Synecdoche, Baby

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There's no way around saying that Charlie Kaufman, the director-writer of Synecdoche, New York, is a gloom-head. A brilliant and, in his past screenplays, hilarious one (by the standards of dryly perverse humor), but a gloom-head all the same. Who, for now, has put aside his sense of humor. The problem with his film, which I loved in portions, understood the point of and was intrigued and somewhat amused by in the early rounds, is the damn moroseness of it.

And the title is impossible. I would actually say commercially suicidal. I finally learned how to pronounce the damn thing -- Syn-ECK-duh-kee -- but if the folks who wind up distributing believe that average moviegoers are going to do anything but run in the opposite direction when this puppy opens, they'd best think again. Titles should always convey something that your average dumbass can understand -- this one doesn't. And they sure as shit can't be tongue-twisters on top of this.

I nonetheless said to myself during the first 50 minutes or so, "This is my kind of deal." Okay, maybe into the first hour. Smart-guy material, wise and witty, at times almost elevating, at times surreal, performances that strike the chords just so.

But it began to wear me down. I could feel my interest ebbing. This had something (okay, a lot) to do with the archness and obsessiveness of the characters caught up in various fickle head trips and never saying "uncle." I didn't hate what was going on -- it's an imaginative Alice in Wonderland-type thing -- but I found myself wishing nonetheless that all these dithering neurotics (Caden especially) would get over themselves and...I don't know, go rob a bank or move to rural China or something. The story tension in Synecdoche, New York is zilch.

And later with the shots of pink urine and bloody stools sitting in the toilet. I don't care how lame this makes me sound, but I'll put up with no more than one human waste shot in a film. Here there are three.

Kaufman doesn't do "comedies," per se, but he should have (and could have, if he were so inclined) made it all funnier. And a bit shorter. In the realm of, say, 110 minutes rather than the 124-minute version shown in Cannes.

This might sound like a thoughtless suggestion for a film that follows its characters for a good 30 or more years, staying with them into old age and serious decreptitude. I only know that for all the rich ideas and fully worked-out totality of it, for me it started to drag big-time.

Kaufman said at the post-screening press conference that he began writing it in response to feelings of oncoming decay and death. That's what 49 year-old gloom-heads do, I guess. They're most likely looking at another 35 to 40 years of life, if not more, but they feel threatened about the depletion of the organism and the curtain coming down.

The shorthand buzz before Friday's screening was "quality material, tough sit." I was intrigued and semi-into what it was doing, but I didn't and couldn't submit like Kaufman wanted me to. That said, it's certainly worth a tumble. Only two hours and four minutes of your time, and a promise of at least some satisfaction.

I was especially wowed by a sermon scene that happens sometime in the last third. It's just some young bearded clerical letting go with the gospel according to Kaufman (we live in a gloomy, fearful universe), but the way it was written and performed made me feel alive and re-engaged.

After the press conference I asked Kaufman and producer Anthony Bregman if I could be sent a copy of this speech to give HE readers a taste of what's really good and special about the film. Kaufman passed me along to Bregman, who said, "Do you have a card?" No, I'm cardless, I said, but you can easily send me the dialogue through the website. I knew then and there I'd never hear from him. If anyone has a copy of the script, please get in touch.

Caden (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a 40ish upstate New York theatre director who's married to Adele (Catherine Keener), a successful miniaturist painter. They have a very cute little daughter (Sadie Goldstein) named Olive, who doesn't slightly resemble either of them. Naturally.

As the story begins, Caden is becoming more and more alarmed at signs that serious diseases (or intimations of same) may be shortening his life. His marriage seems like a typical union -- relatively stable, shuffling along, both parties depressed, he with a girlfriend (Samantha Morton's Hazel) on the side. But Adele can't hack his gloominess. She flies Olive to a Berlin gallery showing with her friend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and never returns.

Caden soon after is handed a genius grant, and decides to stage a massive atmospheric theatre piece inside a super-hanger-sized structure that houses a scaled-down replica of Manhattan. The subject is Caden's own life. He casts actors to play himself and all the people closest to him. So by the halfway mark there's a duplicate Caden (played by Tommy Noonan), a duplicate Hazel (Emily Morton), a duplicate Lucy (an actress character initially played by Michelle Williams) and so on.

