Synecdoche, New York
In one way or another, Charlie Kaufman scripts always end up talking about love, death, pain and suffering and their impact on the human mind. "Being John Malkovich", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Adaptation," "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "Human Nature." The exploration of the psyche is there.
"Synecdoche, New York" marks his debut as a director, and is no exception - is a natural progression of Kaufman's obsession, and possibly his most complex and distressing work. A journey through their most neurotic and pessimistic nightmares, but with grace.
The movie introduces a theater writer and director (the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, from Capote, Doubt, Charlie Wilson's War) as the melancholic protagonist and naturally inclined to see the bad side of life. He seems to be always expecting his death.
"Synecdoche, New York" is a fascinating narrative, constructed in layers of complex structure - a shed in the shed in order to represent the simulacrum of simulacrum. A circle of many baffling dramatic representations of fiction - fiction of fiction of ficction. Mere co-stars in the universe, protagonists of our own lives... a great movie!
* Synecdoche - special kind of metonymy which uses a part for a whole or a whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in “a Rockefeller” for a rich man or “wheels” for transportation.
"Synecdoche, New York" marks his debut as a director, and is no exception - is a natural progression of Kaufman's obsession, and possibly his most complex and distressing work. A journey through their most neurotic and pessimistic nightmares, but with grace.
The movie introduces a theater writer and director (the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, from Capote, Doubt, Charlie Wilson's War) as the melancholic protagonist and naturally inclined to see the bad side of life. He seems to be always expecting his death.
"Synecdoche, New York" is a fascinating narrative, constructed in layers of complex structure - a shed in the shed in order to represent the simulacrum of simulacrum. A circle of many baffling dramatic representations of fiction - fiction of fiction of ficction. Mere co-stars in the universe, protagonists of our own lives... a great movie!
* Synecdoche - special kind of metonymy which uses a part for a whole or a whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in “a Rockefeller” for a rich man or “wheels” for transportation.
