Director: Charlie Kaufman
Writer: Charlie Kaufman
Starring: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Tom Noonan, Emily Watson, Dianne West, Jennifer Jason Leigh
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 124 min
[This is a repost of my zygote-like review of the film at the premiere of the Toronto International Film Festival. Consider this a jumping off point for your own elaborations on the film, as I could not even begin to untangle the details of the film until I have seen it at least a second time. For now you decide: is this a modern masterpiece or pretension run amok?]
You are reading this because you want to know if Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York is a good film, and perhaps you want me to compare and contrast it with the great screenplays he has written, and hopefully in the process provide a categorical frame to this new commodity. What must a press screening of such a film look like, what sort of deadening halt could be felt, to pens and paper, to stillborn thoughts, as the anarchy of Kaufman’s imagination marched mercilessly through its two hours. What language other than the poetic can one even begin to articulate the activity of that fugue?
Rest assured, this ‘review’ will not give away anything, for it would be as pointless as describing a blob of colour carefully set within a Monet landscape, or quoting a line from a Beckett play, the activity of this story is one of patterns. It may take your mind an hour or two, or even days to adjust to the pattern recognition required to make sense of what Kaufman is doing with this story. So is the possible genius of the work; I’m still uncertain what happened, what I even feel about it. The dense narrative works not in scenes, nor arcs, nor traditional transitions, but everything both real and unreal, past, present and future coming together on the same cosmic stage. I was unable to understand it in the fashion I am accustom to, but after awhile the pervading ideas and emotions emerged like one of those 3-D illusions, the dissociative details forming a lived-in impression of loneliness, heartache, and death. The Russian doll ellipses, apparently random tangents, and gaping time lapses, provide just the right amount of disorientation to evoke the revelation, to have the sadness of life creep up on you and inhabit you.
As the synapses fire blanks, a new seeing emerges, the seeing not of characters and story on a separate stage from us but as us, surveyors of our own lives, inhabitants of insecurities and absurdities that brush shoulders with one another in unscripted indecencies, all loose ends that are felt beyond the academic rigor of existentialism or the theatre of the absurd. As characters in the film perceive fictionalizations of themselves we perceive the characters, and perceive ourselves watching the characters. As the puzzle of perception unfolds, deeper and deeper into the time lapse, any remnant of analytical thought is exhausted by the onslaught of highly stylized quasi-subconscious details that run through, and in the flurry of all these simultaneous assaults on the mind, one either tunes out or tunes in to a whole new wavelength.
The originality of the film is staggering, even by Kaufman standards. Its unparalleled sophistication of storytelling is something only a Beckett or Kafka could imagine, not even Lynch, I suspect, could have the patience for this well-laid detonation of meaning. Kaufman’s directorial debut is aggressively auteur, it is, as Cameron Bailey noted in his introduction to the film, the purest distillation yet of the mind of Charlie Kaufman.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is a theater director whose ambition to capture the true meaning of life escalates into citywide sets of thousands of actors all on his cue. This review is now over.
Modern Masterpiece by far. The fact that this thing remains so sticky on the brain qualifies for one thing, the fact that Kaufman is a very good director on top of being a genius writer is another. Synecdoche, NY is likely (and history will be kind to this film) the best film of 2008 thus far. At least in the top 3.
Definitely my favourite film experience of the year. Maybe that’ll change once I see it again (something I have to take care of really soon), but I sat there slack-jawed during the TIFF screening I saw. And I mean slack-jawed in the good sense…Kaufman’s directorial skills really shine through via the performances of the cast – Hoffman is amazing and every one of the actresses is remarkable.
Talk about mixed reviews though…There’s some high praise, lots of middling reviews (“too confusing”, etc.) and much outright hatred of it. And it inspired possibly the worst film review I’ve ever read – Rex Reed’s complete trashing of the film and Kaufman. It’s quite vile actually (did Kaufman run over his dog or something?). Not that I took Reed seriously before, but this certainly will prevent me from ever taking him serious in the future.
I’d better get to the theatre again soon though – I can’t imagine this will do very good Box office.
Rex Reed is one of the most coarse, uninteresting and close minded critics writing for a major newspaper. I’ll take Armond White’s review-the-reviewers scthick or Anthony Lane’s stand-up comedy routines before Reeds silly minded vitriol.
