| for this week's Tribune: SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK [6+/10] |
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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Synecdoche, New York USA 2008 Starring : Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton Director : Charlie Kaufman ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A film can be a "must-see" without being any kind of masterpiece - a fine example being Synecdoche, New York. It's written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, whose previous scripts include Being John Malkovich and Adaptation - brought to the screen with dazzling results by Spike Jonze - and also Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (George Clooney), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Human Nature (both Michel Gondry). And while at times it achieves the head-spinning brilliance of the Jonze movies, overall it is marred by the incoherence, smart-aleckery, solipsism and tricksiness which marred Kaufman's non-Jonze projects. While dismissed by many as a tedious, wildly overlong (124 minutes) exercise in navelgazing, the film has been acclaimed a life-changing masterpiece by a sufficiently large minority that anyone seriously interested in current cinema really does need to check it out at least once. That does, of course, involve being able to say the title of the movie at the ticket-office - the first word of which, pronounced sin-eck-de-key, is a semi-archaic term defined as "a rhetorical figure by which the whole of a thing is put for a part, or a part for the whole." The word, its usage now largely confined to university dons, is here punningly confused with New York's upstate city of Schenectady - real-life birthplace of Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler is, as it happens, packed full of synecdoches, such as the ring's division of competitors into good-guy "faces" and bad-guy "heels"), and here residence of harrassed, genius theatre-director Caden Cotard (Hoffman.) Caden's protean, prodigious talents are given little scope for fulfilment by his work with a local theatre-group, but are recognised when he wins a MacArthur grant - a valuable bursary designed to recognise and encourage the development of artistic abilities. Cotard's project involves the construction of what becomes a full-size replica of Manhattan in a colossal (seemingly endless) Manhattan warehouse-cum-hangar - work which consumes decades, untold resources, and requires a cast of thousands. Along the way Cotard's chaotic private life sees him move, like a Fellini hero, between various intelligent and beguiling women - the remarkable supporting cast includes Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Hope Davis (one can only presume that Julianne Moore was unavailable.) But while Synecdoche, New York contains more ideas in a single scene than most movies manage in their entire running-time, and while the superb ensemble do their best to bring it all to life - the picture never finds the kind of spark that illuminates, say, the Wes Anderson of Rushmore, the Paul Thomas Anderson of Punch-Drunk Love or the Woody Allen of Stardust Memories. For about an hour, we're borne along on the giddy spirallings of Kaufman's imagination - to such heights that we're convinced we're experiencing one of the great achievements of all cinema. This makes it all the more dispiriting and devastating when, after the halfway point, the creative gas starts leaking from the balloon - the picture becomes repetitive, smug, inert - and what remains is just a frustratingly protracted slow descent back down to earth. Neil Young  written for the 13th May edition of Tribune magazine SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK : [6+/10] : USA 2008 : Charlie KAUFMAN : 124m (BBFC) : seen 19th October 2008, Magnus Barfot cinema, Bergen, Norway (public screening - Bergen International Film Festival - complimentary ticket). Original review. |
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