Synecdoha, New York is a talented work by a convinced pessimist and misanthrope about the apparent meaninglessness of human existence.
And the fact that most people are bad directors of their own lives, absolutely unable to offer themselves a tolerable script and actors who could cope with even simple roles.
Look around you, dear directors. Analyze the situation with the actors involved in the production of the play of your life. Are they able to implement your ideas and your script? And the script itself, can anyone be interested in it?
Or maybe the worldly and creative wanderings of the protagonist of this film clearly illustrate the poverty of the mind of homo sapiens, trying to build something in his not infinite life, when in fact there is neither past nor future, but only “here and now”?
The intellectual puzzle with elements of psychedelia from Charlie Kaufman is designed for an advanced viewer and makes you think about the meaning of life, in which movement is important, and frequent changes and turns are absolutely necessary for the development of the plot, because you can not play the same play until the very end.
“Life is like driving a bicycle, to keep your balance, you have to move.” Albert Einstein
When Dogville was called the last movie on Earth, I didn’t know what it meant. Sure, Dogville shook all my molecules and reassembled them, but the last one? Is that a k?
A few years later, I watched Synecdoch without breathing and thought that it was impossible for the director to shoot something else, for the actor to play something else, and for me as a viewer to watch something else. What a shock I felt when I learned that Philip Seymour Hoffman decided to leave the profession after this film and even took away his documents like our workbook. But then he went back to work. Not for long. Until he passed away. It turns out that I did not see the exorbitant exposition of the great Hoffman in this film.
Wishing to praise the acting, usually say that the actor does not play, and lives in the role. Now, Hoffman doesn't live in that role -- he dies in it. His dedication reaches the level of self-destruction. Watching this act of self-immolation is absolutely impossible, even immoral, and the audience’s empathy reaches the level of complete identification with the character (or with the actor?). And now there is no longer you, no Kotar, no Hoffman, no screen between you, there is simply life, naked and trembling, as it is - not too filled with great meaning, not at all filled with great happiness, but so to your pain. Him. Everyone. "You're Helen." Kaufman got what he wanted from us.
And in fact, no matter how much you talk about this film, everything will be wrong, everything is clumsy and heavy, because words are the creation of reason and appeal to it. This film, being a true work of art, acts not with words, but with images, bypassing the mind, directly on the subconscious, that is, on the soul. And the soul, it is a substance illogical, chaotic, irrational, but it senses the truth. And even those who were dissatisfied with this film because of the excessive allegedly “black” felt this truth, but were afraid of it. Successfully working on the destruction of our personalities tabloid, cheap sermon imbecile "positive" flooded women's magazines. But it is not in vain that people notice that laughter without a reason is a sign of a fool. Trying to make us happy nodding fools "psychologists", whose social order they fulfill?
We should be grateful for films that do not hide us from ourselves, from our lives, but take out our pain, loneliness and fears, extract them carefully and respectfully, giving them the right to exist, as if to say: “We understand you, you are not alone, we all share a common lot.” Most interestingly, recognized pain lets go faster, turning from a tool of destruction simply into a life experience that enriches our personality. Respect your feelings. Watch some good movies.
Perhaps every piece of text devoted to this film should begin with an explanation of the word "Synecdoha", but the audience did not prevent to study at school a little more carefully, and distributors have at least a small bit of strength and taste. For "New York New York" although it makes sense, but serves more as a cause for discussion than a reflection of the tape.
It is no secret that Charlie Kaufman, as a creative unit and as a creator of works, who managed to play with great and global conceptuality, put processes in the position of heroes, I sympathize frankly and openly. You can even call him one of the most significant contemporaries, but this will be a purely point attitude to the writer, but not to the director. In Synecdoch, Mr. Kaufman assumed the position of the creator, visualizing what was written and finishing after the film, while, as he believes, again reflecting his own ideas about the man of creativity.
Initially, as is customary, time and space were denied, the two forms of matter that explain the position of the construction of being as such. Time here has a segment, but it flows intermittently, in pieces, going back, shifting from space to space and again running a few steps forward. However, in its probabilistic distribution, it is displayed by the correct calendar on the appearance of the hero and his inner state, which dies from scene to scene, from every death that he lives both in reality and in the production.
