Synecdoche, New York – Review
People are boring.
You, are boring. You get up with a foul smell in your mouth. You do stuff when people are not watching. You are confused in public and act macho in private. You are always thinking how it would be to be the guy with the girl. You sing the opera in the confines of your car. You steal glances at the price-tags and buy the unnecessary out-of-budget excess because you want to impress someone pretty who you in all mathematical probability will never ever see again. That you escape from the ‘now’ and the ‘then’ conveniently to sing the chorus and and never the song is anything but the ultimate victory of banal surrealism that is as chronic as the ability of a man to “think” itself. Yet, inspite of all this knowing, the one constant feeling that a man cannot rid himself off , inspite of thinking this a hunderd or more times in a life time – why do I see what I see as me. Why is the “me” seeing this and not the ‘he/she’ beside me. How would it feel to see the world from his/her eyes?
The daily clich'©s, the very food for everyday existence, are tailor made in this film to play out what it means to watch yourself being played by charecters who over a period of time become – well, you! The film is one huge drama, one huge set that Caden, played to expected perfection by Philip Seymour Hoffman, dreamt, designed and put life into where for years on end, the quest to perfect charecters takes place. There are roles assigned to each person who follow their “real” charecters and the director expects these charecters, over a period of time, behave the way their real conterparts behave so much so that after a while, the “charecters” do the thinking for the real people. Confusing? Aah well, you have to watch it to see what I mean. And un-surprisingly, there are very few reviews of this film for that very reason.
As expected from any Charlie Kauffman film, the movie has tons of layers, tons of subtle reflections on the parody of life. Whether you choose to see it or ignore it is totally upto you and very conveniently, it does not impact your take away from the film. In my book that is very compelling screen-writing and when it’s Kauffman, so you can’t expect anything less. But to be fair to the average viewer, the film is tad too long and very very boring in most parts. For an avid writer or a serious movie enthusist who wants to explore every frame, there is probebly more meat than the whole of the star-wars episodes but for most, one sitting is way too taxing.
Some of the most brilliant episodes in the film happen very early when the roles of Caden and his family are defined. The mediocre lives they lead is sketched in a way that is least pretentious as most movies about average families do. The bottomline when watching this is – the movie is Charlie’s most laborious work. It’s his offering to the art that he is born for. A screen-writing that comes along once in a while! It’s his temple to films like Roark’s for Human Spirit. It’s his ultimate creation of a soul to take form on a film screen. It’s his attempt to make bare the self of a human in the ways that can be put in terms of words and images. They say writers are some of the most complicated people in the world. They are because they have all these thoughts that go cross out each other all the time and to define all this in the form of a film take a lot of effort. This film is made from a litmus test of conflicting thoughts and the effort shows and speaks for itself.
Charlie Kauffman, all through the 130 mins, makes his charecters dance to what tunes play in his mind. The tornado of thoughts spiral out on to the huge set in front of him and permeates into Caden and into Hazel and into Sammy and into the guy who practices how to walk natuarally. The set-men do what they should, the light comes from where it should because inside Charlie’s mind, like my mind, like your mind my dear reader, the reality of things that we so comfortably choose to dismiss – exists, shrouded with peels of imaginative bliss that over time becomes the external us in the company of an audience that is inturn full of the same synthetic exterior that it becomes part of your, mine & charlie’s huge set – a play of constant moments of loudness that the rest of the silent actors take notice and then forget. Such is the vanity of the fame, fortune and social brightness – it all is but a moment of anticipated glory bred by years and years of longing.
Synecdoche, New York. Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. Watever! That’s my way for accounting for the title.
Note: The review was written in bits and drabs as the film is not easily digestable. So the commentry is random and incongruent mirroring the film.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
ahh there we go..soloid Ravptor..have beem meaning to see this for a long time..but, off late i guess i have seen all the Kauffman movies twice and didnt find the strength to watch this and get myself fucked over again..
after repeated viewing of his movies..it has becoem apparent to me..his thoughts are clear..story simple..its the screenplay that fucks you up..and their lies his genius..or the mad-genius-einstein..or whtever..otherwise..on paper..they are all geeky..revenge of the nerd movies..not that i dont like it..but..ahem
would be interesting to see Charlie Kauffmann..the director..and i can bet every last penny of mine..it would need repeated viewings..but thats as a fan-boy..what about the others?
btw..wat is is it with your long sentences..damn..reading your article felt like watching a kauffmann movie..needs a second reading..lol!! its a compliment :-)
More power to inconsistency bro.
OM: There is a scene towards the end where if you look closely, there is an overlap of sets in sets in sets. You have to watch it. The story is straight at that point – Characters becoming real but that metamorphosis is screen written in such a complicated way that you are just blown away… pure pure genius.
Tushar: Amen Bro! To the curious cases around the world!
saw it once…didn’t get it fully…liked the priest monologue at the end…here it is below
“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years! And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce.
And they say there’s no fate, but there is, it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right, but it never comes. Or it seems to, but it doesn’t really.
So you spend you time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along, something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel cherished, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is is, I feel so angry! And the truth is, I feel so fucking sad! And the truth is, I’ve felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long, I’ve been pretending I’m okay, just to get along!
I don’t know why. Maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen “
Is that first paragraph something you wrote yourself or is it a part of the movie? If you wrote it, I am gonna respectfully steal it to impress females. :P
Awesomeness to say the least!!
Dude… its all me bro
I don’t like reviewing films… i usually write about what they mean to me – Pretentious MoFo that I am.
Steal away… getting the chicks is the priority!
axw11: At that stage, very philosophically, what he says sums up the cinema. I want the dvd to decode but the script drains you out.
Charlie can write these monologues, its a give, for me its fun to see him write the monologues in the form of screen acting. The charecters don’t say it, they act it and when that delicate routine gets accented by the final outburst – true cinematic bliss!