Caden rehearses and rewrites for years on end, but the piece is never performed for the public. They wouldn't get what's going on anyway, right? Keep things hermetic. Process is all. But there I was watching it, realizing after a time that there was no escape from the hangar, and wishing more and more that something else would happen. A visitor who isn't in the play upsetting the apple cart, say. Or a 747 crashing into the hangar and blowing it all to hell.

And yet I was never exactly bored. In a way it's a riff on Federico Fellini's 8 and 1/2. It's been 45 years since that landmark film. Isn't it good for our collective moviegoing soul to wade through such films now and then? Then why am I mostly pissing on a film made by a guy whom I've enjoyed and admired for many years? Because I've always gotten a sardonic kick from Kaufman's screenplays, and this one took me into the Realm of the Bright but Dispiriting Bummer.

In his Synecdoche, New York review, Cinematical's James Rocchi wrote that "there are some dreams where we awake perfectly clear as to how the pieces and parts of our nighttime vision matches up to our waking life, and there are other dreams where we simply blink, and dismiss them as nothing but crazy talk; Synecdoche, New York is more like the latter kind of dream, and that hurts the film. Its ideas are so fecund and fertile and promiscuously perverse that we're often left with a movie too slippery to grasp with the mind and too clever to claim with the heart."

That says it pretty well, I think.

I asked a few journalists at last Friday's Sony Pictures Classics luncheon which film they'd rather distribute if they had to choose one or the other -- Synecdoche, New York or Steven Soderbergh's 260-minute Che. The latter, they all said. That's saying something.

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Posted by Jeffrey Wells on May 25, 2008 at 11:17 PM

comment #1

NDH says ...

Sure, the title is a bit of a tongue twister, but I don't think marketing will be that big of a problem. They just need to be a little creative. Build all of the trailers and TV spots around the title and the pronunciation of it, kind of like what was done for IN BRUGES, which I thought worked rather effectively.

Even the posters for RATATOUILLE had the title spelled out phonetically for the kids. If a three year old can say RATATOUILLE, I'm pretty sure a thirty year old can say SYNECDOCHE as long as it has a proper ad campaign behind it.

It would be interesting to see a study of how films with odd titles performed at the box office. No one knew what ROAD TO PERDITION meant, but that did relatively well. Then again, JOHNNY MNEMONIC wasn't exactly the smash hit.

Posted by NDH at May 26, 2008 6:21 AM

comment #2

MickTravis says ...

Syn-ECK-duh-kee.

Posted by MickTravis at May 26, 2008 6:33 AM

comment #3

Rob says ...

Did people really not learn about synecdoche (along with metonymy) in tenth grade English?

Posted by Rob at May 26, 2008 6:34 AM

comment #4

GKLondon says ...

Johnny Mnemonic had much more wrong with it than the title.

This constant appraisal of a films likely success in the majority of reviews I see is starting to really grate against me. Why is the commercial prospect of a movie at all relevant when discussing it's quality? Not that it isn't, I myself just don't see why it is. Enlighten me.

Plus, do you really think that anyone involved in the production of this film was thinking 'This is the one!! This is gonna bring Charlie's voice to the masses!! They'll remember this as the film that tipped things in favour of highly multi-conceptual, philosophical films over the bloated, beached whales of summer! Viva la revolution!!!"?

Posted by GKLondon at May 26, 2008 6:38 AM

comment #5

Movie fan09 says ...

Jeff, go here:

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type in your info and you can choose from any business card format for free.
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Posted by Movie fan09 at May 26, 2008 7:30 AM

comment #6

Balthazar says ...

OK, so maybe it's no Eternal Sunshine or Adaptation, but I'll see anything with Seymour Hoffman, and that trumps the potential for a Kaufman clunker, in my book

Posted by Balthazar at May 26, 2008 7:47 AM

comment #7

Gaydos says ...

