“Happiness,” written and directed by Todd Solondz. Running time: 140 minutes. No MPAA rating (language, sexuality and extreme adult themes). Nightly, Nov. 9-12, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

In a recent telephone interview with this critic, Todd Solondz, the award-winning writer-director of 1996’s “Welcome to the Dollhouse” and the current film “Happiness,” spoke out against media reaction to his controversial films.

“They are not meant to be jokes,” Solondz said from Los Angeles. “As often as people find them funny, the characters are trying to connect with one another. I take it all very seriously. There is nothing in my films — particularly in “Happiness” — that you don’t see discussed on television or on radio talk shows. But the press is at once moralistic and exploitative. They don’t want to admit it, but they love the freak show aspect of anything.”

Some have pointed that same finger at Solondz, saying he creates a freak show environment in a calculated effort to gain media attention for his low-budget films. In “Happiness,” for instance, he features a pedophile psychiatrist who rapes young boys, a compulsive masturbator with a penchant for making obscene phone calls, and a female literati sex addict who feels she would have been a better, more authentic writer had she been raped at 11. There’s a prepubescent boy desperate for his first orgasm, a joyless woman named Joy, a philandering Russian thief who beats his wife, and a lonely, obese woman so addicted to food she has difficulty connecting to anyone.

Couple this with the film’s subversive, sometimes shocking content, and it’s not surprising that its director freely admits the film “isn’t for everyone.” Yet “Happiness,” while beautifully, ironically titled (none of its characters is happy), is a powerful piece of work that can be hilarious in the face of its characters’ despair. Indeed, what might appear to be a freak show to some is essentially the human landscape — with all of its pockmarks and pitfalls — as seen through the knowing eyes of the most daring director working today.

How daring? Consider Bill (Dylan Baker), the pedophile who drugs his family in an effort to rape his son’s young friend. The film’s best, most harrowing and uncomfortable moments stem from this subplot, which Solondz handles with such unflinching honesty, some critics have mistaken it for sympathy.

“But sympathy isn’t possible,” Solondz said. `It implies that what Bill has done is excusable, when it’s absolutely inexcusable. What he has done is atrocious. But it’s true that I do have some kind of compassion for Bill, an acknowledgment that there is a heart and a mind at work in this man. There is a person here; I don’t want to treat him as just some evil entity.”

He doesn’t — that would be too easy — and it’s precisely this approach to all of his characters that gives “Happiness” its startling freshness and considerable power.

Still, a question lingers: What drew Solondz to these characters? “I can’t help depicting life as I observe it,” he said, “particularly in the comedy of this horror show that we live in. My characters are an extension of that. They’re all bleeding souls. They affect me, move me — I’m compelled by them.”

Universal Studios wasn’t compelled by them. Even after “Happiness” won the International Critics Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the studio demanded that its subsidiary, October Films, drop “Happiness” from distribution because, according to Solondz, its content was too much.

It was a decision that had some in the industry crying censorship. Others feared that independent filmmakers would be fearful of pushing the artistic limits in future films, but Solondz disagreed.

“It would be absolute hubris for me to think that Universal’s decision to drop my film will determine so much,” he said. “And in the end, it doesn’t really matter what Universal wants — there are many more distributors out there. I do feel bad for October Films, though; they were behind me. But there will always be maverick distributors and producers who will somehow find the money to finance challenging movies.”

If those films are half as good as “Happiness,” a third as courageous, a quarter as provocative, we should all be grateful. Grade: A

Video of the week

“Godzilla,” directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio, Dean Devlin and Emmerich. Running time: 139 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for mild language and violence).

This May, when “Godzilla” swung its meaty tail in theaters, it did so with an ad campaign that was meant to tease and titillate: “Size Does Matter!” the ads proclaimed, to which a nation of insecure men collectively crossed its legs.

Still — between us — does size really matter?

Consider this silly film, which features Matthew Broderick, of all people, as a scientist who comes up against Godzilla in a story that’s ultimately too small, and too poorly written and directed to contain such an epic beast. Indeed, this Godzilla, which swims across the Atlantic to stomp through the cement canyons of Manhattan, is not the Godzilla most will remember from the wonderfully campy Japanese films of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Those films weren’t just bad in ways that were deliciously good, but they also gave audiences a Godzilla to look at.

Director Emmerich, who mines surprisingly little thrills out of his film, has made Godzilla so big the screen cannot contain him — particularly on video, which has cut and shrunk Godzilla to a slimy swatch of scaly skin.

Pity. In the end, it seems that size doesn’t matter after all; in fact, it’s nothing but a hindrance. All along it’s been the director’s loving touch, the close attention to detail and, of course, the film’s overall performance that’s mattered.

Too bad in “Godzilla” these qualities were overlooked in favor of a big swinging tail. Grade: D

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear each Monday in the NEWS. Each Thursday on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today,” he reviews what’s new and worth renting in video stores.