Synecdoche, New York. Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman.

So I figure this film is going to need a thread eventually and they released the trailer today so this is as good a time as any to start one. The film looks absolutely wonderful. Look at that cast. Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis. So many great actresses. And of course Philip Seymour Hoffman.

yes. every ounce of me wants this to be excellent.

i've seen some mixed reception, though... someone brought up the point that there's no one to keep kaufman in check.

that and i hadn't been this excited for a film since wall-e, which, as a result of my internal hype, I was disappointed by. we will see.

i will say i am super glad jon brion returned for the this picture.

and that i'm kinda expecting adapationx100 in its cerebral tangents.

Am I right - it's SIN-ECK-DOE-KEE?

i'm not sure if you guys have seen this yet, but wired did a two and one half hour podcast interview with kaufman about this movie.

http://blog.wired.com/storyboard/2008/09/t...omplete-in.html

the length makes it a little daunting for me to listen to, but an interview of that size has to be at least somewhat revealing.


but yeah, i'm terrified of this movie mostly because i want it to be so great. he's a special kind of film maker.

For the record...

Synecdoche is taken from Greek sinekdohi (συνεκδοχή), meaning "simultaneous understanding".

It is a figure of speech in which:

a term denoting a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing, or
a term denoting a thing (a "whole") is used to refer to part of it, or
a term denoting a specific class of thing is used to refer to a larger, more general class, or
a term denoting a general class of thing is used to refer to a smaller, more specific class, or
a term denoting a material is used to refer to an object composed of that material.



Examples where a part of something is used to refer to the whole:

"The ship was lost with all hands [sailors]."
"His parents bought him a new set of wheels [car]."
Similarly, "mouths to feed" for hungry people, "white hair" for an elderly person, "the press" for news media.
For nations, "Britain" or "Great Britain" (that is, the largest of the British Isles) is sometimes used to mean the entire United Kingdom, as is "Holland" for the Netherlands or as "Russia" (formerly) was for the Soviet Union. From 1992 to 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was commonly called "Serbia" due to the political and cultural dominance of Serbia within the state.

Examples where the whole of something is used to refer to a part of it:

"Use your head [brain] to figure it out."
"Michigan [the government of Michigan] just passed a law addressing this problem."
Similarly, "body" for the trunk of the body, the "smiling year" for spring.

Examples where a species (specific kind) is used to refer to its genus (more general kind):

"The cutthroats [assassins] there will as soon shoot a man as look at him."

"Could you pass me a Kleenex [facial tissue]?"
"I've just finished with the hoover [vacuum cleaner]."
Similarly, "coke" for pop/soda, "castle" for home, "meat" or "bread" for food, "Judas" for traitor.

Examples where the material from which an object is made is used to refer to the object itself:

"Those are some nice threads [clothes]."
Similarly, "willow" for cricket bat, "copper" for penny, "roof" for a house, "boards" for stage, "ivories" for piano keys, "plastic" for credit card, "the hardwood" for a gym floor, "pigskin" for football, "steel" for a sword, "lead" for a bullet and "rubber" for vehicle tires.

Fantastic info there Tony.

This has been, and continues to be, my most anticipated film not made by Pixar. Preview looks absolutely stunning.

Holy Shit that looks good.

I saw the trailer and it became my top 10 favorite movie of all time. Uh oh.

this beautiful poster is up, along with some near-reviewing on chud.com. not wholly positive, but makes me more excited to see this than anything else i've read so far.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/16450/1/...TOWN/Page1.html


can't effing wait.

When does this open?

October 24th, I think.

I definitely want this to be awesome. Charlie Kaufman is a great man. I mean, this is a dude who wrote episodes of Get A Life.

So I've now watched the trailer 3-4 times, and TRS clarified the plot for me (man makes play about every moment in his life... including all the moments making said play). Plus my anticipation has been up since I heard the concept last winter. My point is that at this point, to meet my expectations, it will literally have to be BY FAR the greatest film ever made.

Can't wait for this one, I must have watched adaptation at least 50 times to say nothing of his other films. Also lately everything Philip Seymour Hoffman is in has been just fantastic.

Between this and Blindness and Changeling, October is looking like it's really going to deliver.

am i the only one who thinks blindness looks like absolute dreck? i wanted to see based on the pedigree, since the trailer and early buzz, not as much.

The trailer is definitly lackluster but he's coming off of 2 brilliant films and I loved the book so i'm pretty psyched for it even with the mediocre Cannes reviews.

I'm looking forward to this one.

Basically pointless post, I know.

