Synecdoche, New York

Charlie Kaufman, 2008

5/5

This is one of those films that after you process, it, it changes you. You want to tell your other movie-lover friends to go see it so you can gauge their reaction. They ask you “what’s it about?”. That’s the challenging task. “Okay, so it’s about a struggling playwright played by Philip Seymour Hoffman”. They reply “That’s it? That sounds kind of boring”. Your brain rattles, trying to come up with a better way to describe the film. “Okay, so it’s about a struggling playwright who works on an ambitious project after getting substantial funding and is able to recreate a miniature New York inside a massive warehouse that he purchases”. Closer. More descriptive, but no, that’s still not it. Maybe this is just another one of those films that you say “Just go see it.”

Synecdoche is one of those films sort of difficult to really discuss upon first viewing. It almost demands rewatching. The attention to detail, the exhausting carefulness that Kaufman clearly puts into his film. It’s one of those films that after looking back on it a few days later, there’s a dream-like quality to it. There is lingering imagery. Life and death. The fear of death, the neverending clinging to one’s mortality. Hypocondria, paranoia of being ill or falling ill. Parental pressures, the fear of losing your family or struggling to live without your family by your side. Career insecurities, self-doubt on the creative level. It’s also an examination of the American marriage, or at least a focus on a fading relationship. Complacency, marital boredom. Love lost, wandering eyes, jealousy. Kaufman is a genius when it comes to taking everyday life and completely manipulating it. Sometimes he is just toying with it slightly, with a minor hallucination. At others he is bending the world in different shapes and forms. He is an artist with a lot to say, and there’s not enough room in the massive warehouse to store it all. Hoffman’s Caden character is one of the more complex characters to come out of 21st century cinema. As he seems to grow more and more disconnected from reality, his artificial world seems to grow more elaborate. There are certainly people out there who will watch a film like this and pick it apart. It’s a complicated film. At times probably over-complicated. But that’s sort of what Kaufman has done with his screenwriting, so why would he not do the same thing while sitting in the directors’ chair? Nobody but Kaufman could conceivably make a movie quite like Synecdoche. He turns parts of upstate New York and New York City into an urban mind-field. The final result is some kind of surreal hybrid of Vanilla Sky, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. And who wouldn’t want that?

eXistenZ

David Cronenberg, 1999


4/5

Allegra Geller is a video game designer who is very proud of the new incarnation of her virtual reality game titled "eXistenZ". While showing the game to a group of enthusiastic fans, a mysterious assassin interrupts the presentation. Searching for clues, she figures the only way to get to the bottom of who is after her is to go into her own game and see what she can find.

If The Fifth Element and The Matrix had a baby, it would be eXistenZ. This is a film that perhaps can only be created by Cronenberg. The film is very Cronenbergy; absurd visuals, bizarre stop motion animation similar to his oddball creations in Naked Lunch. At times the film has a very The Fly-like feel to it combined with a very cerebral and intricate story. While a film like History of Violence likely took Cronenberg out of his comfort zone, eXistenZ is a film right in his wheelhouse. It's satirizes humans obsession with technology, specifically with video games and the sense of escapism involved in playing them - but doesn't stop there.  Allegra (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is an enigmatic, yet accessible character. Because of the hours spent in seclusion developing her game, she lacks proper social skills and has an odd demeanor to her. When she pairs up with Ted Pikul (Jude Law) to search for the mysterious assassin (or assassins), it's really two opposites coming together. She is the quiet, awkward type and Pikul is the over-cautious extrovert. Jude Law, who is a quite consistent actor, was clearly still working on his American accent while working on this film (the process was quite humorous actually). Cronenberg does a great job of building up the anticipation of actually seeing the virtual world created by Allegra. When you do finally see it, it doesn't disappoint. You enter another dimension and you quickly indulge in the elaborate digital world constructed by Allegra. Just like a video game, the characters even have their A.I. limitations (ie. going off script to an in-game character may throw them off). The comprehensive story maintains it's pace all the way to the climax, and the ending is surprising yet very satisfying. This is a Cronenberg film that probably slipped through the cracks for a lot of people. It reminds me that he's probably one of the more under-rated directors out there. His unusual visual concepts can be compared to Lynch or Burton, and he doesn't just lean heavily on the visuals - with this film specifically he works off of a sophisticated screenplay that should leave viewers feeling satiated. Or at least the ones who like the weird, heady stuff.