Synecdoche, New York

[The Groke]

went to see Wolverine instead.

Heh - a movie that I imagine is the polar opposite to Synecdoche, new York in just about every conceivable way!

I hesitate to ask what you thought of Wolverine...

Go on - surprise me!

 

[Idaho]

Loads happens in it! It spans years!

At first it's not possible to tell whether it's actually happening or all in his head as it's fairly preposterous. Then as so much detail and events are stuffed in, you are left with little or no connection with the characters. They are just abstract players in an intellectual fantasy.

 

[Orang Utan]

i didn't worry about whether it was real or not, i just enjoyed the ride into someone else's mind - it was like being charlie kaufman i guess (as many reviews have pointed out). i might go see it at the cinema again this week. it's something to watch over and over again.

 

[beeboo]

At first it's not possible to tell whether it's actually happening or all in his head as it's fairly preposterous.

Ah, right, if this is the reason people are criticising it, then I think I'm going to enjoy it. I love that kind of stuff.

 

[Nanker Phelge]

I thought it was great! very much enjoyed every performance in it, loved the set within a set within a set, the cross plotting, the visual humour, the criss-crossing and leap-frogging of time, the characters playing characters within characters who then clash with the charatacters they are playing, the sad funny finger poking at human endeavour and at art and life and death and cleaning...

It was like Woody Allen directing the Truman Show!

 

[Lord Camomile]

It was like Woody Allen directing the Truman Show!

Can't help thinking that just turned a great swathe of people off seeing it

 

[Nanker Phelge]

Can't help thinking that just turned a great swathe of people off seeing it

Oh well!

 

[cliche guevara]

I want to go see this tomorrow, but I'm worried I'll pronounce it wrong at the box office and get laughed out of the cinema.

 

[The_Reverend_M]

I mostly agree with Orang Utan. Enjoyed playing an almost constant game of catch up with the constant barrage of ideas it throws at you. Will definitely be viewing again.

 

[Brainaddict]

I wasn't at all sure what to think when I left the cinema. It had some things I liked and some things I didn't. After careful consideration my conclusion is this: it's a mess. It has too much going on, too many ideas (some of which I felt had followed me from other films) and in the end there's no cohesion and not enough (non-quirky) story to really get you involved. It suggests that CK is one of those creative people who shouldn't be given too much freedom - perhaps he needs the normal strictures of commercial cinema making. i.e. an obligation to have an actual plot and stuff like that.

On the other hand it makes a change to see a Hollywood film grappling with the mysteries of human existence etc. It was a brave and potentially career-suicidal attempt to do something different and I admire CK for trying.

It's still a mess though.

 

[Dillinger4]

I saw this when it first came out.

I enjoyed it. I enjoyed coming out of the cinema feeling completely confused and not being sure what had happened, whether it was very good or, as BA mentions, a mess.

I am still not sure. It will definitely stand up for repeated viewings, and I will probably never be sure what is actually going on. I like that. I like that it is difficult.

And I also agree with BA that it is admirable for trying to deal with such big issues, human existence, life in its entirity, death, and so on.

Maybe, in some way, such an attempt can only ever end in failure, and that is some kind of point in itself.

I will watch this again.

 

[Orang Utan]

i felt the same way coming out of eternal sunshine - overwhelmed and emotionally drained. i haven't rewatched eternal sunshine cos it was too much for me emotionally - the first time i've ever felt like that about a film. i wanted to rewatch synecdoche straight away, but again feel a bit daunted by its emotional punch. it really puts you through the wringer.

 

[Dillinger4]

Incidentally, I recently heard Charlie Kaufman, along with others, such as Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze (and one or two others who I forget) described as a Hollywood New Wave.

I hadn't thought of it like that before.

 

[Orang Utan]

i don't know what that's supposed to signify but then i could never work out what the french new wave was apart from a bunch of french guys who wrote and directed and shot their own films

 

[DJWrongspeed]

I wasn't at all sure what to think when I left the cinema. It had some things I liked and some things I didn't. After careful consideration my conclusion is this: it's a mess. It has too much going on, too many ideas (some of which I felt had followed me from other films) and in the end there's no cohesion and not enough (non-quirky) story to really get you involved. It suggests that CK is one of those creative people who shouldn't be given too much freedom - perhaps he needs the normal strictures of commercial cinema making. i.e. an obligation to have an actual plot and stuff like that.

On the other hand it makes a change to see a Hollywood film grappling with the mysteries of human existence etc. It was a brave and potentially career-suicidal attempt to do something different and I admire CK for trying.

It's still a mess though.

I thought it was very cohesive, once you'd picked up the idea of all encompassing creative activity. The strange stuff going on all relates back to that idea. It's about letting that idea take it's natural course. If it wasn't a mess i'm not sure what it would've been ? I agree perhaps there are too many ideas, particularly the first 5mins, but that has a thrill. Given DVD culture i guess CK wasn't worried if people didn't get it the first time. That said, i don't want to watch it again in a while.

My main criticism it's that's just so despairing it drive the film into a black hole.

 

[danny la rouge]

I managed half an hour of it. It was self-absorbed shit. I was supposed to hate the couple, I take it? Well, I couldn't manage being interested enough in them to bother.