This is the movement of space – here the exact layout of the city is inside the city, and the actions are repeated from one situation that actually occurred to the second position that copies it. Sometimes between them there is an ongoing reality that has no mapping, and when the characters move from one state to another, it seems that space is completely lost. Especially in the denouement, where the main character himself, being a director, goes into the category of a character woven over him.
The effect is achieved.
In fact, it is very difficult to separate Kaufman from Kaufman. First of all, this is most affected by the lack of compactness of the work and the division of the film into episodes, where sometimes only the shadows of the characters are visible. If from the point of view of the text this can be explained by the idea of the author, from the point of view of observation, such half-moments look like an understatement of the camera. Undoubtedly, this explains the grandeur of the idea, its breadth, it tries even more to confuse the already doubtful viewer. However, the hero’s life is so gray and miserable that the more actions and contacts he has with other characters, the more mistaken it seems that he is trying to live, even though he absolutely does not intend to live. No, he loves life, but to “live” for him is a verb close to inner suffering.
Many criticize the tape not only for its nonlinearity and lack of established pillars of human development, but for hopelessness and oppressive order, demonstrating the uniformity of life. The hero’s loneliness not only happens in reality, the character who plays him in a parallel production looks lonely. He dies, too, telling, even more convincing, Caden that life is moving forward, minute by minute, that it is not predetermined until you sign the finale yourself. And you can't find the answers in a thorough reproduction.
The personification, the key word for “Synecdoha” is the usual for everyone “self-digging”. Diving time after time into the past, reanimating it with the help of substitution of places and characters, reproducing it exactly in such, but not artificial scenery, it is impossible to find a definition of the correctness / error of the chosen direction of your life. The emergence of irrationality in what is happening is similarly correlated with a person, in favor of his guesses, inventing situations, explaining the reasons for who you are not and completely denying what happened. Hence the diary of the daughter, replenished with records, even when she is not, and falling from the tattoo petals, and exhibitions of micropictures, offering to look closer and finally see. The only pity that possessing such subtle elements and episodes, Charlie Kaufman could not emphasize them, and chose to leave them only as moments of “culture shock”.
In all other respects, he again described himself, a man of imagination, of subtle thinking, constantly within himself. Just an ordinary standard person, whether viewer, reader.
He decided to think about his own life and fell asleep among dreams and their own kind.
Stupid people with their stupid stereotypes about finding the meaning of life, the right name and other everyday scenery of real life.
“Between stagnation and change. All life, if it is real, passes at that moment.” Not between the past and the future.
I want to make it easy to watch the movie. Dynamics are flawless. Screenshot. Lightning speed. You have never seen this before.
The main character and characters do not cause any negative emotions. If you start, you will have a feeling of involvement in the action itself.
“Every protagonist of his story, everyone needs to be given credit.”
There are so many chips in the tape. Starting from the burning house (just a burning house, nothing special, do not even think about it) and ending with the diary of the daughter of the protagonist, from which he learns about the events happening to her (it does not matter that they live in different countries).
- I am not following your book.
- But she's catching up with you.
When was the last time you thought? No, no, not about the paraphernalia that preserves the status of the middle class, but for real. Synecdoha will send you to the needle of anti-healthy and socially unacceptable intrapersonal thought.
- I'm doing fine.
- I don’t want you to be okay.
There should have been a review, but not here and not now. Because today, tomorrow, and last Wednesday, time does not exist. And it's not even syntactic homonymy, it's just a mistake. It is a mistake to stumble upon such a tape and not to see every changeable and chaotic frame, not to hear every crazy and clear monologue.
Did my words at least seem confusing to you, and the course of the story strange? I was just trying to convey the overall style of the film.
And since you finished it, New York, New York is your city.
What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you Lived, understood, disappointed. You realize you're not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone.
“As the people who adore you stop adoring you — as they die, as they move on, as you shed them; as you shed your beauty, your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you and there was never... You think only about driving - not coming from any place, not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are gone.”
Synecdoche, New York, 2008
Charlie Kaufman is a man of mystery to me. Confessions of a Dangerous Man, The Eternal Sunshine of the Pure Mind, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation are all films based on his scripts that have been watched by me at different periods of my life, and none of which I understood.
