At approximately 8:39 PM EST, I stepped out of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York. The film seems to have mystified a significant portion of the critical community, which makes me think more and more that they can't follow anything that doesn't have the traditional 3 act structure (see: Ashes of Time Redux). I'm sure that if you handed me a laptop then, I would be able to string out a much stronger ramble, but here I am now, and there I am then, and now the waves of time have flashed over, and I'm already on my way to death.
Kaufman presents death as the catalyst for human action; as soon as the character's see their lack of imprint on the whole of human existence, they need to find a way to lash out and make their stamp. Are they successful? No, well, Mr. Hoffman, isn't. His wife seems to make it, but she's already far away and gone. But alas, don't fret! I am instantly reminded of the epitaph of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, what with everyone being equal in death and all. Yes, everyone dies.
If you couldn't already see, this is a mordant film, and in many ways, inspired by the works of Kafka and Beckett. However, the absurdity here is completely tragic and the comedy relies more on wit than anything else. There's the stupid bureaucracy (the ever travellng doctor trips) and a character reading The Trial for good measure. Maybe that later characteristic is too neat for its own good. Many of the characters (who aren't trying to win his favour) seem to be conspiring against Hoffman's character, and are very well putting him on trial, and he's put up with all sorts of sicknesses throughout the ordeal. But this may cause many of these characters to just be nothing more than caricatures, and the film is constantly stuck in this limbo. You don't know if Kaufman knows what he's doing or not, or if it even really matters. Early on, I thought that the film revelled in all this grime and dirtiness; the first minutes have much to do with fecal matter and warts. Our protagonist has a compulsive obsession with cleaning things. But this decay is gradually forgotten, as the film moves into its forlorn grand act of theatre: a production of life. This is part of what makes the film maddening; a production of life, how imposing is that! It's clearly supposed to be some sort of statement about life, and I think that's really what sets it apart from great art (oh woe is he who uses the distinction! Gods have pity!) is that it does exactly that instead of providing any shred of insight. But it could be stranger than this - one scene has a preacher on the "stage" literally preaching but as soon as I became annoyed I realized there was some power to this. The preacher almost seemed to go completely out of character to deliver his damning sermon. There is nothing formally interesting about the film whatsoever; it is not much more then a screenplay with pictures.
This is also not a film to make people comfortable. There is nothing pleasing to the audience's in egos. During parts, I felt like Kaufman was saying, "Haha, you lousy fucks! But then again, I am one too." But even with the obviousness and the general cacophony, I was surprised by how I did in fact like the film. For all its pretentions (well, what film on a topic like this wouldn’t be pretentions) there was an undercurrent of a strong emotional reservoir. There are places where this film goes where no other commercial film I've seen dares to go. Really, I only started liking it until the plot began to dissolve and the film became "self-indulgent". Oh, that dreadful word! Imagine what the world would be like without art that wasn't "self-indulgent" - we'd have a drought! The same was said of the superior Inland Empire. I guess anything that really tries to stand its own ground is "self-indulgent" now, because if there wasn't a word to describe it, people would probably just have to beat the film stock down with sticks. There is so much indulging in self here that you know that this is an earnest film. For all its sorrow, I don't think it really means that the film is condescending in anyway. I think Kaufman is putting himself more or less in the same boat. Just like the theatre director, he is staging his own play of life, making this a case of life imitating art imitating life imitating art imitating life and etc. and etc. He, of course, knew that going in, and the meta-ness is noticeably stepped up a notch later on, when there are actors playing actors playing somebody else, and it all falls to pieces. It really did the little aspiring artist in me, and that turmoil has a strong resonance. Unfortunately, there are points where the film descends in some stupid crudity later on, and that causes some undermining of the emotions which Philip Seymour Hoffman carries over his back. His really is quite a tremendous performance, and he even reminded very much of the small-time director that I've met around town. It's really hard to know what to say to something that at times has its surrealism and absurdity feel too snug, that can be infuriating because of its over-aching "ideas" - but none really too significant - and which has not much of anything of mise en scene. I can't decide if it's daring or obliviously presumptuous and simple or both or neither. And wait, there are a few images I found visually and predominantly emotionally arresting, most having to do with the characters looking longingly above, and especially the shot where a zeppelin is seen flying in warehouse. The doppelganger may be one of my favourite characters in recent film, and this is surely leagues ahead of Kaufman's earlier "clever" work. That leaves me to pass almost no final judgement on the thing itself. It'll probably die soon anyway, that lousy fuck.
