The Criterion Collection

DVD Talk’s Christopher McQuain heralds American indie auteur Todd Solondz’s entry into the Criterion Collection: “His latest sad, wry observation of the many ways we find to delude ourselves (and for Solondz that also, if not especially, means us—the literate, urbane, politically conscious art-house moviegoers who are his primary audience) is Life During Wartime, a sort-of sequel to 1998’s Happiness that finds the characters from that film trying to discern some feasible code by which to live their lives in a frightening post-9/11 world.” McQuain concludes that, though the film is quite funny, Solondz “takes very seriously the film’s basic, vital, and very difficult-to-answer questions about loss, pain, guilt, memory, and forgiveness—perhaps more seriously than any other American filmmaker working today.” For indieWIRE, Nigel M. Smith writes that the film “finds the director once again working with a stellar cast and controversial material” and labels it a “must-own.” J. D. Lafrance of WhatDVD praises Life During Wartime as “an audacious experiment that reinforces Solondz’s maverick status.” And Paper’s Dennis Dermody is knocked for a loop, writing, “Solondz’s writing is diamond-sharp, and each scene is as brutal as it is horrifyingly hilarious” and calling the film “a major work from a savage mind.”