Charlie Kaufman Unleashed
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CHARLIE KAUFMAN UNLEASHED
By Daren Foster
**Schenecta--Synechdoche--Skneckta--Wha'?**
By referring to an artistic endeavour as a ‘noble failure’, do you traffic in damning with faint praise? With a patronizing tussle of the hair, are you in effect saying, nice try, kiddo, but better luck next time? Like in that olde tyme commercial where the young boy returns home, disconsolate, after losing a game of hockey and his painfully understanding and pretty mom asks if he did his best and had fun. Yes on both counts and duly consoled, the lad then gratefully digs into the Campbell soup mom’s made for him. Or maybe it was McCain french fries, although the particular foodstuff is not at issue here.
What is at issue is Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synechdoche, New York. After seeing it, the phrase ‘noble failure’ immediately sprang to mind. On second blush though, the failure felt mostly mine. It wasn’t that Charlie failed to deliver. I failed to understand. Normally, I hate movies that show me up like that. Pompous Europeans, I’ll mumble. Wilfully obscure Asians, I’ll spout. Pretentious film school prats, I’ll whine. Oh look at me and my heavy-handed homage to Aki Kaurismäki. Tosspots, the lot of them.
As an admittedly fervent Kaufman fan however, I would never lump him in with such empty minded posturing. He’s not trying to be smarter than I am. He is smarter than I am. Accept it and get on with sitting at the feet of the master, bathing in the brilliance. Except that, Synechdoche, New York isn’t unqualifiedly brilliant. It drags at times. Unrelenting bleakness negates impeccable moments of humour. Oscar-grabbing hysteria overwhelms more nuanced, impressive acting, sometimes even within the same performance. It just doesn’t always click on all cylinders and yet, it is a truly compelling film. When the credits finished, I didn’t want to leave my seat. Why don’t we stay and sit through another screening? Cajoled to my feet, I wandered through the theatre lobby with a feeling of surreal disassociation almost exactly like Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Caden Cotard. How couldn’t this not be a truly great film? (A point of grammar: does this sentence’s double negative make it ultimately positive? Hopefully so, as that was the intent.)
As a writer, Kaufman has already had his hand in one great film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He’s also scripted two really, really good films, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich and a couple fun turns, Human Nature and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. There are very few screenwriters with a more enviable resume, certainly in Hollywood right now, so there was every reason to expect great things from Synechdoche, New York. And 75% of the time, that’s exactly what the movie delivers. Unmitigated virtuosity and totally absorbing viewing. And yet.. but yet.. I can’t embrace it to my bosom with total abandon. For a film to be a masterpiece, the love it generates must be completely unconditional. It must be flawless in every way, shape and form. Just like in real life.
You see where I’m going with this? Life can be messy, unruly, interminably boring and we can still love it to death. Most of the time. And most of the time we’re fine with that. It would be outrageous and infantile to demand anything else. Why not extend the same courtesy to the movies? Sure, there’s a school of thought that believes art should strive toward a greater perfection than life can attain but, truthfully, most adherents to such unachievable idealism have been dead for centuries and the few aesthetes that remain invariably prove to be insufferable assholes that suck the air out of any gathering they attend.
Synechdoche, New York misfires but its misfires are more admirable and engaging than all sorts of movies that effortlessly achieve their low expectations. Busting out of the mould is always more difficult to watch than witnessing the treading over of a well worn path. There’s an undeniable ease with knowing where the journey’s heading and exactly how it’s going to end. Being out of your element as a viewer is, by its very nature, unsettling. It’s hard to slip off your shoes, unlatch that top button and hunker down for the ride. Attention must be paid at all times and if the mind wanders, it’s almost impossible to catch up. You become disoriented and angry at having been left behind, later telling people through gritted teeth when they ask how you liked the movie that it was stupid and crazy, didn’t make any sense and was pompous, wilfully obscure and pretentious. 
I’m making the film out to be much more of a chore than it was. Simply put, it was the most enjoyable, engrossing movie I’ve seen for some time. The acting was flawless from Hoffman down through the cast to the late appearance of Dianne Wiest. Who knew that Samantha Morton and Emily Watson looked that much alike? Kaufman’s directing was sure-handed and quiet, diametrically opposed to the busy intrusiveness of his regular collaborators, Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze. The script was, well, appropriately Kaufmanesque.
Industry scuttlebutt has it that previous Kaufman outings were ultimately reigned in by his directors and studios. Early drafts of Being John Malkovich, even as flamboyantly out there as the final product was, went much further afield, much, much further, introducing outer space into the mix. Synechdoche, New York is all Charlie Kaufman. That being the case, the movie is surprisingly down-to-earth in its own quirky way. There are no portals into a celebrity’s mind or ½ floors in office buildings. No screenwriting twins and exotic flowers or humans raised in the wild or a CIA agent masquerading as a game show host. This is real life albeit real life as seen through the eyes of a writer who has penned all the previously noted scenarios. Strangely realistic in a Charlie Kaufman kind of way. (i.e. Kaufmanesque. See previous paragraph.)
That is to say, while relatively recognizable on the surface -- all mid-life crisis and creative angst -- the movie never adheres to a straight up narrative arc. Chronology is screwed with from the get-go. Characters hear different things from what are said. Or say different things from what are heard. Take your pick. Various actors play the same character sometimes at the very same time while the other actors playing that same character look on and take notes of the portrayal. Armies patrol the streets with no explanation and dirigibles float overhead.
Despite all that, Synechdoche, New York is very grounded in the mundane trials and tribulations of everyday life. It somehow manages to celebrate existence in the ever present face of our impending doom. OK, if not celebrating existence, the film exhibits an unflinching, unsentimental accord with all the vicissitudes that are dealt out along the way. Is that even the same thing? At this point, I honestly couldn’t tell you. I have been so far in over my head for about a page now that I can no longer see a way out of this.
But as William Hurt’s character, Nick Carlton, said to Meg Tilly’s, Chloe, in The Big Chill: Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you. So it is with Synechdoche, New York. You can try and explain or make sense of it but that really isn’t the point. If life itself is ineffable, why should we desire anything different from the movies? While we may long for the escape they have on offer, we shouldn’t really demand answers or certainly not pat answers that we know to be false. In its own offbeat, bittersweet way, Synechdoche, New York offers up escapism aplenty. It’s just the destination’s a little unfamiliar and the mode of travel slightly ill-fitting.
Kind of like your first go-round on the Zipper at the fairground midway. Strange and a little nauseating but a ride you can’t help going back on. After you’ve regained your equilibrium with the help of a mustard slathered corndog.In other words, two thumbs up. I think. It just may take a few more viewings to know for sure.
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