Normally I would write my own review, but after an excruciating evening of watching this movie with Annie, I pretty much agree with everything Stephanie Zacharek says:
http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/10/24/synecdoche/
Except for what she says about Claire--I think Kauffman actually wrote Claire to be a rather unsympathetic character, not someone fragile (nor do I think Williams is a "fragile" sort of actress), someone we're supposed to ridicule because she's the kind of theatre actress who isn't as smart as the plays she plays and because she has no idea how self-centered she is. That bugged me in the movie. It seemed petty.
I don't exactly agree with Zacharek about the potential the movie had, because I really liked Eternal Sunshine and Adaptation. I think those movies did have emotional resonance, even as they got so meta they made my eyes roll. I think if Synecdoche had been reined in somewhat and taken one direction instead of another, I might have liked it more. Synecdoche reminds me, in that sense, of The Science of Sleep, which I still really like but feel is lacking in many ways. In both instances a very unique screenwriter took a hand at directing their own work and kind of ran away with themselves.
I'm not going to say this wasn't painful to watch... but I'm also not going to say I'm not going to watch it again tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteWhat I do think is that the writer at Salon probably (it seems to me) missed another layer of this thing:
"That could be a great, bleak comic idea, if it weren't just a cog in Kaufman's bigger "What is the purpose of art? What is the meaning of life?" thesis paper. Bulldozed by the actors who've stepped in to re-create their lives, Caden and Hazel wonder if they're actually real anymore. At one point a character utters the pivotal line "There are a million little strings attached to every choice we make," and we're invited to look back at the mess of Caden's life as if it were -- get this -- a perpetually evolving play. Because you know what? All the world's a stage.
I wish I could say I made that line up, but the actor who's playing me right now stole it from Shakespeare and typed it in when I wasn't looking. "Synecdoche, New York" strives to be a work of greatness. But Kaufman's overarching vision is a lot less interesting than the small insights he gathers along the way. This is what happens when life imitates art, and blows it."
I think that Kaufman is fully aware of how in writing this screenplay the idea becomes merely a cog. Isn't that sort of the point? That living something is entirely different from trying to realize it in artistic form? That's how I interpret it.
What's truly disturbing to me is how much of this resonates with me on some level. I don't know. This one going to have to *marinate*. I didn't enjoy it. But I also loved it. We'll see how I feel second time around, now that I know what I'm dealing with here.
I forgot to add that I think the Salon writer missed another thing (part of that next layer that she seemed not to get): isn't it obvious why Kaufman had to direct this?... and also why it had to get out of control? In other words, I guess I'm suggesting that we give Kaufman a little bit more credit and that he knew exactly what he was doing by making this so excruciating. It's marinating a bit... I'm liking it more as I unravel it all...
ReplyDelete