 

[Diamond]

I saw this film last night.

It's interesting reading this thread afterwards. A fair bit of it seems to have focused on an argument about the British not appreciating art thanks to their needless categorisation of things into highbrow/lowbrow.

Somewhat ironically, as a result, there is very little actual discussion of the film.

Maybe that tells you most of what you need to know about the British cultural experience.

But, yeah, on to the film. First things first, it was flabby, overlong, not particularly interesting to look at, marred through most of the second half by an, possibly deliberate (though for no clear reason), obscufating score and ultimately glib.

The acting was OK. Only Samantha Morton and Michelle Williams really shone.

Phillip Seymour-Hoffman looked again to be on cruise control, which was problematic given that the flatness of his performance was at the centre of the film. The rest were largely unremarkable.

I suspect this problem with the acting may have a fair deal to do with the actual writing itself.

Kaufman set himself a huge challenge in producing a work about the act of representation through artistic work in so far as any room for character development was always going to be heavily circumscribed by the simulacristic (is that a word?) environment in which he chose to operate.

So should he get the benefit of the doubt for this...for the bravery to explore something new and challenging that ultimately capsized any attempt at entertainment?

No, is my answer, but ultimately it will be a matter of personal preference.

The larger environmental problem with characterisation was also present in the inability to provide a narrative, or rather, the lack of courage and originality that Kaufman demonstrated by coming up with a compromised solution of having the narrative framed by the main character's life.

With all the nods to mortality, it just felt like an easy, stale, default solution.

Either he should have been bolder and done away with linear narrative conventions altogether or he should have actually been arsed to come up with some kind of supervening plot structure.

I thought that here was the key to why the whole thing felt like it had fallen short by some distance.

Kaufman was focused so heavily on the concept of synecdoche and the impossibility or, intrinsic unreliability, of artistic and even everyday representation as a result of synedoche that he missed two other major strands of artistic work - characterisation and narrative.

And quite simply, a film that does away with the substance of characterisation and narrative while retaining their empty husks is a bodged compromise which fails to fulfill its most fundamental function - to entertain.

So a round of applause for the effort maybe, but certainly none for the end result.

In the same way that Waterworld should not be celebrated merely because a large amount of money and technical effort was expended upon it, arthouse cinema should not be treated as virtuous purely for being ambitious.

It must tick all the other boxes demanded of all films. Unfortunately, it didn't.

 

[Reno]

I'd been putting off watching this and finally got round to it and was surprised at how much I liked it. Sometimes I love Kaufman's work (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine) and sometimes I find it irritating (Human Nature, Adaptation) and I thought this would be more along the lines of irritating. I also finds Philip Seymor Hoffman and his patented slack jawed expression rather overrated, but he was good in this and the rest of the cast were fantastic (Samantha Morton in particular was wonderful). I disagree with the previous posters comment that the film was uninteresting to look at. I though Frederick Elmes' cinematography (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, The Ice Storm) was beautiful, as was the art direction.


To accuse a film of self indulgence, when its subject matter is the ultimate self-indulgent artist maybe slightly missing the point. The central conceit, that an unlimited arts grant is a very bad idea, struck me as rather funny, but then I keep applying for these things. I also didn't expect to find the film so moving in places. Unlike so many recent films, this is one I can't wait to watch again. Rather than nothing happening in the second half as some people are saying, I thought that an incredible lot happened and I've got a feeling that this is a film that will be more rewarding with repeat viewings.

 

[little_legs]

Seen it, it's very good. Phillip Hoffman Seymour is great in it.

 

[Augie March]

'The Smash Hit Comedy Of The Year!'.

Or so proclaims the blurb on the front of the DVD. Which made me conjour up an image of disappointed people renting the film out expecting some kind of slapstick gag-fest but instead end up with this crazy film that makes jokes about polysemic words and is obsessed about sexual frustation and death.

Anyway, I myself had been looking forward to seeing this since it'd graced the cinemas and after watching it last night, I'm by no means one of the disappointed people. A fascinating study into the lonliness and despair of a middle-aged man desperate to create something wonderful and over-reaching in his life, so that everything might make sense. Obviously, it's Kaufman creating a film about himself, yet again. But what's wrong with that when he does it in such surreal sublime strokes, that sucked me in to the narratve no matter how nonsensical it felt at times. It's a brilliant head-scratcher, that left me with an overwhelming sense of wonderment at the absurdity of your own existence after it finished. Which is a feeling that I rarely get after watching a film, but when I do, I know I've watched a damned fine one indeed.

 

[Dillinger4]

this is on film4 at nine tonight.

 

[kyser_soze]

Brilliant film, but I found it utterly tedious. It was like listening to someone talk about their dreams.

 

[Idaho]

Brilliant film, but I found it utterly tedious.

How can it be brilliant when it was utterly tedious?

 

[kyser_soze]

Same as I can say I can see how good the music of the Beatles is, while not liking it. My subjective opinion on it was that I found it boring, but it was a brilliantly executed piece of filmmaking attempting to express a very complex idea - an idea I personally found tedious.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I loved the they way the first half worked but it got dull and came to a predictable conclusion instead of a clever or thoughtful one.