I’m rarely interested in celebrities. I love the Film Festival for the obscure stuff, the foreign films that often only get a DVD release in North America, months, if not years, after they screen. It’s great when the filmmakers or cast show up after screening to answer questions – though some questions are better than others, and some people are better at answering them than others – but my admiration and respect is usually reserved for the work itself, as opposed to the person.
But there are exceptions.
Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and, one of my favourite movies ever made, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There’s no one else who can write a movie like him.
So I was ecstatic to get tickets to Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman’s directorial debut. And when Kaufman himself stepped onto the stage at the Elgin Winter Garden, I have to admit I was just slightly a little bit in awe of the man.
(This despite him being very short. When Catherine Keener joined him on stage, she practically towered over him, admittedly thanks to some very serious heels. Phillip Seymour Hoffman also appeared, but didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic.)
Reviewing Synecdoche is kind of tricky. My immediate reaction was “I want to see that again.” Which isn’t necessarily a great thing – while his previous films certainly benefit from repeated viewing, they were also easily accessible on at least some level.
Synecdoche is an entirely more complicated work, though. It seems more personal, though perhaps just because it’s about a writer, and Kaufman probably had control over the film from the screenplay to the editing room; it’s hard to say, similarly difficult to evaluate whether that’s a good thing.
So the plot, which is relatively easy to cover: Hoffman plays Caden, a local theatre director who’s facing middle age with an unimpressive career and a marriage (to Keener) that’s slowly swirling down the drain. Marriage counselling isn’t helping (“Everyone’s disappointing if you know them long enough”, Keener says at one point, and she asks the therapist if it’s wrong to fantasize about her husband dying), and Caden keeps coming up with new health problems.
(Note: There are more jokes about poo in this movie than in all previous Kaufman scripts combined.)
His wife finally leaves him – unofficially speaking – and his only consolation, besides a theatre employee with a crush on him (the lovely Samantha Morton), is a theatre grant that enables him to mount an ambitious project: Recreating life on a giant warehouse stage.
So eventually we have our characters, and the actors playing them, and in some cases the actors playing them. Tom Noonan is an odd choice to play Phillip Seymour Hoffman, though Emily Watson makes a perfect Samantha Morton. Incidents from Caden’s life play and replay from different perspectives, the scope of Caden’s world and stage continually expanding.
There’s also a subplot about Caden’s estranged daughter, and Jennifer Jason Leigh turns into a German lesbian halfway through the film. I’m not sure what that’s about, but as I said, I need to see it again.
It’s a dense and layered film, full of odd characters and strange ideas – Morton’s character buys a house that’s on fire, and lives there for many years. When asked at the Q&A to explain the burning house, Kaufman politely answered “No.”
My immediate reaction, besides wanting to see it again, was that Synecdoche doesn’t quite work – it feels overly indulgent, or ambitious, like Kaufman was taking on too much of a challenge for his first foray into directing.
But it’s an unquestionably fascinating film; you can’t stop watching, wanting to know how Kaufman will bring it all together. And it’s full of great performances – Hoffman is his usual excellent self, Morton is superb, and quality actors keep showing up, giving themselves over to these odd roles and often covered in old-age prosthetics.
And, well, it’s a Charlie Kaufman movie. You know you’re going to see something that’s at least interesting, and could turn out to be a masterpiece. I have to admit I was thrilled to be sitting there as this very unassuming and casual screenwriting star stood a few rows in front of me; I probably would have been pretty happy even if the movie had turned out to be terrible.
Thankfully, I don’t think it did. Did I mention I need to see it again?