While there is clear hypocrisy in the Sunshine family's rabid pro-life stance which leads the father to hire hit men to kill abortionists, this hypocrisy seems to have been looked over by many reviewers. And what is Aviva's response? She runs away from the family that night, and one may at first believe that she's motivated by fear of violation by staying. But it's soon revealed that her motivation is to go with the hit man hired to kill the abortionist that she was forced to use by her mother because she believes she is in love with the hit man, who was the trucker she had sex with in the motel.This utter lack of fear exhibited by Aviva, not just in this scene, but throughout the film, is totally unbelievable and unrealistic. The film attempts to pull her character through the whole movie on two basic motivations: the desire to be pregnant, coupled with anger/hatred of abortion and her abortionist who foiled her first successful attempt at pregnancy. These motivations are too thin to carry her through the entire movie without any other emotions which would be reasonable given her circumstances. This, again, strengthens my sense that this movie is not about her at all. It's about someone else, likely the filmmaker, wanting this character to be something that is so severely disconnected from reality for his own purposes.

There are hints of classical allegory (see: Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain) to this intriguing, disturbing, difficult but ultimately triumphant film. I think that the use of several characters to play Aviva (meaning "Springtime" in Hebrew) implies that the young lady is mildly schizophrenic - something that was either triggered by exposure to sex at such a young age, or by the trauma of the aberrant abortion.The film jumps around a bit in time. Chronologically, it starts with the first sexual encounter when Aviva visits the younger Otto (palindrome), and ends with Bob (palindrome) getting shot by the police. The film itself splices a few scenes in between, beginning and ending with the young black girl 'character' who is perhaps the youngest and most innocent of the Aviva characters. I was blown away by the portrayal of the foster family. Had no idea where to place them. I think that ultimately Solondz is sympathetic to them, which gives the film an impressively mature and equivocal view of religious fundamentalists (but a deep, dark part of me had a good chuckle, too).More please, Mr Solondz!