I’m with you there Kurt…At least Armond makes me laugh. From his review of “Synecdoche”:
“In Synedoche, Kaufman has been afforded a privilege he doesn’t deserve; his unimaginative imagery never comes close to the magnificence that visionary director John Moore creates in the turbulent tableaux of Max Payne.”
C’mon, that’s funny! And no offense to “Max Payne” (because I aven’t seen it), but how do you 1) compare those movies, 2) call Kaufman unimaginative and 3) get away with saying “turbulent tableaux”?
Haven’t checked out Reed’s review yet, but that’s because I need to check my own brain first. There is no question that this film will take AT LEAST another viewing to begin to grasp completely.
I’m not 100% sold on the movie but I think it’s quite probable that after repeat viewings this could turn into a favorite. The masses are not going to like this at all because it is the opposite of pandering and challenges the mind far too much for them.
I figured Synecdoche would rub a lot of people the wrong way… I’m the kind of guy who likes to be challenged, who likes the cerebral and I found this an assault nearly without parallel. The last time I felt so unsure about what I saw was Primer, and repeat viewings did wonders for my opinion of it.
I can honestly say I left the film not even sure if I liked it, and then it slowly absorbed me afterwards, its a punch to the face and the sharp sting needs to fade away before you can appreciate what just happened.
I believe it is a modern masterpiece, about three steps ahead of virtually anything else, a Nietzschean superman leap forward if ever there was one in film. Maybe it lacks a turbulent tableaux but it works on a different level… its not about visual spectacle, its about ideas, obstructing the normal flow of ideas, short-circuiting and getting to some kind of new revelation.
Um, what Mike said. If you liked Fellini’s 8 1/2 or La Dolce Vita, you’ll definitely be in the right zone for Synecdoche, NY.
@ I can honestly say I left the film not even sure if I liked it, and then it slowly absorbed
I know what you mean. It works much better as a memory than as a viewing experience.
It’s a very flawed film; uneven, heavy handed, meandering. But so what. It’s a staggering accomplishment. I felt like I was on top of a mountain staring out at the future as an awesome vista!
I saw it a second time and the flaws were even more visible… most notably the choppy effect of having genuinely heartfelt moments set amongst intensely cerebral tangents, its impossible, at least for me to connect in the way those scenes deserve in the temporal space given in the duration of the film, but afterwards things have a way of restructuring themselves in a more coherent way. I cannot think of another film where there is such a disconnect between watching it and the experience. In the end I value something by the experience it affords, so despite the clunkiness of delivery in the moment, Synecdoche remains a masterpiece in my opinion.
@ I cannot think of another film where there is such a disconnect between watching it and the experience
Eyes Wide Shut is that kind of film for me.
Not for me, Eyes Wide Shut is continually watchable, it also affords one of the rare acting performances of Todd Field, my favorite new director working today.
Synecdoche NY is a 5/5 from me.
Initially after watching it I simply was wowed that this was actually made. It seemed impossible that someone somewhere actually put hammer to nail to make these sets, that it was written and edited and put together. Something like this just feels so alien, like it just came to be and got put on screen somewhere. Its impossible to think of Kaufman somewhere saying ‘and action’ or picking certain takes over others. I mean its cinematic, but it didn’t feel like I was watching a movie. Does that make sense?
So I sat around for quite a while afterwards trying to figure out if it meant anything or nothing, because normally the artier films have an easier time pissing me off, as theres a line for me that if crossed, I can turn on an arty film so fast. I’m not fun at OCAD shows…
So I think overall in the end if the movie is about anything, its really about control. I mean it seems kind of obvious when I pieced it together and I guess I’ll venture around to see if theres any reviews that agree with me on this, but on one hand you have Adele who makes microscopic paintings, which though are incredibly detailed given how small they are, are still a little loose and stylized. She’s looked at and is praised as a master of her field. She stays in control while not strangling her work with extreme details and perfection.
