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I promised a review of Synecdoche, New York last week and spent several hours writing a long and detailed dissection that I didn't quite finish on Friday before heading down to spend the weekend at my sisters. Looking back at what I wrote I realised that there were a number of inaccuracies to the piece and some connections that I didn't see at the time and I don't have either the time or the patience to go back over it and correct it, so here is my much, much, shorter feeling about the film.
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend anyone see this film. It is true that while most films fail to reach the lowest of expectations (I mean, I finally saw the first Transformers movie last week too. How exactly can you fuck up a film about transforming robots that badly? And don't get me started on the dank tuft of rectal hair that is Shia La Bouef) Synecdoche is an exception in having the highest possible aims. It fails to reach those and we instead have a cluttered mess of a film, it's a pudding colossally over-egged, it's a garden in which there are many, many roses, but unfortunately too much bind-weed. Charlie Kaufman has so many ideas he wants to cram in the film but they all wither on the vine, denied space to thrive. I'll admit my own personal neuroses probably had some part in me not liking this movie, the destructive relationship that the main character has with his wife and, especially, his daughter, is probably supposed to be really darkly humorous, it goes beyond my tolerances if that is the case and just seems needlessly cruel. The bizarre non-naturalistic flourishes in the film seem like genuine non-sense because they are squeezed in.
I came out of the film feeling, to quote a DJ Shadow sample, as though 'my whole soul was undermined'. It is also treading ground which, to be honest, Kaufman covered better with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.
So yes, it should be supported because heroic failures are always better than small failures, but shouldn't we only support films that actually succeed?
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend anyone see this film. It is true that while most films fail to reach the lowest of expectations (I mean, I finally saw the first Transformers movie last week too. How exactly can you fuck up a film about transforming robots that badly? And don't get me started on the dank tuft of rectal hair that is Shia La Bouef) Synecdoche is an exception in having the highest possible aims. It fails to reach those and we instead have a cluttered mess of a film, it's a pudding colossally over-egged, it's a garden in which there are many, many roses, but unfortunately too much bind-weed. Charlie Kaufman has so many ideas he wants to cram in the film but they all wither on the vine, denied space to thrive. I'll admit my own personal neuroses probably had some part in me not liking this movie, the destructive relationship that the main character has with his wife and, especially, his daughter, is probably supposed to be really darkly humorous, it goes beyond my tolerances if that is the case and just seems needlessly cruel. The bizarre non-naturalistic flourishes in the film seem like genuine non-sense because they are squeezed in.
I came out of the film feeling, to quote a DJ Shadow sample, as though 'my whole soul was undermined'. It is also treading ground which, to be honest, Kaufman covered better with Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.
So yes, it should be supported because heroic failures are always better than small failures, but shouldn't we only support films that actually succeed?