Synecdoche, New York

[Stefen]

i did a total 180 on this. i felt exactly the way jb feels when i left the theatre and for many months afterwards. now i think it's a big 'ol masterpiece. i don't want to write an essay about it right now, but the thing that began to unlock it for me was kaufman describing a theme of the movie as 'the negative aspects of total artistic freedom/creative control'. it's also about the futility of building 'masterpieces' when we're already part of the biggest work of art ever, a work of art that is constantly changing. eg. the apocalyptic future that caden has no time to incorporate into his piece, which eventually overwhelms and destroys it, making it irrelevant on many levels. this is kind of a giant metaphor for caden's inability to accept dirt and decay, and his secret passion for cleaning and basically keeping everything the same, which is also futile. deep down he wants to be a cleaning lady, and this idea stares him right in the face throughout the film, but he refuses to accept it as his true calling. keener's character suggests that the only way to be a successful artist is through specificity. eg. narrowing and reflecting reality into tiny paintings, NOT obsessively recreating the universe. even though we'd all like to do that, it's the coward's (cotard's) way out.

You nailed it. It's a pretentious piece of shit movie about white people trying to be artistic.

[picolas]

i would call it anti-pretentious. and anti-piece of shit. like a war movie, it has to show you the big piece of shit at its shittiest. it is definitely about white people though.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Honestly, I should give the film a second chance to be fair. Even though I saw sparks of brilliance and was very much a Kaufman fan, I absolutely hated the experience of seeing this movie. And that could change.

It was a long time ago, but the biggest thing I remember was the scene with an old PSH and Morton talking on a park bench or something, and it was this incredibly sentimental/pretentious/dumb dialogue about nothing of interest or importance... I think that's the point at which I said "screw it, this is horrible."

[Reelist]

I remember one of Synechdoche's major weaknesses being the "old makeup." It was just horrible. Like it was caked on and could start falling off in clumps at any moment. Was that intentional/ironic?(It looks even worse than the old makeup parodied in Walk Hard.)

I noticed that, how you could fucking see it peeling around their neck and jowls, haha. That was definitely my biggest criticism of the film, but I guess I cut Kaufmann a little slack for being a first timer. Still, it's all in the details.

[Neil]

I just re-read all this. I guess it's time to watch this again and maybe actually say something coherent this time!

[Lottery]

I actually didn't get to finish this. There wasn't enough momentum to keep me watching which doesn't usually happen. And that's kind of bizarre because it had some really cool elements and some of the later sections seemed promising. I'll get around to it at some point.

[Pubrick]

i love jon brion's track:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA_ubhYgjAc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA_ubhYgjAc</a>

probably the best song he's ever done for a film, i like it better than Here We Go, with which it seems to share a lot of themes.

of course PTA rejected the latter from use in the actual film, which may have precipitated the end of their collaboration.