Caden on the other hand, makes his universe bigger and bigger and bigger, its completely out of his control, his subjects keep making their own decisions and only make the meta go deeper and deeper, but Caden can’t stop obsessing over all the details and making his vision absolutely perfect, and since at the end he has to let someone else take over for anything to move forward, for it to end and for everyone and him to die, if theres any message at all to the film its pretty much in praise of Adele’s balance, that you can have these lofty aims but at the same time you have to leave enough leash for it to breathe and take on its own abstract qualities…
which is kind of like the movie itself, extremely ambitious but not without its looseness. And even things that seem like non sequitors such as the house constantly on fire, fit into my understanding of the movie. Caden is attracted to her, and while she works with him she personally lives within chaos and (eventually) dies from it. Call it some degree of opposites attract, and maybe why Caden keeps longing for Adele long after she’s gone. Michelle Williams on the other hand completely buys into what Caden is doing until she can’t take it anymore, it wasn’t healthy for her.
So maybe I’m full of shit and as pretentious as so many people find this movie, but thats what i managed to glean from it in the couple hours since watching it, in a theater where of 11 people, I was the only one left watching by the end. I think I was completely alone by the time the Zeppelin showed up on screen.
one more little thing
the name
Caden Cotard
from wikipedia:
The Cotard delusion or Cotard’s syndrome, also known as nihilistic or negation delusion, is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that he or she is dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his/her blood or internal organs. Rarely, it can include delusions of immortality.
seem about right?
Filmspottings analysis of this movie, which I’m listening to right now, is quite good. They’re damn right, Cotard is one of the more detestible characters out there, he’s a solipsist and all his friends and family are props to him, demanding the ultimate satisfaction for himself, and his fears and desire to make this project in general completely revolve around him.
The AV Club blog compared that obsession to the new GNR album, which is also amusing.
On second viewing the whole solipsism aspect really resonated, I am not sure why my original review makes no mention of this because it is everywhere, Cotard is only interested in Cotard, the world he wants to reflect is his world, and you are spot on about the issue of control… it is a musing about creation as much as it a musing about death and dying.
It is worth listening to the hour long Q&A with Kaufman on the Creative Screenwriting podcast, he really opens up about his craft, about how he works things over and over and relies on intuition to select the things that remain in the story, the meat of it that would never have existed had he not sort of lived with the issues his story brings about. This is very much a film on the brink of insight, its not calculated, not schematic as most films… you do not neatly parse themes from it, its about the joint similarity of the elements having the right nuance of truthfulness for the writer which he, and hopefully the audience, tacitly understand.
why is the house on fire, is not the point, the point is the feelings that dredges up.
Indeed. One of the (if not THE) best of the year.
This post contains a guess about Kaufman’s next movie.
So I’ve been going through the other Kaufman-scripted movies (save “Confessions…”) since seeing Synecdoche. I’m wondering if its something you can look for in any movie now, but the control theme is everywhere in his movies, maybe not central but its there. Also when the control fails it’s pretty nightmarish.
Human Nature – Tim Robbins’ scientist and his mind control over animals, the obsessive freak about manners, table positions, and making a monkey man super intelligent, vs. Rhys Ifan’s monkey man humping everything. There’s the freaky afterlife in the one room, constricted, Robbin’s punishment.
Being John Malkovich – There’s the obvious control factor of puppetry and “playing with people”, but they are all fighting over control of John, and it makes them assholes. The consequence of losing control? For John its horrific, he’s got all these people inside him and is never himself again (yet still friends with Charlie Sheen?), and for Craig he’s trapped inside the next vessel.
Adaptation – Kaufman, himself, is so obsessed with getting his failed adaptation under control that he ends up with writers block, and the only way to get it finished is to give up control to his hack brother. the nightmare is more personal and anxious and having to put his own failure on screen to solve the problem. which is a good thing for us, but i dont know.
Eternal Sunshine – Jim Carrey gives up control of his mind for happiness, only to realize he doesn’t want it, and goes through horror when he can’t do anything about it.
In each of these movies save Human Nature the lead character is also some form of an artist, and the more they try to be in control the more of a douchebag/villain they become… so with these things in mind could you make some parody of whatever Kaufman’s next script could be? Can we try?