That Rilke, he's driving me crazy with those dreary elegies all the time. And that gloomy Dutch painter down the street, Vinnie something, what's with all those morose crows and cornfields? I asked my merchant friend whose work he'd have a better chance selling and he said, "French postcards. That's what everybody wants these days."

Posted by Gaydos at May 26, 2008 8:18 AM

comment #8

Mr. Muckle says ...

That's the longest review I've ever seen posted on H-E, for a movie no one's going to see, and I'm not going to read the review either. (OK, I might netflix that puppy.) Incongruous.

I'm sure that Synecdoche, New York is chosen for its sort of rhyming with Schenectady. Eh? No one has said that before here. FIRST!

Posted by Mr. Muckle at May 26, 2008 9:33 AM

comment #9

Jeffrey Kunze says ...

GKLondon: "This constant appraisal of a films likely success in the majority of reviews I see is starting to really grate against me. Why is the commercial prospect of a movie at all relevant when discussing it's quality?"

I'm going to go ahead and second this motion.

Posted by Jeffrey Kunze at May 26, 2008 9:42 AM

comment #10

alynch says ...

I find it kind of mind boggling that anyone who writes for a living could really have never heard of the word "synecdoche," to the point where they're not even sure how to pronounce it. This is really basic high school English shit.

Posted by alynch at May 26, 2008 9:55 AM

comment #11

Jimmycrackcorn says ...

"I find it kind of mind boggling that anyone who writes for a living could really have never heard of the word "synecdoche," to the point where they're not even sure how to pronounce it. This is really basic high school English shit."

I hate to boggle your mind even more than it's already been boggled, but I make a very good living at writing and I am not familiar with the word or how to say it. And I often am accused of using five-buck words that my audience won't understand. I'm not saying this particular word shouldn't be a part of basic English literacy; I'll take your word on that. But your experience taking high school English may have been different from the one most of us had. Now, please continue with the condescension.

Posted by Jimmycrackcorn at May 26, 2008 10:25 AM

comment #12

MickTravis says ...

I hear you Jimmycrackcorn. And I don't care.

You probably get that a lot.

Posted by MickTravis at May 26, 2008 10:30 AM

comment #13

Roman says ...

Caden = Homer Simpson.

Please tell me they kept Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment in the screenplay.

Posted by Roman at May 26, 2008 11:00 AM

comment #14

Jason says ...

Unless you're a hospital orderly, I think everyone has a threshold for shots of bodily waste in a movie, so you're not alone. I can't believe Gondry kept that magnetic-stream-of-piss gag in Be Kind Rewind. Yuck.

At the end of Way of the Gun, there's a high-angle shot of Juliette Lewis shortly after giving birth. It flashes shockingly onto the screen: suddenly you're staring at this enormous puddle of blood and afterbirth coming from between Lewis' legs. I felt a twinge in my stomach, but three rows back some guy began to howl, "HWOHH-HWOHH! HWOOOHH-NOOO!" He had reached his limit.

Posted by Jason at May 26, 2008 11:34 AM

comment #15

Walter Sobchak says ...

Sounds like Kaufman's made his "I Heart Huckabees".

Posted by Walter Sobchak at May 26, 2008 12:02 PM

comment #16

/3rtfu11 says ...

I wanna see it. Thankful to God I live in LA.

Posted by /3rtfu11 at May 26, 2008 1:57 PM

comment #17

Wiggumx says ...

I had a professor in college whose favorite word was "synecdoche" or I would have likely not been familiar with it, either.

Synecdoche:
n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).

I haven't seen the film yet, but I would assume that the title was chosen for more than just it's similarity to "Schenectady."

And I'll sit through almost anything from the people responsible for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," even "Be Kind, Rewind."

Posted by Wiggumx at May 26, 2008 2:17 PM

comment #18

filmsofdust says ...

I am surprised no one has mentioned how similar this idea is to Bjork's Bachelorette music video directed by Michael Gondry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5nNfbTS6N4

Posted by filmsofdust at May 26, 2008 2:47 PM

comment #19

ps1ch says ...

Jeff, for all your hate on the "average dumbass," one would figure that you'd be able to pronounce a simple and common literary term.