Each of his works is something very personal, intimate, resulting in a sometimes awkward picture, resembling absurdity, but very sincere. Each scenario is another undisguised attempt at desperate neurasthenic reflection; an analysis of oneself, one’s surroundings and one’s life as a whole; a huge emotional experience, trustingly and seemingly uncertainly, brought to the harsh judgment of a harsh public.
Synecdoha, New York is more mature, serious and understandable in my opinion. The 50-year-old writer himself directed the film. And it was the first and only to date, which I seem to understand, which I watched with pleasure, and which I liked!
The most important thing to say is that this is an allegory film.
What is it? As a description of the plot, the following quote from it is best suited: Cayden Kottor is a dead man. He lives between two worlds, between stagnation and change, time there behaves differently, the chronology is broken. Until recently, he desperately tried to understand the meaning of his situation, but plunged into apathy. That's enough.
This film is not about comparing life with the theater, not about Americans, not about the “world in which we live”, not even about the main character or any particular person, and also not about the life / frailty of being. The film is about death and loneliness, but not only about interpersonal relationships. And I see it this way: it's a film about each of us, about the "I" that we have inside, about Ida and Ego. These are our internal conflicts; our attempts to find ourselves, the meaning of life; futile attempts to gain a conscious understanding of love and happiness, harmony. It's selfishness in its vile manifestation, where basically, frankly, whether you realize it or not, all you're thinking about is yourself. The main character recreated the whole world, a whole life, his, for himself, for the sake of understanding who he is, what he is. In fact, he embodied an inner “self-digging” into reality, seeking consolation and love, understanding, but on the ruins of other people’s lives and feelings. In search of himself, he extremely selfishly suppresses everyone around him, crushes, adjusts other people's lives to his needs, operates on the people around him like puppet puppets.
I've always looked at you, but you haven't looked at anyone but yourself. So watch me jump. See how I learn that after death there is nothing - nothing to look at, nothing to watch, no love.
- Sami, come down! Sami! I didn't jump! Get up! I didn't jump!
And it's about each of us. We just don't realize it, but we all are. Everyone. Driven by egoism, even in our most altruistic desires, we are guided by egoism: “I WANT him to be happy (conscious), because then I will be fine (unconscious, root, paramount).” In order to satisfy our own needs, we are ready to destroy everything around us, like rams, seeing nothing but the goal, obsessed with the desire to achieve it: we do not think about the people around us, that they too have feelings, that they are as vulnerable as ourselves, they have their lives, their needs and desires. “None of these people is a statist, each of them is the protagonist of his own plot, everyone should be given his due.”
It is impossible not to notice the idea of loneliness present in the film. But it is not central, but rather accompanying (which is more than logical and clear). Why not? Because it's not the kind of loneliness that comes to mind when you hear that word. Yes, the main character here is a really lonely person - lives alone, no wife, no children (they are in fact, but in his life are not present) and to go to a frank conversation "heart to heart" in general with no one. But that, again, is an allegory. In the subcortex, if you look further, deeper, it is a more philosophical, existential concept. Explain. This picture is a personal experience of the individual. Therefore, it is obvious that each of us is alone from the moment of birth and all our lives, especially in old age and at the moment of death. We are surrounded by people, but closed in body, soul, brain, consciousness alone. We can share our thoughts and feelings, but even if they are understood, they are still only ours; no one will survive them for us, no one will feel them, we can be supported, helped, inspired, but this is an external influence.
It is difficult to put your feelings in a verbal shell. This movie needs to be seen. It leads to the need to reason. It looks like a requiem.
But this movie isn't for everyone. I would not classify it as one of those, after watching which a person changes his point of view on certain things, overestimates values, changes the coordinate system. It is for people like me (and the more inveterate) who love psychoanalysis.
Excellent musical accompaniment is not obtrusive, inconspicuous, but definitely doing its job. Playing actors does not cause any faults or complaints. The same can be said about the director’s and camera work – everything can not be better. And the film diverges on quotes, which is a good indicator.
It also looks a lot like Birdman and some of the Coen Brothers.
One of the last films of the fantastic artist Philip Seymour Hoffman, an amazing person, not the most beautiful or at least cute, but amazingly talented actor. Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Pure Mind (another film with a complex title, but about this another time, maybe), Being John Malkovich, Adaptations. The great script component of all these films, the confusing lines, the unexpected twists. And then Charlie decided to adapt the new text himself for the movie screen. Of course, it's not that simple.
