Synecdoche, New York

now you're just being bitter.

That's just a summary of what everybody says about it.

Can you guys tell me what you thought was so brilliant? Is this movie 'indescribably' good?

Awepittance rattled off some references to philosophers, was that it?

Okay, one more thing and I'm off.

Did you guys really "tear up" when Calamity Jane was stripping and/or when she was in the hospital and requested that PSH tell her he sucked Eric's cock at band camp?

i didn't think it was brilliant. it basically reminded me of a sad david lynch movie. it had the same effect on me that mulholland drive had. it isn't nearly as good as that movie, but it had the same general effect (althought i am not actually comparing the two as they are nothing alike in terms of artistic purpose, theme, etc). it wasn't mindblowing, to me. i just found it to be a very affecting portrait of someone so obsessed with his life that he forgets to live it. if you don't think that's applicable to your life, ok.

edit: yes i teared up, as i said before. i don't know why, that scene had an effect on me, what can i say. i guess if i rationalized it, i would say : since i bought the conceit of the story and hoffman's character, his separation from his daughter by a glass panel or whatever after having no influence on her life and seeing how she's essentially become a stranger, well, that was sad. it made me really sad.

Okay, I have the proof. Thanks.

(I seriously did think you were winding me up with this...now I realize you earnestly enjoyed it.)

Oh well, I'm jealous. Again, didn't hate it, just didn't care. I hate to sound like Armond White, but I felt like I was invited to a party where I was the only one who didn't speak the language. Synecdoche has arty hipster written all over it.

  autopilot said:

Unbreakable is a fantastic film.

One of my faves. The 1st time I saw it, I was tripping on DMX (which is a great movie drug) and it blew me away.

Other great DXM movies:

Gummo

Pi

Cabin Fever

i don't see how this is a "hipster" movie. sounds like you're projecting a lot of shit onto this, probably from the few people you actually know who loved it. that's what i do when i hate a movie, i project. i'm usually wrong.

that review you linked is terribly written, btw. review the fucking movie, don't show off how many films you can reference in five paragraphs.

  sneaksta303 said:

  autopilot said:

Unbreakable is a fantastic film.

 

One of my faves. The 1st time I saw it, I was tripping on DMX (which is a great movie drug) and it blew me away.

 

Other great DXM movies:

 

Gummo

Pi

Cabin Fever

I hope you realize I've read about two dozen posts by you where you've unknowingly interchanged "DMX" and "DXM".

...you fucking Krew fanboy.

i don't think that's a mistake. i always mute the sound and crank up "x gon give it to ya" whenever i watch the shop on main street.

  Mirezzi said:

Zaphod, Salads, pack your things, I'm sending you to Atop's summer camp.

 

PARTY TIME!

  zaphod said:

i don't see how this is a "hipster" movie. sounds like you're projecting a lot of shit onto this, probably from the few people you actually know who loved it. that's what i do when i hate a movie, i project. i'm usually wrong.

 

that review you linked is terribly written, btw. review the fucking movie, don't show off how many films you can reference in five paragraphs.

That's why I said I hated to sound like Armond White. His reviews are like Kaufman movies. They're all about the author.

There are a few things I'll add as to why I wasn't particularly enamored with Synecdoche.

First, the things I liked:

-Humor: Kaufman is often very clever, and there were more than a few genuine lols, painful lols. As the avatar for Kaufman's own fears and failures, PSH gave us a few situations where the author's sense of humor shined pretty well. Unfortunately, there were plenty of setups that felt trampled by the previous two decades of pop-culture. For instance, the Hope Davis shrink. I've just seen that too many times to find it funny or even interesting.

Biggest LoL: when PSH sees the pink "nose" box and pulls out the tear squirt-bottle before thrashing the box with his fake tears.

