Solondz offers a different view of ‘Life’

His sixth feature is “Life During Wartime,’’ a sort-of sequel to his most critically-acclaimed film, “Happiness’’ (1998). Opening Friday, it finds a more reflective, more mature filmmaker examining themes of forgiveness and atonement as he revisits the dysfunctional Jewish family that has left New Jersey — a Solondz first — for the suburbs of Southern Florida.

“This film is much more mournful and gentler than ‘Happiness.’ It’s an older person who is making this movie,’’ said the director, in Boston when “Life During Wartime’’ had its local premiere as part of this year’s Boston Independent Film Festival. “Getting older is a gift from God. You have different problems, of course, but it does make you more generous. You have lived more, you understand more, you forgive more.’’

Not that Solondz, who’s been called a misanthrope by some critics and regularly struggles to get his films distributed, has suddenly gone soft. His new film picks up about a decade after Bill Maplewood (now played by Ciaran Hinds — all the roles have been recast for new perspective and subtext) went to prison for drugging and raping several of his son Billy’s fifth-grade classmates. Billy (Chris Marquette) is now in college and younger son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder), who’s been told his father is dead, is preparing for his bar mitzvah. The three Jordan sisters are back, this time played by Allison Janney, Ally Sheedy, and Shirley Henderson, who is haunted by the ghost of ex-boyfriend Andy, originally Jon Lovitz, now played by Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman.

“I never planned to revisit any of these characters, but what can I say? Ten years go by and I wrote the first scene and I liked what I wrote. Then I thought, if I don’t have to be beholden to the original cast, if I could play with things and not adhere to what had been established, then I had the freedom to add these shades,’’ said Solondz, a Newark, N.J., native whose exaggerated nasal whine is incongruous with his earnest and articulate speech. In his khaki pants, canvas sneakers, and oversized eyeglasses with lime-green frames, he looks like Woody Allen as drawn by R. Crumb.

Solondz earned the wrath of many, including his original distributor, by making a pedophile the most sympathetic character among his damaged suburban souls in “Happiness.’’ “Life During Wartime’’ shifts the focus to a fear of pedophilia, and to the larger question of how to forgive the unforgivable. “Pedophilia is a metaphor of what is most loathed and most feared; it’s a crucible to confront,’’ said Solondz. “Those are the particular demons of Bill Maplewood, but everyone has demons within themselves . . . You don’t have to go to war to have moral choices. You see someone cut in line at an Almodovar movie; it doesn’t take much to see the savagery.’’

Solondz, 50, a Yale graduate whose father attended MIT, is known as an actor’s director with an eye for offbeat casting. The presence of Reubens adds an interesting dimension to the film’s themes of remorse and redemption. “There’s a poignancy, given his history and baggage, that takes it out of the realm of where it had been before. . . That excited me, as did the added irony of Paul Reubens playing a character who probably has his own Pee-wee Herman doll at home. It seemed rich.’’

In a small but pivotal scene, Charlotte Rampling plays one of the film’s new characters, a self-described “monster’’ who picks up Bill in a bar. “I met her at a film festival in Brazil; she was there with Francois Ozon for ‘Under the Sand’ and we went out on the town looking at transgender prostitutes at three in the morning. She is hearty and earthy, there’s nothing prissy about her. So when I had this part, I called her. I didn’t presume she’d take it. It isn’t flattering. She looks fabulous but I wasn’t presuming she’d be open to exposing herself. . . . But she told me that she knew it was necessary for the scene. She had no quarrel with baring herself.’’

Ever since his auspicious twist on the coming-of-age story, “Welcome to the Dollhouse,’’ won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1995, Solondz has continued to make movies his way. His most recent films, “Storytelling’’ (2001) and “Palindromes’’ (2004), offered Solondz’s usual parade of misfits, but both films experimented with form. “Storytelling’’ was two segments, “Fiction’’ and “Non-Fiction,’’ with characters who use writing and filmmaking to retell events. In “Palindromes,’’ multiple actors of different ages, sexes, and races played 13-year-old Aviva, a New Jersey girl who longs to have a baby. Solondz says he’s finished the script for his next film, “Dark Horse,’’ but is reluctant to talk about it because it might “jinx’’ his perpetually precarious funding.

Solondz has never directed a script he didn’t write, and he supplements his income by teaching at NYU. (“I love teaching. It gives me great pleasure with none of the stress I have when I make a film.’’) He knows his films are not for everyone. “The fine line of comedy and pathos that I walk is a difficult one; people like funny or serious. People say my movies make them uncomfortable but they aren’t uncomfortable reading the tabloids or watching the news. This film requires a certain kind of open mind. But I think my films have a certain integrity that has protected me from those who tell me I’m cretinous and misanthropic and the scum of the earth. Do I like it when people say mean things? No! I’m only human; I’m weak.’’

His advice to detractors is simple: “If you don’t like it, walk out. That’s your choice.’’

Complex portraits of young people, from “Dollhouse’’ ’s Dawn Wiener to “Life During Wartime’’ ’s Timmy Maplewood, who utters the film’s final, poignant line, have long been a Solondz trademark. So it isn’t surprising that he says one of his quests as a filmmaker is to “recapture that joy of reading a book or seeing a movie as an 11-year-old when it was all character and story . . . You want to pique, because that’s what I want when I go to the movies: to be moved, to be woken up from the slumber that we’re all prone to. I want to feel more alive.’’

Loren King can be reached at Loren.King@comcast.net.