Cayden Kotar (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theater director, puts unremarkable performances in Synctedy, New York (here is a chip with an English reading, it is clear why the distributors blurted out a difficult word, maybe someone accidentally got to the film). Too many stupid scenery, actors overplay. Nevertheless, the press is favorable to him. Meanwhile, his wife, an artist working on micro-pictures, is finally disappointed in her husband and leaves for Berlin with his daughter, trying not to contact her husband. Here Kotaru is suddenly given the MacArthur Prize ($500,000 for 5 years quarterly), and he decides to put something large. A giant, dilapidated warehouse is bought, and it builds a model of the world Caden lives in. He is played by a man who has followed him for twenty years.
Here's another one, great!
Here's another one, great!
Kotar's life is hell, his daughter is in Berlin, and she's really bad. Relationships with no one at all, and through his fault. Wildly insecure about himself and what he does, he nevertheless takes on what may be the grandest production in the history of mankind. It is very similar to the movie itself, in fact.
Deconstructing everything you'd expect from an independent drama (with a budget of $20 million, yeah). An incredible performance in which the concept of staging life is replaced, where extras live their lives at work, where the director follows how the actor who plays the director watches the rehearsal of the production in the production, and so on. Of course, the idea is fantastic, but it must be followed by some plot, implemented within the framework of an incredible model. And he's here, oh, that's the thing.
It seems that the writer put all his life problems into the text that could even come to mind. The film is about the fortieth anniversary, and about children, and about wives, and psychosomatic diseases, and about Jung’s philosophy, and about what not. True, there is a slight difference when you notice references for your own, left stealthily, and when the whole tape consists only of such references and their endless interaction. The lover of the hero buys a burning house that burns throughout the film. Non-random surname of the main character (depressive delusions combined with ideas of enormity, ugh). Every place in the film requires a footnote, what was meant. Each line probably doesn’t mean what you think. Since the film was not created to become an understandable viewer (it was not understood, the fees are twenty percent of the budget), then why? Smart author's film carries the intention of the creator. This movie has such a plan that, except for the creator, it is not clear to anyone. It remains to look at small details, interesting, striking.
For example, chips associated with the fully described life of the hero. The way he is gradually replaced both in the play and in general (I don’t know if I can talk about the difference here). As everyone around you starts to die (that’s it, don’t look for a spoiler). As Kotar begins to invent his illnesses and drink pills in handfuls. And it would be a good thing if, by the end, I didn't understand anything at all, I didn't start asking myself, "Why am I still watching this?"
When Charlie Kaufman’s screenwriting merits to the cinematic world were recognized in the form of an Oscar for The Eternal Sunshine of the Pure Mind, it became quite obvious that it was time to move somewhere else. Of course, somewhere else – meant to be an independent director, because who else will be able to unlock the full potential of the script, but not the skilled screenwriter himself. And so came "New York, New York," Kaufman's first and last directing experience so far. The film is a story about a successful director, dissatisfied with his life, who decided, however, to put something really real and great. The real and the great because the true.
"New York, New York" is something of a cosmic category. It's about where Tom Yorke came from. Here, the faster you try to stop understanding every detail, to disown the comprehension of everything and everything here and now, the better, the more you will be able to grasp. And there is something to grasp, because now the universe that exists in the head of Charlie Kaufman, no one to shove in a small plastic kaleidoscope, taking the necessary minimum. Here, everything unsaid, unsaid, everything that Kaufman has been silent up to this moment burst to the surface. The main motive of the picture is easy to consider - loneliness, but at the same time to say that the film is exclusively about him - and in no case. It is hardly possible to say that “New York, New York” is about something specific and unique. Love? Well, of course, it's a love painting. The creator, the phenomenon of illumination? Of course they are. Death? Yeah, what else? Humanism, humanity? Of course. But is that all?! Kaufman raised a huge number of topics, gave the viewer an incredible number of thoughts and emotions of varying degrees of facet. If there is anything to accuse him of, it is perhaps that the director wanted to say a lot. And this led to the fact that the endless and, in many ways, chaotic flow of thoughts, symbols, signs, hints simply puts the viewer before the fact of his existence, and someone in this situation, no doubt, will conclude: the film is oversaturated and oversaturated with a deterioration in quality. But in this case, blaming “New York, New York” for it is basically the same as blaming the bright night sky above the city for its low-quality star saturation. Yes, there are lots of stars, you can't count them, they don't make up an orderly system. But they're stars, damn it. Enjoy the show in all its glory.