-Music: Easily the best thing about the film was its music, which worked FOR and AGAINST it. I needed a break from Brion and rarely got one. I think they needed at least two or three more cues because they kept hammering us with the same two repeatedly. The song at the credits, had the film worked on me at all emotionally, would have made for a nice cathartic tearjerking fuckfest. Instead, it felt forced and hamfisted. The reason I thought you were joking about liking the movie was based on that. Not that it matters, but I'm not convinced that Kaufman was aiming for tears. This film, like all his others, seem more of an intellectual exercise than anything.

Now, what I didn't like:

-Cast/Characters/Direction: I'll put this in one category because I have the feeling I'd like this film much more if Jonze had actually directed it. (He bowed out to make Wild Things) Okay...I'm sick of PSH. He's become the fattest, most slovenly, ugly troll sack of shit you could ever want. I get that. He enjoys playing pathetic bastards and he's very good at it. I'm just bored of it. There's a very odd thing about the craft of acting that makes it so scary for directors and actors alike. If the audience doesn't buy what's going on, or when the seams of the script are darting through the frame, it's difficult to listen to the performers let alone care enough to bond with them. When Keener hugs PSH and says, "I don't know what I'm doing," I cringed at her inability to seem believable. I wondered if that was a choice, like part of her character perhaps, or just bad acting/directing. Somebody should have thrown her Caden's "tear bottle" at that point. I will leave out Michelle Williams, who I thought was great. I really do like her.

-Bending Reality: Again, with quite literally every Kaufman project, he's done this and I now firmly believe he is a one-trick pony. "Oh my gosh, is this really happening? No, wait, WOW, that's so random!" This is where my hipster critique comes in, Zaphod, and it's not projection. Sitting around in a house that's burning down, climbing into the warehouse of the warehouse of the warehouse of the warehouse, building a set that mirrors his own apartment, casting three people to play himself, etc. That's all very kitschy and for one film from any given director, I'll indulge in it because it can be fun. For me, that film was somewhere between Eternal Sunshine and Adaptation. Yes, I prefer both to Synecdoche. The question has to be asked though...how many times will people dig that? It doesn't matter, but I'm done with it.

I may have more later, these are just some of my thoughts and I don't wanna chicken out of a discussion. I also wanna keep Zaphod at bay so he doesn't project his own projections about projection onto me. (See what I did there? Kaufman, eat your heart out!)

havent read a word of this thread but i really liked this movie. very funny and sad.

Another bad:

Old people makeup was fucking horrendous. Took me out utterly.

im pretty sure the awkward casting and bad makeup was on purpose

or atleast that's what i told myself

:angry:

  Mirezzi said:

If the audience doesn't buy what's going on, or when the seams of the script are darting through the frame, it's difficult to listen to the performers let alone care enough to bond with them. When Keener hugs PSH and says, "I don't know what I'm doing," I cringed at her inability to seem believable.

This is something I wondered about as I watched. On the one hand, Kaufman has a contextual 'out' in claiming that the movie was supposed to appear as 'stagey' as real, given the main character's job and the project he undertakes in the movie, and the blending of stage and reality that is supposed to result. On the other hand, many of the lines delivered (especially the old woman narrator's at the end) sounded much more like something you would read rather than something a person would say extemporaneously, and that added to the overly-intellectual vibe you were pointing out.

It also reminded me of the similarly stilted delivery of many of the lines of dialogue in Being John Malkovich.

I just didn't know what to think about it, but as with you, it didn't always work for me.

  Quote

-Bending Reality: Again, with quite literally every Kaufman project, he's done this and I now firmly believe he is a one-trick pony. "Oh my gosh, is this really happening? No, wait, WOW, that's so random!" This is where my hipster critique comes in, Zaphod, and it's not projection. Sitting around in a house that's burning down, climbing into the warehouse of the warehouse of the warehouse of the warehouse, building a set that mirrors his own apartment, casting three people to play himself, etc. That's all very kitschy and for one film from any given director, I'll indulge in it because it can be fun. For me, that film was somewhere between Eternal Sunshine and Adaptation. Yes, I prefer both to Synecdoche. The question has to be asked though...how many times will people dig that? It doesn't matter, but I'm done with it.

