SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (dir: Charlie Kaufman)
PART ONE
This movie is madness. This movie is obsession. This movie could be my life, a story of scary thoughts, of social illness, of personal failure and hidden secrets being discovered and exposed.
This movie is life. In many ways its an update of the feature Death Of A Salesman, of confused existence and ultimate failure as goals are strived to be achieved but not really reached as life becomes bogged down in detail, baggage and painful memories that haunt an individual until they day. Life as rehearsal.
My friend described this movie in one word: depressing.
I am only 32 but I feel 33 verging on 34.
These are my Charlie Kaufman moments:
1) going to see Being John Malkovich at an Ipswich cinema with Matt from Gringo Records in the good times before we fell out. My days were dark at this time and without funds he paid for me to go see the movie with him. This was generosity that I didn’t appreciate and now I miss.
2) watching Adaptation on a flight home from California as my friendship with Matt from Gringo Records had come to an end of the back of an unpleasant two weeks with him and a female that came between us without anyone ever realising.
3) taking the Muslim sister to see Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind at a cinema in Colchester only for her to hate it, not seeing the depth a personal strength within the movie. The experience was summed up in her disclosure afterwards that her favourite movies were in actuality Terminator 2 and Predator.
4) seeing Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind in a double bill with Broken Flowers one Sunday afternoon at the Curzon Soho on my own, emerging onto the streets with Soho Pride in full flow just around the corner causing me fear and trauma at the risk of having a gay person call me “tubby girlfriend.”
5) catching Stranger Than Fiction one Monday morning at Golden Square at a press screening with the BBC girl whose job/life I loved more than her and her parts, becoming completing wrapped up in the movie revealing to her as I see it as some kind of metaphor for my life and then realising it is in fact not a Charlie Kaufman movie at all.
6) being given Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind on DVD for my birthday in the Cheers bar on Regents Street in complete ignorance of what it is/was, ignorantly forgetting a conversation I had about it the previous month, instead choosing to focus my attentions on the American lady that was accompanying us to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not just a few short months before she manages to devastate me.
7) snagging this torrent download of Synecdoche, New York and failing to watch it ahead of the game and instead viewing it one lonely Sunday evening (now)
His play is my writing. It consumes me and fills me with failure. It is never finished and never understood. It seldom justified and never acknowledged.
This is a story of filling a void that cannot be filled or satisfied. It is also about possessing a God complex.
This film is not finished and neither is this review.
PART ONE
This movie is madness. This movie is obsession. This movie could be my life, a story of scary thoughts, of social illness, of personal failure and hidden secrets being discovered and exposed.
This movie is life. In many ways its an update of the feature Death Of A Salesman, of confused existence and ultimate failure as goals are strived to be achieved but not really reached as life becomes bogged down in detail, baggage and painful memories that haunt an individual until they day. Life as rehearsal.
My friend described this movie in one word: depressing.
I am only 32 but I feel 33 verging on 34.
These are my Charlie Kaufman moments:
1) going to see Being John Malkovich at an Ipswich cinema with Matt from Gringo Records in the good times before we fell out. My days were dark at this time and without funds he paid for me to go see the movie with him. This was generosity that I didn’t appreciate and now I miss.
2) watching Adaptation on a flight home from California as my friendship with Matt from Gringo Records had come to an end of the back of an unpleasant two weeks with him and a female that came between us without anyone ever realising.
3) taking the Muslim sister to see Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind at a cinema in Colchester only for her to hate it, not seeing the depth a personal strength within the movie. The experience was summed up in her disclosure afterwards that her favourite movies were in actuality Terminator 2 and Predator.
4) seeing Eternal Sunshine Of A Spotless Mind in a double bill with Broken Flowers one Sunday afternoon at the Curzon Soho on my own, emerging onto the streets with Soho Pride in full flow just around the corner causing me fear and trauma at the risk of having a gay person call me “tubby girlfriend.”
5) catching Stranger Than Fiction one Monday morning at Golden Square at a press screening with the BBC girl whose job/life I loved more than her and her parts, becoming completing wrapped up in the movie revealing to her as I see it as some kind of metaphor for my life and then realising it is in fact not a Charlie Kaufman movie at all.
6) being given Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind on DVD for my birthday in the Cheers bar on Regents Street in complete ignorance of what it is/was, ignorantly forgetting a conversation I had about it the previous month, instead choosing to focus my attentions on the American lady that was accompanying us to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not just a few short months before she manages to devastate me.
7) snagging this torrent download of Synecdoche, New York and failing to watch it ahead of the game and instead viewing it one lonely Sunday evening (now)
His play is my writing. It consumes me and fills me with failure. It is never finished and never understood. It seldom justified and never acknowledged.
This is a story of filling a void that cannot be filled or satisfied. It is also about possessing a God complex.
This film is not finished and neither is this review.