Perhaps the best thing that this picture has is complete and absolute incomprehensibility. And if you move away from specific ideas and thoughts, and look at New York, New York in general, you get this absolutely amazing thing. At the very beginning, this film is crystal simple and understandable, then more and more murky, doubtful in its development. In its course, a person tries to build, invent, and desire a separate world, where there will be exceptionally hard and uncompromising truth, where nothing else is needed; of course, his attempts have been unsuccessful. Time runs so fast that before you even have time to look back, and has already become an old man. Some situations, actions, things here are absolutely clear, some are much less understandable, and some seem absolutely meaningless. Love and separation, comedy and tragedy, the simplest evidence and unpredictable illogicality. Charlie Kaufman hit the bullpen. “Synecdoche, New York”, that’s what the film is called in the original – a real synecdoche of the world around us, of all life with all the flaws, cracks, perfection and imperfection, with everything that enters its structure and somehow manifests itself. In fact, this is exactly what this modest, inconspicuous-looking two-hour film is about.
But is that all? ...
Did you get a story?, then you went to another movie theater.
All words and thoughts are below the belt. From the first frames of the film ' poop, menstruation, penises, vaginas...' against the background of the total mortality of all characters, except for the two main characters.
And#39. . I now know how to stage a play!' - sums up the main character at the end of the film.
A clot of abomination from the creator of the genius “Being John Malkovich”.
' New York, New York' with the same success could be called 'Moscow, Moscow', 'Tokyo, Tokyo' and other megacities that contribute to driving a person crazy. The question arises why such disclosure tools (themes) are chosen for such a topic as loneliness, such as: poop (green, yellow, gray is just what I remember), all possible genitals, types of sex, drooling during meals, many medical diagnoses, mortuaries, cemeteries, death, suicide and other shit?
Not being a fan of 'American Pies' I want to draw a parallel with 'New York, New York'. It's a hard version, with, like, semantic load.
That's right. After all, I sat down to write about Kaufman’s New York, knowing that nothing would work anyway. Except for a few confusing observations, fears, not to the place of the words spoken. Kilometers of what we've seen and misunderstood. Diary mess.
In fact, the film is about the fact that nothing will ever work in life. Especially as you like. Including living. But this is told not in the tone of depressive coolness, but wise and somehow warming longing. It is as if Kaufman invented and filmed all this "after life and death / / / wised twice", tried existence on both sides in the most concentrated form.
I never thought that human longing can be organic (like breathing), confident (as a position), balanced (as a life choice), effective (as an action), stimulating to think, go, live. That it can be the goal of creativity, communication, love. And their condition.
I mean, I read about the longing of Berdyaev, Heidegger... I was surprised how calmly Brodsky identifies boredom, longing and time. And I knew, yes, that longing is one of the most powerful themes of literature (and art in general). One of the main points of reference (and return) of philosophy.
This movie asked me an unexpected question. Is it possible to live a full life without longing?
The religious man yearns for eternity, the romantic for the second half, the poet for beauty, the philosopher for ideal, the mystic for the unknown.
Longing, unlike boredom (which is more itching than pain), is spiritual. He is the one who leads to the highest.
Charlie Kaufman is certainly a singer of longing, i.e. high, creative, trauma-healing her essence.
Longing is not formed into a plan, a thought or a word, an elusive but persistent desire for something. More? Another? Different? Gravity. Call. Waiting. The best way out is always through. Getting out of the fake. Belief and trust in pain (not just your own). Something familiar to everyone, something universal.
Real suffering, pain, longing, loneliness (according to Kaufman, apparently, the most true emotions in our lives) we can all experience only when we realize the meaninglessness, futility, futility of everything around us. So it turns out that nonsense is the real thing. In Kaufman, the heart beats like a Hamsian, no other way! The courageous absurdity is what drives the blood of his film through all these complex scenery of the city-synecdochi, the city of the homeless, homeless, lonely.
This city, if you think about it, is not. He's receiving a writer-director. Part of the whole. Part of it. He is ephemeral as the delusion of everyone who considers himself the creator (master, director) of the world. And steadfast and eternal as emptiness. And closed and hopeless, like a circle of a dial painted on a brick wall, whose hands will never reach eight, but will forever strive for the eight of infinity.