Here I disagree. I actually expected to feel like it was just more of the same meta-level shenanigans Kaufman has indulged in in the past, but this movie surprised me by its ability to continually surprise me, usually in funny ways, with its bending reality. The only example that comes to mind is the dynamic that develops between the second and third Cotards, which imitates the initial, but by that point outdated, dynamic between the real and the second Cotard, like when the third steps in to say something and the second waves him away dismissively. I lol'd at that.

I watched the movie somewhat inebriated, but this is what I got from it

or something like that.

I forgot to mention this previously, but the most interesting encounter I had with Synedoche involved Caden/Kaufman's narcissism. Kaufman is a smart guy, so I doubt this Freudian means of storytelling was unintentional. When Adaptation came out, there was a frenzy of labeling Kaufman a narcissist. With that in mind, the real turning point of Synecdoche was when Caden is looking into the mirror and shaving. The sink explodes and the surreality of the story begins to escalate. Sycosis / Psychosis, burning house, etc. Freud's explanation of homosexuality, however ridiculous, was narcissism and self-interest, so the use of a mirror is classically Freudian. There were at least twenty implicit and explicit indications that Caden was homosexual. Kaufman's subversion of Freud is that self-loathing, however agonizing to watch, can still only operate as another form of self-interest. After all, the film's quite excellent final three minutes unravel everything about Caden's world, as the narrator tells us that not only are the three or four Cadens who were running around during the film a marker of abject self-interest, the entire cast of Caden's life are extensions of this narcissism. I wasn't ready to articulate it in this manner last night, but I thought this was Kaufman's final piece of work on this subject. He may have a hard time getting financed to write/direct something like this again anyway, but I think this was his humble attempt at making an epic version of what he started to do with Adaptation.

Somebody mentioned earlier that it would have been better if he had waited 20-30 years. Maybe. Awepittance and I also agreed that the project might have been *better* in the hands of another filmmaker, specifically Jonze. However, it's probably only fitting, especially on the meta-narrative level, that Kaufman was at the helm.

  Mirezzi said:

Another bad:

 

Old people makeup was fucking horrendous. Took me out utterly.

Yes, but I think that was intentional.

anyway you should stick to jason bourne films and school of rock type films.

  GORDO said:

  Mirezzi said:

Another bad:

 

Old people makeup was fucking horrendous. Took me out utterly.

 

Yes, but I think that was intentional.

 

anyway you should stick to jason bourne films and school of rock type films.

Yeah, the one-liners you throw at me on every film thread are sheer genius. I can't wait until the next time you mention Bourne and School of Rock. I'll give it a week. In the meantime, dig your dick out of your stomach and try to write a few complete sentences.

lol you like school of rock, lol lol.

lol

Keep digging!

lol?

I have yet to have an encounter with Synedoche :(

  GORDO said:

  Mirezzi said:

Another bad:

 

Old people makeup was fucking horrendous. Took me out utterly.

 

Yes, but I think that was intentional.

hmm its one thing to disagree about if a film was good or not but to make excuses for things like that?

that's very reaching imo.

When i was in high school my friend's neighbor bought an Atari Jaguar, he had the game Aliens VS Predator. I went over there to play it and was horrified by how badly put together the game was, there was barely any sound when you walk around, you dont even know if you are being chased by an alien until you are attacked. His response was

'It's supposed to be silent like that, the game programmers intentionally didn't put any sounds in to make it more scary'

I called bullshit, and from that day forward in our group of friends sprung a new phrase 'Aliens VS Predator syndrome' a syndrome where the person suffering from it likes a particular thing so much that he will make excuses on behalf of the artists intentions without a) knowing them b) usually trying to cover up an obvious mistake, by saying the 'artist intended it that way'

i like Charlie Kaufmann a lot, but i don't think i can say with a straight face that 'yeah it was a really daring decision of him to use very rushed looking old people makeup instead of spending more time realistically aging the actors'