Happiness (1998)

Todd Solondz Happiness is a film that seems as though it’s been edited with the intention of trying to keep the tone up for a film that conveys the opposite to what its title suggests. The film explores the lives of several individuals that intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection. The film boasts a stellar cast, including the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman as an incredibly awkward man desperately in love with his neighbour, Jane Adams as a quiet woman searching for sexual liberation, and Dylan Baker as a psychiatrist with some dark secrets of his own. The film leaves us feeling sympathy for some and loathing others, but ultimately intrigued by its characters and whether the find the human connection they so desperately crave.