New York.......................................................................................................................
Synecdoche......................................................
..................New York
Despite the modest reviews from many Critics and a lack luster score of 65% over at RottenTomatoes.com(meta review site including hundreds of reviews from papers across the country) Synecdoche, New York blew me away. I have no doubt, that most of the negative reviews have more to do with not "getting" the film rather than liking or disliking it. Which is a fair reason to critique a film, but this one is complex, well thought out and will get better with multiple viewings, not worse. Roger Ebert admits to having to watch it 3 times and then watches it a fourth time for pleasure. That takes humility, to realize despite your life in movies that you didn't get it all on the first viewing. I think this is the root of most negative reviews, "I'm a critic this is my job, and I don't get it. It must be bad or overly Pretentious."
Hackberry Review
Synecdoche, New York is made of layer upon layer of ideas, even the difficult to pronounce title is a calling card for new heights of Charlie Kaufman's self obsessed narcissism. There are films where the plot becomes irrelevant and this is one of them, you can't describe a film like this without getting to what it's about. To make it even more difficult external information(metaphor & symbolism) doesn't help reveal much of anything you are seeing. This is completely and totally a hall of mirrors in the mind of Kau
fman a director trying to make a film about a director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) trying to make a play of his life, needing to hire an actor to better understand his own life. Not only is external knowledge mostly useless you need to go further inward into the film making process by asking what was Caden's experience of this more importantly what was Charlie Kaufman thinking, how does this relate to his life? It's what happens when a director examines his own life through a magnifying glass only to find that by viewing it and those around him so closely that he burns through reality and loses track of where he ends and others begin. He's peeled back his own life so far that nothing is real and he doesn't know how to live his own life without seeing someone else act it out in front of him.
fman a director trying to make a film about a director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) trying to make a play of his life, needing to hire an actor to better understand his own life. Not only is external knowledge mostly useless you need to go further inward into the film making process by asking what was Caden's experience of this more importantly what was Charlie Kaufman thinking, how does this relate to his life? It's what happens when a director examines his own life through a magnifying glass only to find that by viewing it and those around him so closely that he burns through reality and loses track of where he ends and others begin. He's peeled back his own life so far that nothing is real and he doesn't know how to live his own life without seeing someone else act it out in front of him.It's haunting, absolutely hilarious, utterly depressing and ultimately a deeper look into human psyche than any film I can recall... If Roger Ebert can admit to needing 3-4 viewings, somewhere around the 10th most of us should be so hopeful as to see the full picture unfold.
*Then today this was brought to my attention. And the title and concept pretty well sum up the film.
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