“Inheritance”
The sculptor son of an estranged son of Scientologistlike cult member inherits his fathers studio where his father, like him, sculpted. While working on an installation, he falls and nearly dies, but survives when he slows down time to a near standstill. he realizes he has inherited the powers to bend space and time that his father was promised as an OT member of his cult. With the Scientologist-y drive to save the world inside him, he immediately starts using this power to try and help people on the street about to be hit by cars or being robbed. He starts to go broke obsessively doing this day to day. Helping one person he finds attractive, he gains a date from being a hero, opens up to her about his powers, and she convinces him to use it for profit. He ends up slowing down time frequently first as an ace courtroom artist and later to capture celebrities in very photorealistic sculptures, much like Ron Mueck’s.
http://www.hemmy.net/2006/04/12/ron-mueck-photo-realistic-sculptures/
None of this makes him happy, the woman he helped has a disfiguring accident in the same room as him and resents him for not stopping it. he starts getting strange phone calls from his fathers’ old cult realizing he has his fathers’ gift and threaten him if he dares go public that it can be obtained outside their cult.
He starts going back into the street looking to help people but gets no satisfaction out of it anymore and is always looking over his shoulder suspiciously. he eventually ends up checking in to to another cult (one simply looking for blind devotion, not promising anything). Their attempts to brainwash him don’t pan out, he’s unable to give up his mind no matter how hard he tries. He decides to finish himself off by concentrating and slowing down his own time, thinking he will freeze himself, but instead slows down only his body – he becomes one of his sculptures inside the lobby of the cult’s expanding building (using his membership as status, like Scientology), forever staring at people coming in to give over control of their lives.
I dunno, I’d see it.
Just caught up with this one at the Glasgow Film Festival and I have to say….wow. I would stop short of calling it a masterpiece (I feel about this much like I do with Haneke’s Funny Games US) just but it’s certainly an achievement; a challenging, labyrinthian, strikingly layered piece of brilliant cinema.
The one thing that hinders it (that I can see from just the single viewing) is Kaufman’s inexperience as a director. When he was just writing the script (i.e. Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) he had others ala Spike Jonze to make it quasi-comprehensible. But since he’s taken up the directing reigns I think it flails about without enough structure (that’s also a plus in one way but looking at it as a feature film to sit back and watch it’s a weakness).
But don’t let that give you the wrong idea – I LOVED this movie and I think after repeat viewings (this is definitely a “purchase as soon as it comes out” movie) it will become a favourite.
Oh and btw…..PERFECT ending. One of the best of the last year or so.
Where do you even start a discussion on this?
I watched it last night before going out for some drinks and I couldn’t get it off my mind all night. It’s still on my mind. A rarity it is when a film can absorb your every thought like that, and I suspect I’ll be reflecting on this for a while. Just a “holy fucking shit” feeling after watching it.
I had stayed away from all discussions about this and haven’t read any still yet, because I want to figure out exactly what this movie meant to me first, but goodness gracious… there is so much to discuss, so much going on here.
Life. Death. Fate. Regret.
Between the preacher’s chill-inducing speech, Olive’s diary entries, and Dianne Wiest’s voiceover at the end, I think Kaufman puts it all right there in our faces, right there for each of us to discover what this film meant to us. I think a lot of us, depending on our own personal experiences and views on life, are going to get something different out of it – much like Fellini’s 8 1/2 – and that is just one of many reasons why I think this is an unbridled masterpiece.
I haven’t even begun to start discussing what I want to discuss, but I have to split town for the night… I’m coming back to this though because my god, I think we could talk about this for weeks.
From an interview I just watched with Kaufman:
“I wanted to create a way, in my mind, that you could view the same piece of film on different occasions and have different experiences. What I’ve decided I’d like to offer people is the ability to watch this movie now and then watch it in five years and have a different experience because you are a different person. Or watch it tomorrow a have a different experience because there are things you can not see the first time. There’s too much to see or you don’t have the information at the beginning of the experience to see things at the beginning of the movie that will only be revealed at the end of the movie. I just think that stuff is fun and that is what I want as an audience so that is what I try to incorporate.”
This is certainly how I’d describe Fellini’s 8 1/2, and yea, that is the closest comparison I can think of to the movie.
watched it once. can’t say i really understood the big picture and really want to watch it again. can anyone explain a few of the things for me?