Wow, this film was a mess- a self-indulgent, irredeemable mess. I enjoyed the first half, but then it began to slowly segue into the unwatchable. I happen to be a fan of surrealism, but there was nothing remotely rewarding to be found within the fragmented, disjointed imagery. It actually made me start to view ‘art’, at least within the context of this film, as something ugly, soul-destroying, even unnervingly vile. The message I gathered from this is that life is depressing and interminably long, and then you die.
I also had a real problem with the role of women in this film. They seem to either exist as irrational/detached/flake-y art ‘muses,’ (again portraying art as divisive and harmful, not conjoining, redemptive or liberating, as I and a great deal of the world see it) or as vacuous bit parts who seem devoid of passion except when regularly offering Hoffman’s character comfort through sex.
The only brief moment of the film I enjoyed was the “priest” in the rain/collective cast photo scene (I don’t know how else to describe it) and his diatribe on the sadness of the human experience in our lifelong efforts to find love and relativity to others. It was a bit high school diary, but it rang irrefutably true and touched me immensely. But that scene was short lived, immediately followed by a random, completely unrelated moment of what I can only describe as an obligatory exercise in the license of creative lunacy. I cannot even recall offhand what was even involved in that particular scene, but that’s precisely my point. It’s pretty much how this film operates. One moment of mild, life-affirming poignancy is then “cut” into by something completely irrelevant and, frankly, nihilistic. It makes for a very unsettling experience, as there is nothing rewarding about the sequence, subsequently. The poignancy is overtaken by the nihilism and effectively cancels it out.

And then, it all ends with a dull, deathly, silencing “beep.”

To paraphrase the great John Lydon, ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

Charlie Kaufman is a distinctive writer of quirky films that usually subvert formal structures and are built around narcissistic characters who lack self-awareness. To say that Synecdoche, New York takes places within Kaufman’s usual territory would be an understatement and in his directorial debut he takes it one step further in a messy, frustrating and fascinating film. Filled with strange images, characters and situations that sometimes make sense and sometimes don’t, it’s one of the most unique films that I’ve seen over the past year. I don’t think that it’s for everyone, but it is so dense and lovingly constructed that I think people will be talking about it for long time.
What kind of strange is it, you may ask? (he asked rhetorically). There are parts that are a bit dreamlike and surreal, but not in the way that David Lynch does it (with Lynch it seems more intuitive). There are parts that are like Jean-Luc Godard (but not as political or ecstatically cinematic). It’s quite neurotic and darkly funny and emotionally brutal at times.
It’s unsettling with complex performances from the cast who have to work within very strange parameters. I don’t think that I’ve seen a film that operates with such a strange sense of time and identity with days or years passing between cuts and the elements blurring the distinctions between places, times and people. Magical surreal images are sprinkled throughout the film with an absurd sense of humour that sometimes is poignant.
This is a unique vision and one that I need to revisit to start to piece together more.