Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is a master’s class in dream logic, pulling out every surrealist trick in the book – and inventing several new ones – in order to tell an ambitious, multi-character story. It certainly solidifies his claim to be the most distinctive and original American screenwriter alive, and possibly even the best. But it’s also, to my mind, the first unsuccessful movie Kaufman’s been involved with (barring the George Clooney-helmed botch Confessions of a Dangerous Mind), and what’s worse, everything bad about it – from its claustral self-absorption to its thinly veiled misanthropy – appears to be completely intentional. This is clearly the kind of film Kaufman wanted to make, and the kind he’s likely to go on making until people stop throwing money at him.
Whereas Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry brought out the goofy playfulness on the surface of Kaufman’s scripts, Kaufman himself drills relentlessly into existential bedrock; we are not permitted to forget that this is a movie about Death and Love and Truth and Stuff That Really Matters. Of course this is just what Kaufman’s protagonist and stand-in Caden Cotard wants his work to be about too, but if anything the extra layer of irony only compounds Kaufman’s pretensions, trapping him in metarhetorical spirals worthy of David Foster Wallace. This fatal self-consciousness might have been alleviated by his actors, but here the new director shows lots of taste but no imagination. Philip Seymour Hoffman, by this point, has abased himself on screen so many times that his performance in Synecdoche, impressive at is, often feels like a gloss on previous losers; likewise, great actresses like Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest are all impeccably cast but don’t get to do anything particularly surprising. (“I only love women,” Caden says at one point, and Kaufman seems to agree with him: when in doubt, he introduces a new love interest.)
An even bigger problem is that Kaufman, like Caden himself, essentially has a theatrical sensibility as a director, which in practice means lots of ingenious ideas and nice moments between actors but little sense of overall cinematic structure or movement. Compared to a similarly self-indulgent “personal” film like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, which it might be said shares some of the same flaws, Synecdoche, New York feels leaden and unwieldy. If Synecdoche has an aesthetic equivalent, in fact, it’s not another film or even a theater piece but the work of comic book artist Chris Ware, who displays the same mix of obsessive intricacy and emotional pessimism, expending awesome amounts of effort and ingenuity on what ultimately adds up to an elaborate pity party. If what Kaufman has been trying to do all along is to hack off big bleeding chunks of his psyche for our inspection, then Synecdoche, New York is the most substantial piece yet. But it also suggests that there might be a limit to how interesting Kaufman’s mental processes can be.
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
02 Nov 2008 7:53 PM | Comments (3)
“Everything bad about it — from its claustral self-absorption to its thinly veiled misanthropy — appears to be completely intentional..” I totally agree, and this is what has given me so much trouble in coming to terms with the movie. Keeps me wondering if there’s some “larger point,” among so many “large points,” that I’m missing. Or maybe there’s just an overload of capital letter “BIG IDEAS” in the movie.
It is very difficult to conceive of a movie much more complex than synecdoche. Yet, oddly, I have no desire to see it again just so that I might resolve something. Not because I disliked it, but because so many scenes were indelibly imprinted within my mind such that I “get it”. That is, I “get it” as much as can be expected. My first impression as the movie started was that “dialogue” was the entertainment. Actually, for this reason (i.e., dialogue), I would see this movie again. However, because the dialogue heightened my awareness of the same, it became easily perceptible when dialogue began to yield its place to various “prop devices” as the centerpiece of entertainment. I’m not necessarily using the phrase “prop devices” as disapproval because we sometimes present ourselves as silly when we, for example, indicate that such and such should not exist or should be replaced by such and such. In many cases, we would have then simply created “another movie”. In this case, maybe we should make our own movie. That’s when some of us would realize just how difficult it is to actually make one of these things. Some of the devices (literary or cinematographic) used by Kaufman were stunning or spectacular! For example, the “voice” of Adele’s (Cotard’s wife played by Catherine Keener) miniature paintings, and the paintings themselves, were used to great effect. The creation of a “New York within New York” presents very interesting and creative cinematography. The work (make-up, costume, and lighting) performed to create the illusion of aging characters is also very well done. And while the seemingly non-stop, nested twists and turns might make one dizzy, it is just this unexpected variety that provided a journey instead of just another movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman continues to deliver. I found his performance to be communicative and almost accessible to the touch, as one is almost unaware that he is acting. This gives us the feeling that we know him. We then become comfortable with him, and finally empathetic.
This movie comes at you in layers of interwoven humanness. Every message invited the audience to think about themselves, their families, their lives, their legacy, their meaning, and their relationships. Caden Cotard (main character played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was chronically, and strangely ill. There was a scene where Cotard, after receiving permission from his wife Adele, urinated in a sink while his wife and young daughter were both present in the room (present, but not watching). His urine appeared to be mostly blood yet he offered no reaction at all and simply carried on as if the absurd had become the expected. His sickness seemed to symbolize the loneliness that is concomitant with the very individuality necessary in order to qualify as an autonomous human being. If we die alone, are we in fact alone? Of course, this movie is about much more than that. No doubt, most of the criticism of this movie will be that it is far too ambitious. But what do we want? Do we want movies that only fit within our conventional range of pace, dialogue, boundaries, and cinematography? It seems that conventional movies will continue to appear with great frequency so, they will be readily available, but movies like Synecdoche are rare. Nevertheless, there were quite a few things that I did not like. While Phillip Seymour Hoffman very convincingly depicted the kind of leg tremors that might be caused by neuropathy, I found his enactment of a seizure to be so unconvincing that I actually laughed aloud. Interestingly enough, there was a gentleman one row up and about 10 seats to my right, who clearly did not like my idea of “funny”. — Although one got the strong impression that the gentleman expected everyone within 200 feet of him to “synchronize” with his idea of good comedic timing, as he outscored us all with his use of laughter aloud — And that is one of the effects of the complexity of this film; that is, though this film might be easily regarded as “despairing”, there were many funny moments where laughter erupted even while surrounded by loss and brokenness; just like real life. Sometimes, though, brilliance might not be brilliance; sometimes it just might be simple depravity disguised as something intellectual and modern. For example, while I love Tom Noonan’s work in most everything he does, I did not like Kaufman’s wording of his character’s pitch to play Cotard. — Obviously, this “play” is not a real play, but a montage of a construct that represents the mind, fears, and philosophies of Cotard. While I would prefer dialogue that allows for the existence of things like intellectualism, the intelligentsia, modernity, and the avant-garde without requirement for homosexual references, don’t mistake my preference for a suggestion that anything should be changed in this movie. Since Cotard was not homosexual, parts of the movie seem to suggest it par for the course that all men somehow contend with homosexuality. This is not true. This is the movie that Charlie Kaufman wanted to make. No one can say that it should be anything other than what it is. I doubt that any of us will agree on much regarding this movie, as we don’t agree on much regarding life.
Shut your mouth about Chris Ware.
Cullen Gallagher
2 November 2008
8:44 PM
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