Synecdoche, New York
The new movie from Charlie Kaufman, the brilliant mind behind Being John Malcovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (lesser known, on par with the others), and Adaptation.
Each of these screenplays was shaped by 3 stud directors in Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and George Clooney (yet one more thing that makes him cooler than me) and aided by knockout performances by Carrey, Rockwell, and Nick Cage (believe it or not).
Phillip Seymour Hoffman lived up to, if not exceeded the performances of his contemporaries above, but the question remains, what would come of Kaufman’s directorial debut?
The answer: Absolute fucking chaos.
I began watching with the notion that this would more or less be like any other movie, as original as his other concepts had been, they were a joy to digest. This…this was like trying to swallow a piano.
Expect that you will be uncomfortable, know that you will not grasp much and you will feel as if you grasp even less.
The movie starts out simply enough, but the directing style, chronology, and consistency to itself unravels at an ever increasing pace, mirroring the accelerating degradation of the main character’s mind.
Like Adaptation, Synecdoche is deeply rooted within Kaufman himself. He directs it from the inside out, making cage’s character in Adaptation almost a prophecy of what was to happen here. Kaufman loses his mind directing SiNY because Hoffman’s character is losing his mind directing his opus. It’s somewhat beautiful, somewhat narcissistic, but Kaufman is the movie, and the movie is him.
I encourage you to see this movie, and to see it again.
However, I cannot rate it.
