Synonyms’ preview intrigued me, and it lasted in theaters for two weeks. It was about Yoav, an Israeli soldier who flees to France to get away from the madness of a historical, eternal conflict. It would either be amazing or eyeroll worthy, but I was not sure which one. A trusted movie loving friend gently dissuaded me, and I am glad that she saved me money and time because if I had not seen it at home, I would not have the opportunity to see the extras, which are essential for making the film comprehensible.
I have an unofficial rule. If the extras are as long or longer than the movie, it is often not a good movie, and Synonyms proves the rule, but without them, I would not know that this movie is autobiographical. It is based on the director’s life. Nadav Lapid cowrote it with his dad, Haim Lapid, and his mom was his editor. While more mature, Lapid is still an ambiguous fellow. While there are no right answers, that fact seems to have paralyzed him. “Identity is a terrible cage, but at the same time, not sure if life outside the cage is better.” He still has not quite landed on an identity yet though he has made a movie.
Synonyms is a singular film subjectively focused on the protagonist as he tries to throw out his identity and become born again as a Parisian by abandoning Hebrew and only using French. As an American watching a foreign film as opposed to a person who speaks French and/or Hebrew fluently, I could not tell that the protagonist was using language in an odd way as opposed to being an odd person until late in the movie. It was very hard to distinguish what was a deliberate choice and what was an act of ignorance. There is a point when he has no belongings and is naked. According to everyone, his things were stolen, but I thought that he deliberately disposed of them because he literally did not want anything that connected him to his old life. He seems a bit eccentric (crazy) enough to act in that manner without considering the effect of his actions whether short or long term.
“I really like words, but really not stories.” Yeah, anyone who watches Synonyms can tell, Lapid. His film has no connecting tissue, but feels like snapshots so it is hard to get oriented regarding the protagonist’s exact time and space. A person who initially seems to not like the protagonist later sleeps with him. A person who is completely fascinated by him is suddenly close enough to act as an intermediary between the protagonist and his parents, but there is no scene giving that person permission to do so. At some point, the protagonist wears out his welcome, but considering that I would have crossed the street to avoid this guy, it seems random when disenchantment finally arrives. Yoav’s relationship with supporting characters feels more like skits than a story. If it was better depicted, there could be a valuable lesson of loving your neighbor, but instead it makes them seem delusional for allowing this stranger into their life or as if there is a class subtext of adopting a seemingly poor foreigner as an exotic hobby.
“Movies should not be smoother than life.” Again, Lapid, anyone who saw Synonyms understands this, but his movie is itself a highly constructive product, not a reflection of life. In life, we would see more pass between the protagonist and his coworkers, his friends and strangers. I do not think Lapid was ready to really look back at his complete past and convey his subjective experience fully, or his subjective experience of relationships with people are as fragmented and disconnected as the protagonist’s, which is incredibly sad. There are only a couple of scenes when I felt anything, and they did not last long.
Yoav navigates the Parisian streets in a very counter intuitive way. He decides that the best way to know the city is to not look at the sights too much like a tourist, but to look down so when he walks, he is never completely aware of his surroundings. Tom Mercier, who plays Yoav, is the best part of Synonyms, particularly the way that he immerses himself in the role with zero self-consciousness. He explores space in an unusual way-maybe he will crawl on the floor in a public place or walk on tables, but he is trying to embrace freedom in every movement. So when he randomly bumps into someone that he knows from his past, it stops him and the frenetic movement of the camera. It is a much needed moment of stillness in a manic film.
Also in contrast, when Yoav meets with another Israeli who also left Israel for France, but unlike Yoav, is militantly Israeli, Yoav seems less dangerous or harmless. Synonyms seems to be suggesting that compulsory military service breaks young men’s minds, and that being an Israeli carries a kind of paranoid madness, but in a strange twist, most French people seem to be oblivious to this madness as if it is sanity or appealing. Is that a commentary on how French people treat Israelis or foreigners? Because if I was in a train and a guy started screaming in my face, I may not engage out of fear that it would escalate a situation and turn the confrontation into a physical one, but it is not until the end of the movie when someone actually confronts Yoav for his inappropriate conduct. I found this lack of reaction or nonplussed to delighted reception of Yoav so strange that I wondered if this film was actually satire.
Synonyms starts to get absorbing near the end when Yoav realizes that *gasp* France has issues too. It felt as if Lapid changed cameras after the bumping into a person from the past street scene, and the film becomes more about showing rather than the protagonist telling. The integration courses, which Americans would call citizenship classes, are the best awakening moments, particularly when the film shows the class singing the French national anthem. We are all dumb when we are young, but duh, dude, you cannot escape jingoism even if you eliminate religion. The madness of war is not exclusively Israeli, which makes Yoav have to question the premise of his self-imposed exile. His search for normality after military service ends in failure because it is normal to be warped.
Lapid says, “I, as a spectator, like to be punched by movies.” Well, I’m going to need Lapid to see Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir or Ari Aster’s film because Synonyms is less a punch than a pea under a mattress: irritating, puzzling and only interesting because of its surroundings and context otherwise not innately arresting. Synonyms’ main value lies in giving us an opportunity to discover Mercier, who seems to be a fearless new actor and hopefully not experiencing beginner’s luck. Mercier’s physicality and verbal elasticity in a demanding role that may have been as unintelligible for the actors as it was for me reveals a malleability that other directors should jump at the chance to exploit.