Palindromes

It is difficult to not be engaged while watching a Todd Solondz film, because he has an uncanny way of never really letting the audience know what he's thinking. Perhaps he's throwing out various ideas, hoping that his viewers will be encouraged to think about them for themselves and make their own conclusions. Perhaps he is revealing the inherent complexities in issues that many of us consider "simple." Perhaps he genuinely has no opinion, because he either agrees with them all or disagrees with them all. Roger Ebert correctly points out, "Palindromes contains characters in favor of abortion and characters opposed to it, and finds fault with all of them. The film has no heroes without flaws and no villains without virtues, and that is true no matter who you think the heroes and villains are. To ambiguity it adds perplexity by providing us with a central character named Aviva, a girl of about 12 played by eight different actors, two of them adults, one a boy, one a 6-year-old girl. She is not always called Aviva." She desperately wants to become pregnant and have a child, so she recruits a neighbors son to help her out. When she becomes pregnant, her parents force her to have an abortion. She then takes off on a journey and meets an assortment of people, including a Christian family that shelters deformed children. Even they are as flawed as they are compassionate. I honestly don't know what Solondz thinks, but I appreciate the humanity and complexity that he allows all of his characters. Nothing and no one is black and white in this world, and I am left with a fundamental desire love people.