Christian, it turns out, is the externally sturdy but internally ravaged survivor of his twin sister's recent suicide. This style serves to enhance the substance of the already substantial script, adding filmic flesh and muscle to a strong skeletal foundation. Whereas some more traditionally shot mood pieces have to bludgeon the viewer with obvious symbolic images to penatrate the narrative, here narrative and image collide to become the symbolism. There are some movies that make it difficult to emerge from the theater and remerge with the everyday flow of the outside world, because the reality created on the screen is so strong that it doesn't allow external contructs to filter through, even long after the screen has gone white. Some people see the world as an awful place.
Some people see the world as a funny place.
Todd Solondz, director of Happiness, the best movie of the year, sees the validity in both points of view. For him, the world is an awfully funny place. And in this bleak comic masterpiece, Solondz shows us how to find hope in the most despairing of circumstances, dignity in the face of shame, and compassion in the face of one's most monstrous acts. A monstrous act, indeed, but the camera's unflinching objectivity serves to neither condone or condemn the man, so we are left to see the struggle amidst the strife, the human within the monster. And when the characters themselves instill the audience with laughter, Solondz' artistry and control leave us wondering whether we are laughting at them, with them, or in spite of them, when the truth is somewhere in between.