REVIEW: SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is a movie I can't believe anyone paid money to produce and distribute.  That was a compliment -  Charlie Kaufman's latest (and his first as director) is so aggressively intellectual and so completely unapologetic about it that I'm stunned any financiers or distributors had the stones to think it was commercially viable.  Thank gods they did, though, because the movie is unabashedly brilliant... I think.

The problem with trying to review a movie like SYNECDOCHE* is that, well, I don't quite get it.  Yet.  I hope yet - this film is so goddamn dense with characters, imagery and jarringly abstract narrative that it should take multiple viewings to get only the most rudimentary grip on what happens within.  And that's not even touching the thematic content.  The movie has a philosophical outlook that's either just barely optimistic or crushingly nihilistic (I'm leaning toward the former, though mostly because the latter would hurt my soul too much).  Kaufman's movie is a heady examination of some pretty profound themes, but he really makes you work to figure out what the hell he's trying to say.  Which I have not done yet.  Yet!   

In emphasizing what a colossal mindfuck SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is, I might be giving the impression that it's a cold movie for the intellect to ponder and dissect.  Not true - like Kaufman's other films, it's easy to be overwhelmed by the narrative headgames, but there is a gigantic heart at the center of this movie.  Actually, I take that back.  There's a gigantic heart that the center of his others, ETERNAL SUNSHINE especially; SYNECDOCHE has a raw nerve at its core and it hurts like a motherfucker.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's character, a playwright, describes theater as like getting punched in the mouth, or love.  That hideous paraphrase clutters the point, which is that to him theater is the purest representation of emotional truth distilled to its highest potency.  That's not a bad description of emotion in the movie itself.  Every feeling is expressed in a razor-sharp, essential form.  Even if you don't know what's necessarily going on in the movie plot-wise, you'll feel what you're supposed to be feeling.  

There's an emotional gut punch in the last few scenes of the movie that I embarrassingly missed - I knew it was there but failed to connect because I was stuck trying to figure out the film's labyrinthine construction.  Not that SYNECDOCHE is a puzzle movie (it really isn't, despite being endlessly puzzling) but its willfully fluid boundaries between reality, fantasy and time make it easy to get lost in the plot's convolutions and miss out on the film's emotional journey.

I realize I haven't said much of what the movie's about.  Honestly, the plot isn't an easy one to summarize, nor is it one I'd want to.  This is the rare movie that never ceases to surprise and I'd hate to ruin that discovery for anyone interested in experiencing it.  Which should be everyone.  Let me be plain: I loved SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, even though I know I didn't quite get it.  If you enjoyed Kaufman's previous films, you owe it to yourself to witness his 12th-level intellect unfiltered onscreen for the first time.

*You can rest assured that every time I typed this word over the course of this review, I failed - not unlike how most of the people in line at the box office failed to pronounce it.  ZING!