It saddens me to see Solondz so reviled in most of the mainstream reviews of this piece. It's as though the whole film were just a giant title card of the words "I HATE (critic's name) PERSONALLY." Well, that is not the way to take this film.
I enjoyed it because of its fable-like tone (I found the combination of score, "odd" acting styles, and actor changes to eventually create a sense of "magic" for me), but also because of the questions it raised in my mind.
1. Can there ever be a love that is not selfish? Aviva's mom's love clearly was very selfish ("Now I'll never have grandchildren!") and even the film's most loving character, Mama Sunshine -- we are shown exactly how she projects her own life history onto the children she rescues -- she's really healing herself when she heals them. Aviva's line "Pedophiles love children" seems to sum this up perfectly. Uh -- yes they do -- but---
2. How much value can be placed on human life? He roundly indicts those who put money above human life -- in Aviva's mom's speech about aborting her fetus so they could afford "In Sync tickets" and "hand-packed Ben and Jerry's pints" but it seems that the religion-based view of human life -- "every sperm is sacred" can both lead to tragedy such as the murder of the abortion doc, and is hard to partake of when you know too much about science like Mark.
All in all, if you can keep reminding yourself "it's just a movie" it can lead to a lot of thought as well as the guilty pleasure of laughing at the very messed-up characters -- but each one messed-up in a specific way so as to show a particular oddity or inconsistency of people in real life.
I enjoyed it because of its fable-like tone (I found the combination of score, "odd" acting styles, and actor changes to eventually create a sense of "magic" for me), but also because of the questions it raised in my mind.
1. Can there ever be a love that is not selfish? Aviva's mom's love clearly was very selfish ("Now I'll never have grandchildren!") and even the film's most loving character, Mama Sunshine -- we are shown exactly how she projects her own life history onto the children she rescues -- she's really healing herself when she heals them. Aviva's line "Pedophiles love children" seems to sum this up perfectly. Uh -- yes they do -- but---
2. How much value can be placed on human life? He roundly indicts those who put money above human life -- in Aviva's mom's speech about aborting her fetus so they could afford "In Sync tickets" and "hand-packed Ben and Jerry's pints" but it seems that the religion-based view of human life -- "every sperm is sacred" can both lead to tragedy such as the murder of the abortion doc, and is hard to partake of when you know too much about science like Mark.
All in all, if you can keep reminding yourself "it's just a movie" it can lead to a lot of thought as well as the guilty pleasure of laughing at the very messed-up characters -- but each one messed-up in a specific way so as to show a particular oddity or inconsistency of people in real life.