I want, I want, goddamn I want.

performance, maybe, in "the savages." film itself kind of stunk.

Right on.

And Along Came Polly was.... something else...

But yeah, other than a scattered few, Hoffman has made impeccable film choices.

I will be listening to most of this tonight in the car.

Alright. Listened to this interview of the course of 2 Saturdays, and a few things here really struck out as interesting:


1. Kaufman knows this film will not get a lot of advertising and press from the studio, and so he knows he'll have to do a lot of the promoting himself (He's also embarking on a college tour, I guess). This is something he doesn't hate. While the press often paints him as a guy who hates to give interviews, they are actually something he enjoys doing.

2. Fucker wrote for a lot of tv. Some of it bad, some of it Get A Life.

3. One of the biggest myths he tries to debunk is the whole "there's no one to keep Kaufman in check if he's directing his own script" stuff, a lot of that which came from a false news story that an initial cut of this film was over 4 hours long (a reporter had heard of a screening he thought was legit, which was actually just the first rough editor's draft- which included almost everything shot). He also (surprise!) is not crazy about the film industry because they openly promote too many bad mainstream movies.

This looks great. Can't wait for this..and if it's Brion doing the entire soundtrack..goodniiight nurse.

Edit: at the Chicago Film Festival on Oct 19.

Shhhh...I wasn't going to say anything until I secured my tickets tomorrow. At least the SOMB is mostly dead on weekends.

Does it have to be bought on TM or in person? I haven't found any other place on the internet besides ticketmaster to pick these up.

I bought em through ticketmaster yesterday, so you can talk about it now.

my friends saw this at the festival here and loved it. can't wait

kaufman is gold. and then add in hoffman...man oh man.

can't wait to finally see this thing.

leaving in like 2 minutes for this. Can't wait.

So? Was it good!?

It takes a long time to get down to the city, wait in line, etc. Then a long Q&A, and dinner.

We didn't get home till like 12:25.

It's pretty good, but I don't think it's AS good as his three bigger films.

Still digesting and thinking about it.


I think, the deal is this:

Every scene, individually is very good.

But, the total of the film....nothing really ties it all together. Sort of like the non-Kaufman work of Gondry, but much better than those.

Despite mixed reaction and reception, I am going to maintain that this will be wonderful. Friday!

"little person" is owning me lately.

Wonderful song.

Here's the soundtrack for those who want it. http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QPYR02WS

Thanks for that. Have you listened? "...Sunshine's" emotional core was very informed by Brion's score, and I wonder if that'll be the case here, having not listened yet.

I don't really feel like Brion's score is as large a part of Synecdoche as it is with most Brion scores. I honestly only even noticed it a couple times.

Great Ebert review.

I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to. It will open to confused audiences and live indefinitely. A lot of people these days don't even go to a movie once. There are alternatives. It doesn't have to be the movies, but we must somehow dream. If we don't "go to the movies" in any form, our minds wither and sicken.

This is a film with the richness of great fiction. Like Suttree, the Cormac McCarthy novel I'm always mentioning, it's not that you have to return to understand it. It's that you have to return to realize how fine it really is. The surface may daunt you. The depths enfold you. The whole reveals itself, and then you may return to it like a talisman.

Wow, is that ever not a "money review." Why will people hurry along to what they expect to be trash, when they're afraid of a film they think may be good? The subject of "Synecdoche, New York" is nothing less than human life and how it works. Using a neurotic theater director from upstate New York, it encompasses every life and how it copes and fails. Think about it a little and, my god, it's about you. Whoever you are.

Here is how life is supposed to work. We come out of ourselves and unfold into the world. We try to realize our desires. We fold back into ourselves, and then we die. "Synecdoche, New York" follows a life that ages from about 40 to 80 on that scale. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a theater director, with all of the hangups and self-pity, all the grandiosity and sniffles, all the arrogance and fear, typical of his job. In other words, he could be me. He could be you. He could be Joe the Plumber. The job, the name, the race, the gender, the environment, all change. The human remains pretty much the same.

Here is how it happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.

In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation -- but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again.

Hold that trajectory in mind and let it interact with age, discouragement, greater wisdom and more uncertainty. You will understand what "Synecdoche, New York" is trying to say about the life of Caden Cotard and the lives in his lives. Charlie Kaufman is one of the few truly important writers to make screenplays his medium. David Mamet is another. That is not the same as a great writer (Faulkner, Pinter, Cocteau) who writes screenplays. Kaufman is writing in the upper reaches with Bergman. Now for the first time he directs.