Posted by ps1ch at May 26, 2008 3:19 PM

comment #20

James Rocchi says ...

Films of Dust: Uh, someone already has:

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/05/23/cannes-review-synecdoche-new-york/

"His theatrical project finds a home in a huge abandoned hangar, which he fills with a recreation of the city around it, which, in the illogical logic of a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, involves re-creating a hanger within the hanger containing another iteration of the play, and then, of course, recreating the hangar (and his play) inside the hanger within the hanger. The attempt to evoke the world through art just makes a smaller version of the world, over and over again. (It's too bad that the visual and philosophical appeal of this idea is undermined by how Kaufman's occasional collaborator Michel Gondry took on the same recursive, reductive idea in briefer and better fashion with the video for Bjork's 1997 single "Bachelorette"; it would be interesting to know if Kaufman was inspired by Gondry, or vice-versa, or not at all.)"

Posted by James Rocchi at May 26, 2008 3:33 PM

comment #21

T. Holly says ...

If Donnie Darko can be a cult film, then ask no further, this film can score with old Indiana Jones geezers.

But what of this solipsism? "Those who find the characters here maddeningly solipsistic will possibly be cheered by the intimations of apocalypse late in the film... while everyone else engaged by the film gets a particularly (albeit weirdly) probing illustration of the second part of the well-known adage that begins 'life stinks.'" And then you die. I'm down with that now.

http://www.indiewire.com/ots/2008/05/cannes_08_noteb.html

At least there are a lot of roles for women in it. And dream arguments. Hey, wait a minute, didn't Tony dream the ending of The Sopranos after he saw himself from across the room in the restaurant?

Posted by T. Holly at May 26, 2008 10:56 PM

comment #22

T. Holly says ...

Why didn't I think of it? The ending of The Sopranos it solipsistic.

Posted by T. Holly at May 26, 2008 11:12 PM

comment #23

bmcintire says ...

filmsofdust:
It looks like Scott Smith has some splainin' to do regarding THE RUINS as well.

Posted by bmcintire at May 27, 2008 1:56 AM

comment #24

BurmaShave says ...

New title: CIRCLE JERK.

Posted by BurmaShave at May 27, 2008 10:06 AM

comment #25

Anthony Bregman says ...

Hello Jeffrey Wells -- Next time, why don't you come to a press conference more prepared -- like, with a pen, so you can take down the email address that I (producer Anthony Bregman) generously offered you. That way, I could have at least a fighting chance of helping you out with the script page that you were demanding on the spot. Emailing me your request might work better for you than, say, simply shouting out your email address at me, and assuming that I'd be repeating it in my head for 12 hours until I got to a computer.

It was annoying at the time, but to be fair, this was towards the end of the festival, and I chalked it up to what was surely several days of sleeplessness, too much alcohol, and general grouchiness clouding your judgement. But I'm not so sure how to explain the substance of your review, because it's now a few days later, and presumably you should be in a less challenged state of mind. What piercing criticism you have for your readers! The title is too complicated for "your average dumbass"? You'll put up with one --but not three-- shots of bodily waste per film? There's no 747 crash in the story to make the film more entertaining? Now there's some meaningful suggestions for how to make better films. Such a shame Charlie Kaufman didn't consult with you before putting his finishing touches on the script.

Or maybe it's just a matter of taste -- after all, you did pretty much pan Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind back in 2004 (http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/elsewhere/162.html). You said the movie confused you, and you said that "it felt like a train hopping up and down on the tracks just before a derailment," and then bemoaned that you had to put up the cost of two tickets plus popcorn to see it.

I guess that, as with Synecdoche and as with film criticism, Time will have the last laugh.

Posted by Anthony Bregman at May 27, 2008 8:02 PM

comment #26

Don Murphy says ...

Ummm Anthony, man- Time already is laughing AT this pretentious waste of time

Posted by Don Murphy at November 29, 2008 10:00 PM

comment #27

Angela John says ...

Kaufman is a real guy, not puffed-up with pretension and still grateful for reaching the top of the mountain, as it were. My Good wishes is always with him.

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