The main surprise of the film: the more the hero (director of the never-ending performance Kotar (Philippe Seymour Hoffman) plunges into the hustle and bustle, ephemeral, unreal, the more painful his plan (fiction) merges with his life, the more the feeling that all this is not a fraud, but without any reservations the truth of life. “What is good about boredom, longing, and the sense of meaninglessness of your own or all other existences is that it is not a deception.” I think Kaufman would have signed.
As well as the fact that all life is only a preparation for the play, and death catches up exactly when the idea finally comes, how it should really be called, staged, played. To live...
“Your scene is over. Please leave the stage.
In Kaufman's sarcastic smile, there is no conceit or megalomania. On the contrary, the feeling of smallness, futility, inability to live, lack of understanding of the surroundings; it is more honest than self-admiration (and, if you follow its logic, more honest than the OPTIMISM of faith and hope).
Artificial rain pours over an artificial (scenic) grave. Playing the role of a priest speaks over her open arms. It sounds – and there comes extreme clarity (with words this is rare, especially with translated ones). And no longer burden the terrible intricacies of fates, the confusion of events and names, stagnation and change, dates, worlds, at least double (existence and life, reality and literature, cast and original, simulacrum and present, prison and freedom, delirium and reality, laughter or tears...). It sounds like:
You see a tenth of the truth. Millions of threads are drawn from every decision you make. Every time you make a choice, you can ruin your life. The world has been around for billions of years, most of the time you are dead or unborn. You have one shot. You make your own destiny... Born, live in vain waiting, for years waiting for a call, a letter, a look that should fix something. But you will not wait, or you will wait, but not that. You waste your time on empty doubts and empty hopes. The fact that something good will happen, that you will find a connection with the world, become a good person, that you will be loved by someone. The truth is, I'm so angry, I'm so fucking sad that I feel so bad. And I've been pretending for so long that everything's okay, keeping in shape... so that I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my troubles. Everyone has enough. Well... All go to... Amen.
Yes! Kaufman is primarily a writer. He exalts words. He cannot do without them, even where silence must say everything. He doesn't know how to dot silence. He even measures time with words. He has to say everything. Including “die!” in the finale, even making death verbal, readable.
The wonderful, mysterious future that was before you has been lived, understood, not lived up to expectations. You realize there's nothing special about you, you fought for existence, and now you sneak out of it. Everyone goes through this, every single one. The differences mean almost nothing. Everyone is the same - you, Adele, and Heiser, and Claire, and Olive, and Helen, all her petty sorrows - yours, her loneliness, thin gray hair, rough red hands ... all yours! It's time to understand that... People who love you stop loving you, die, move on, you lose them, you lose your beauty, your youth. The world forgets you. You are aware of your frailty, you lose all your distinctive features. You know, nobody's watching you, and they've never been. You only think about going out of nowhere and nowhere, just going... here you are (7:43) and now you are here (7:44). And now you're nowhere!
This is a window to infinity.
But what strikes most about Kaufman (and his hero Kayden Kothar - the undisputed alter ego) is love without faith and hope, another synecdoch cut off from the whole, bleeding but still alive...
The main difficulty of the film is that it is physically uncomfortable to watch. You have to constantly interrupt to smoke, drink coffee, try to comprehend the next fragment or inserted by the director in the script clearly autobiographical vignette, spit, realizing that you still really do not understand anything and take the movie off pause, to barely absorb another ten to fifteen minutes of screen time.
At some moments you catch yourself thinking, wanting to just turn off Synecdoch, let the author stay with himself, alone with the pearls of his mind, but somehow uncomfortable, so Charlie Kaufman, suddenly towards the end flashes the sleek truth of life and two hours will be a long road to the brilliantly revealed finale. The more disappointment comes at the end.
The character of Hoffman is physically and mentally unpleasant, a body decaying under a heap of all conceivable and unthinkable diseases, a mind mired in an empty abyss of self-reflection, a mind disintegrating like the biblical Job’s life. Even a miraculous, unexpectedly appeared grant does not go to help, but on the contrary pulls it even deeper, to the sadly inevitable end.