It is obvious that he has only one subject, the mind, and only one plot, how the mind negotiates with reality, fantasy, hallucination, desire and dreams. "Being John Malkovich." "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." "Adaptation." "Human Nature." "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." What else are they about? He is working in plain view. In one film, people go inside the head of John Malkovich. In another, a writer has a twin who does what he cannot do. In another, a game show host is, or thinks he is, an international spy. In "Human Nature," a man whose childhood was shaped by domineering parents trains white mice to sit down at a tiny table and always employ the right silverware. Is behavior learned or enforced?

"Synecdoche, New York" is not a film about the theater, although it looks like one. A theater director is an ideal character for representing the role Kaufman thinks we all play. The magnificent sets, which stack independent rooms on top of one another, are the compartments we assign to our life's enterprises. The actors are the people in roles we cast from our point of view. Some of them play doubles assigned to do what there's not world enough and time for. They have a way of acting independently, in violation of instructions. They try to control their own projections. Meanwhile, the source of all this activity grows older and tired, sick and despairing. Is this real or a dream? The world is but a stage, and we are mere actors upon it. It's all a play. The play is real.

This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind.

What does the title mean? It means it's the title. Get over it.

That's the second review I've read that attempted to use a device like that, the other in Newsweek (which was another fair/good assessment despite his, too, second viewing).

I liked that Ebert tried something different, but the "get over it" conclusion was a little misguided. I will also say that I generally agree with what he's saying: that there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of watching a film being an effort or work (as long, of course, that the work involved is not for its own sake).

I'm broke, but will see it soon, despite my obsessiveness over whether or not I'll be disappointed (even having dreamt watching it, a reel-to-reel projector in my bedroom, the film breaking twice mid-through. Weird, I think. But I used to do projection at a movie theatre, so there's that).

On the nature of watching a film more than once to make an accuratement assessment, I thought back and realized, since the Phantom Menace, Kaufman-penned flicks have been the only films I've seen more than once, first-run, at the cinema ("Adaptation" twice and "Eternal Sunshine..." four times).

So, no, haven't seen it yet, sorry. No personal account from me yet.

Closest showing to me in its third limited week: 910 miles. Gragrgh.

I thought it was supposed to go wide this week I wanted to go see it. Closest to me however is 2 hours and $40.00 in train/subway tickets away though

Looks like its opening a little wider this weekend, a couple screens in the Chicago area.

Saw it this afternoon. Still unsure as to what to make of it.


There's loads of discussion to be had. Ogawa?

Saw it last night. Meh. Occasionally intriguing, but I would question if there's a there there. Is the reason Kaufman directed this himself because his usual cohorts (Jonze, Gondry) read the script and decided the material doesn't play?

I know Jonze wanted to direct, and was going to originally, but eventually decided to focus on Where the Wild Things Are.

This thing is still a minimum of 4 hours away from me btw. Grrr.

Jonze was busy, He's had a fight with Gondry, I believe.

I think he did a better job directing than Gondry has done writing without each other. But I definitely wish that they were back together.

Still another week before this comes out around me.

i fucking hate platform releases. this still isn't out here, neither is let the right one in. slumdog millionaire is gonna be coming out right before christmas. christ. i want to see all so many movies and none are near me.

i'll need to see this at least one more time before being able to comment on it.

that said, the speech at the (last?) funeral was terrific.

Yes, likewise. I need to explore some shit regarding this film. But there's no real critical commentary out there yet.

I want to know more about "Sammy," for instance, and his motivations. I want to know if I even should question certain things. I looked at an earlier draft of the screenplay -- it dated the years... curious to find the shooting script, but Barnes and Noble didn't have it afterword.

Spoiler/NSFW: click to show/hide

People on another message board had speculated that there was an actual war in the "real world" that seeped into the warehouses. I don't agree, but it's just an example of something to discuss. Will see again next week.

I will say, though, that it was really pretty odd walking out of the theatre into the heart of downtown Seattle on a Friday night after that particular movie. Thinking:

out of everything.

This looks like pretentious horseshit.

What a wonderfully rich and delicious mindfuck. I'm not sure that I'll ever get my head around all of it, but there's a lot to go back for--the imagery, the characters, the dialogue--everything really. And I intend to do just that before week's end.

I've seen this twice now. There's really too much to take in the first viewing. I think this is one of those films that releases to mixed reviews and years later, will garner more attention and praise. Pretty well done in my opinion, especially for his directorial debut.

Spoiler/NSFW: click to show/hide

Through my second viewing I noticed a lot of elemental references. Earth, fire, and water specifically. Anyone else notice this?