I like weird movies, but Charlie Kaufman does not do it for me. He seems to elicit enthusiasm from everyone, but me. Kaufman as a writer is as close as Americans get to magical realism so while I may not embrace the movies that he wrote, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, I can theoretically appreciate them and would not react as if someone brandished a cross at me if I was a vampire and would watch them again, but the movies that he wrote and directed, Anomalisa, would literally have me running for the hills. The exception to this rule is Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which I had no idea that he wrote and does not have any of his distinctive, narrative signature quirks.
Synecdoche, New York is Kaufman’s first film that he wrote and directed. With what felt like a punishing run time of two hours four minutes, it stars Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays the protagonist, a playwright whose work consumes his life until he gets lost in it. Permit me to give you some perspective. I absolutely adore the dearly departed thespian and treasure any time that he appears in a movie since more of his movies lie behind me than before me, but I could not wait for this movie to end.
And yet just as Synecdoche, New York approaches the end, the most poignant and emotionally resonant portion of the film occurs and opened my heart so much that I briefly considered rewatching the film immediately thereafter to see if my knowledge of the end would soften my reception of the majority of the film. The navel gazing playwright who proves Socrates wrong and that the overly examined life is not living finally made me feel something because he abandoned himself and devoted himself to expressing another’s truth, taking direction and remain faithful to another’s life, a life that I found more absorbing than most of the characters, including the protagonist, who came before.
So I am left asking myself who is responsible for this brief moment of transcendence in Synecdoche, New York: Hoffman and/or Kauffman? Without Hoffman’s talent, a person who can become a fictional character playing another character within a mimetic world in a larger, frankly off-putting world, I do not think that this scene would work. It is one of the rare times that I did not note when a movie began to entwine itself around my heart and soul. Because I have nothing personal against Kaufman other than a difference in taste (cue fans fairly swiping, “And your taste sucks”), it shows that he is capable, even if only for a brief period of time, of telling a story from the point of view of a person presumably unlike himself in a simple, basic and elegant way without all the visually and hyper-stylized neurotic self-reflecting that pushes me away rather than draws me in. He can focus on love that is not romantic or sexual. It felt as if it was his cri de Coeur about himself, a desire to walk in someone else’s shoes so he could better reflect on his own life without getting in the way and just when that realization happens, the movie and a life ends, which is true for all of us on a meta level.
If I rewatch Synecdoche, New York, a film that I mostly disliked, it will be because of this denouement, which proves Jon Favreau’s point in Chef, go small; however with the sprawling, unwieldy scenes that stretched before as if an eternity, would I have appreciated this moment of stillness? I have no idea. If Pedro Almodovar directed this film in his way, but with the same story, I could see myself loving it. Kaufman’s visual style is so naturally inclined to dull, listless, dinginess, which when accompanied with body horror outside of the context of a horror movie and in the context of my version of a horror movie, a drama that trucks in secondhand embarrassment and has romantic elements, no wonder I do not like Kaufman’s films. Kaufman really pushes the gross out envelope even in casually off-handed moments. A mother does not wash her hands after wiping her daughter’s butt. A man roots around his feces. The same man pees in the sink and does not even run the faucet or throw some disinfectant in the sink afterwards yet his impulse to cleanliness does extend to his toothbrush, which he uses on the floor. These moments in a horror movie would not repulse me because they would not be literal, but symbols of an encroaching terror. Here I took them as deep character flaws, appalling and distancing. It feels literal. Nasty.
I also do not like Kaufman’s preferred type of protagonists. Synecdoche, New York’s protagonist is a glaringly narcissistic man who is not as deep and profound as he believes. I act as if it is a horror film as I scream at his potential love interests to run the other way and do not make the mistake of confusing intelligence with attraction. He will not be able to keep up the act.
Synecdoche, New York did have some surreal narrative quirks that I enjoyed. Instead of narration or an inner monologue, actors mirror their real life counterparts and say what they really mean. When the protagonist reads his daughter’s diary, it is possible yet impossible because they do not occupy the same space, yet he can read her current entries, which is particularly intriguing because that means there is a deeper, albeit one-sided connection not reflected in reality as if he can read her thoughts. I loved the explicit foreboding moment when a character basically chooses the way that she will live and die with a single commercial transaction. I found this moment ultimately utterly relatable though it took me awhile for me to appreciate it. (I choose death by Coke Zero.) I also appreciate that someone finally made the connection between Emily Watson and Samantha Morton. It is not just me.
Kaufman also makes me appreciate Yorgos Lanthimos more. I struggled to get through Synecdoche, New York whereas even in Lanthimos’ most unconventional, personally appalling films, I never felt my attention slipping or considered him disproportionately self-absorbed with respect to the ration of his actual interesting level. Lanthimos may be a sick puppy, but he is an incisive one with his perspicacious eye turned outward. I do not have to like what I see, but I can appreciate it.
Synecdoche, New York is not a film that I would recommend except to artsy fartsy film lovers with a penchant for Kaufman or who just want to keep current with the world of cinema and will not be upset if they spent time on a movie that even an ardent film lover who enjoys the surreal may find lacking. Still there is a nugget of brilliance thanks to Hoffman and Kauffman’s collaboration that transcends the overall film and makes it memorable and glorious. It is the only reason that I may watch a movie that I did not like twice.