To follow a thousand hints, outlines, scattered small beads on the text, unrealistic. To do this, one must be Kaufman himself, or Kaufman’s psychoanalyst, or that unknown part of Kaufman’s subconscious that dictates such stories to him. Perhaps such a script would have written the legendary Barton Fink Cohen, but there the text was cut down by an evil producer. I wish there was one here. Not only was it not found, but some force pushed Kaufman into the director's chair, gave him a budget and actors and hinted that it would work out.
It seems that Kaufman found a way to fall asleep for a couple of months and at the same time record the reflections coming to him in bad dreams, thoughts, confused and purely autobiographical, and then in the same disorder as they dreamed embodied everything on the screen. Kaufman's meaningless dreams are reflected in Hoffman's meaningless life on screen, which is reflected in the mindless, cumbersome, endless play Hoffman puts on, and the play is reflected in Kaufman's equally mindlessly cumbersome film. Kaufman-Hoffman-Kaufman is a bad infinity.
Not always, when you see something strange and incomprehensible, you should a priori admire, afraid of being questioned. Sometimes it is worth admitting that the king is naked, that the plot is contrived, that the editing has turned the film into a set of messy fragments, that the allegories are strange and decipherable, even if there is one. Do you want to know if the game is worth the candle? Will not those few who have succeeded in this come to the utter banality - how to answer?
What cinema resembles those ridiculous creations of modern art, which are more than once ridiculed in the film, when the lack of meaning is replaced by confusion, a loud name, hype and draws praise from critics, because it is easier to draw some meaning, to think of it yourself, than to sign that you do not understand anything happening.
Really talented films should not be approached with criticism and volumes of works on psychoanalysis and interpretation of images, as in Synecdoch. The symbolism of Tarkovsky can not be understood, but just feel his films, Fellini – to admire, Bergman’s psychologicalism is associated with excellent acting and directing – even the most complex of his films is largely clear and profane.
My review may have turned out to be angrily tense, but it speaks of resentment and disappointment, the unfulfilled hopes of getting a great film from the hands of one of the best and most original contemporary authors.
That's really a movie-mood, a very depressing movie, in addition to openly evil. If in his previous works Kaufman teased a little over his characters, he also openly mocks the poor guy, so much so that the Warmerdam “Waiter” can sleep peacefully.
Nothing new at all. As in the author’s other scripts, the protagonist is a pathetic little man, unwilling (or for some reason unable) to understand his happiness, burrowing deeper into his own cockroaches. Speaking of cockroaches, this is the favorite theme of Charlie and Donald.
Strictly speaking, Sabj was always engaged only in the fact that he put his cockroaches on paper (which, as you know, will tolerate everything and everyone), took a textbook on drama by Robert McKee and designed all this obscurantism in a decent appearance (good, hard training and experience on television allow), thereby causing delight and bewilderment at the same time. But here’s what was usually the whole catch: cramming everything into the film (and a little above), including a lot of interesting thoughts, the author did not always care about their development, if at all understood them completely. People, by and large, frankly on the drum, still have something to think about, and criticism has already gone crazy with so many noteworthy ideas.
And surprisingly, for his directorial debut, he picked up a fairly simple story, with a minimum of fantastic elements, expressive means, and in general there were noticeably fewer cockroaches crawling out of the head of the main character, at least at first glance. The character of Philip Seymour Hoffman here is the most that neither is a real whiner, who personally ruined his life, but who, at the same time, really sympathize with (much thanks to Hoffman’s soulful play). With some caricature of the character itself, he no longer seems to be a puppet as a hero from Eternal Shining and especially “Being John Malkovich” (however cute they are in their own way, but the characters are really wooden), here he is a living person, lonely, unhappy and at the same time willing to remain so for life.
People, according to Kaufman, are such strange creatures that they will never rest in the search and creation of their misfortunes, wanting to remain so without realizing it themselves (and if they do, they begin to put even more effort into it). A good example of this is the main character of the film. He, instead of making at least some effort for his life, only drives himself even more into his own problems, constantly reminding himself of their existence, instead of solving them or simply spit on the fact of their existence (which did the main character in another work of the author – “Human Nature”). But not everything is so simple, the hero does not just want to be unhappy, he just needs understanding, instead of which he is offered only sympathy and help in creating new problems, for which he invents new images, not being able to properly navigate them, and in the end completely confused.