Review

Review Date: 16-November-08
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

As tools of expression go, I have no problem with synecdoche, the use of a part to express a whole (or vice versa). I do have a problem, though, with the use of absurdity to express profundity. Artists and writers have been trying this for years, with circus clowns surrounded by death, oddly lit rooms in which nobody makes any sense, or other visions of reality gone topsy-turvy in the name of some deep truth. Our subconscious might get away with wacky metaphor in dreams, but as a deliberate medium it looks like sloppy pretension. Synecdoche, New York is a prime example.

The mind behind this misguided exercise, Charlie Kaufman, thought up Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, fine films which used absurdity to describe absurd things like romantic and artistic obsession. (This is also true of Kafka's novella The Trial, to which Synecdoche, New York refers in self-justification.) In addition, these earlier movies had core stories for which the absurd elements were embellishments. Kaufman's latest venture attempts to encompass the entire meaning of life through the uniformly absurd experiences of one man, a theater director whose failed marriages, squandered true love, and fear of death drive him to create his own reality on a larger-than-average scale.

I stayed in my seat for the movie's long run time only because the man is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose work I cannot fail to admire. He takes a game stab at an impossible task, backed by an impressive cast that includes Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Tom Noonan, Hope Davis, and Emily Watson. Perhaps they believe in the point of this movie, that our time on Earth is brief yet we waste it lamentably in self-absorption and worrying about things which we cannot control. I am on board with that, but the fact is that the meaning of life is straightforward, if elusive, and does not need to be — possibly cannot be — expressed with the indulgence of doppelgängers, fractured time, incoherent blathering, and recurrent images of poop.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.