“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind”
“Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” is an interesting outlier in Kaufman’s filmography, since it’s one of the few scripts of his that hasn’t been directed by either Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, or the writer himself. Instead, this blackly comic look at the wild life and times of former “Gong Show” host and alleged CIA spy Chuck Barris was the filmmaking debut of George Clooney, who would go on to enjoy a prosperous career directing everything from the critically acclaimed period drama “Good Night and Good Luck” to last year’s divisive TV adaptation of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22.” Kaufman has gone on the record to state that he was unhappy with Clooney’s sanitizing of the material, and he’s alluded to the fact that he and the director didn’t exactly get along during production (it seems as though the notes Kaufman passed along to Clooney regarding his take on the material were largely ignored). While it’s tempting to wonder what Kaufman’s brainier version of this material would have looked like, the creative friction in making “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” ended up resulting, somewhat curiously, in what is perhaps the most conventionally accessible movie that Kaufman has ever written.”Confessions” is a fizzy spy caper filled with twists, turns, grisly laughs, and sudden, jarring violence, all of it captured in colorful detail by the great cinematographer Newton Thomas Siegel. The film is also given a major boost from then-ascendant leading man Sam Rockwell, who injects this freewheeling genre hybrid with no shortage of the squirrely oddball energy that we’ve since come to know and love him for.
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)
Everyone has at least one bad breakup in their life that they wish they could go back and erase. In fact, if you’ve only been through one, you should count yourself as lucky. One of the many ingenious flourishes of Kaufman’s mind-bending and emotionally trenchant screenplay for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” – which some critics have heralded as the finest film that Kaufman has ever had a hand in making – is that it literalizes this concept, hinging its giddily fantastical plot on a strange medical procedure undergone by a forlorn loner named Joel Barish (Jim Carrey, achingly vulnerable). The purpose of said procedure: to have all memories of Joel’s ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet, matching her co-star in every scene) wiped from memory. “Eternal Sunshine,” in spite of the cerebral nature of its central gimmick, might stand as Kaufman’s most compassionate movie: both Kaufman and director Michel Gondry seem to intrinsically understand that the desire to expunge memories of a doomed relationship is more or less a futile one, as it’s those many accumulated heartbreaks, disappointments and personal revelations that ultimately shape who we are. The film has its undeniable blind spots – Clementine is a bit of an MPDG, after all, and the excellent supporting cast, including Kristen Dunst, Elijah Wood, and Mark Ruffalo, are sidelined to make room for the lead character’s journey through the detritus of their shared past – but taken on its own terms, this radiant postmodern romance remains an emotional zenith in Kaufman’s filmography.
“Synecdoche, New York” (2008)
What happens when the great Charlie Kaufman tries to outdo himself? What happens when he doesn’t have a Spike Jonze or a Michel Gondry to mediate his penchant for narcissistic navel-gazing? And, perhaps most importantly, what happens when Kaufman attempts to make a grand statement about the Big Issues? In other words, what happens when he makes a kind of cosmically-focused, swing-for-the-fences passion project, the kind most directors have to spend their entire careers working towards and announces it as his directorial debut? We suppose you get something like “Synecdoche, New York,” which sees Kaufman leaning into his most polarizing tendencies as a storyteller without a buffer, a safety net, or a single solitary fuck about what anyone else might think of the finished product. “Synecdoche” is the story of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman, wonderful as always), another one of Kaufman’s self-pitying, inward-gazing sad sacks. Caden is not well, physically or mentally, and his recurring ailments provide this often suffocatingly self-serious film with a measured dose of grim humor. The plot, inasmuch as there is one, details Caden’s attempts to pour everything from his aggrieved existence into one career-defining and immersive theatrical experience, and while it’s not difficult to see the metaphor that Kaufman is striving for (it’s not particularly subtle, in any case), it’s also hard not to wish that the film’s misery possessed more weight, more dimension, more purpose, beyond misery merely for the sake of itself. In a film where the lines between fiction and reality are intentionally blurred, so too is the question of whether or not Kaufman is critiquing self-absorption, or merely wallowing in it.
“Anomalisa” (2015)
Viewers, such as this particular writer, who were put off by the one-note nihilism of “Synecdoche, New York” took some solace in knowing that Charlie Kaufman’s filmmaking follow-up, the startling stop-motion odyssey “Anomalisa” (co-directed by Duke Johnson) is a far more tender and less aggressively misanthropic film than its predecessor. In a word, it’s human – this, in spite of the curious fact that there are no actual human beings in it. In a deft touch, this bittersweet animated chamber piece is voiced almost entirely by Tom Noonan, who lends his marvelous drone to every character in the film, save for Michael Stone, a chronically lonely customer service representative voiced by the great David Thewlis and a soft-spoken female companion, voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh, whom Michael surreptitiously meets at a depressing Cincinnati hotel one fateful night. The central metaphor for Kaufman’s sophomore feature is irresistible on paper: in a world where everyone sounds the same, to discover one singular voice – a voice that stands out from the crowd, a voice that makes you feel seen – is nothing less than a divine revelation. Kaufman, Johnson, and their team craft a dazzling world of miniature make-believe in “Anomalisa,” and the heartbreaking monologue that Kaufman crafted for Thewlis to deliver in the film’s final stretch is among the finest things he’s ever written. In his first film as director, Kaufman, a poet of conceit, seemed to be acquiescing to self-obsession. In “Anomalisa,” he valiantly fights against it. It’s a beautiful thing to witness.
“I’m Thinking Of Ending Things”
Read some of Charlie Kaufman’s recent interviews? Watched his two directorial efforts so far? Left to his own devices without collaborators like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, or Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman movies tend to get bleak, miserablist, nihilistically morose and misanthropic. It can be a bit much to take. So that said, his latest, something of road trip psychological horror based on Iain Reid’s book of the same name, is a challenging, often cold work about loneliness and hopelessness and regret. Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley star as a couple on an endless wintry road trip to visit his parents, but the young girl—whose name keeps changing throughout the picture—is full of misgivings, emotional discontent and is thinking of ending their relationship. What ensues is a long, talky, ponderous, discursive, surreal road trip about, well everything, life, poetry, film, Paulene Kael’s takedown of John Cassavetes’ seemingly feminine-positive “A Woman Under The Influence,” and much more. Once they arrive they are greeted by two eccentric and rather creepy parents, David Thewlis and Toni Collette, and things get bizarre, but also really hilarious. Suffice to say, ‘Thinking Of Ending Things’ is bizarre, compelling, difficult, funny, glum, but also filled with hypnotic musical sequences and a magically fever-dream ending, what else would you expect? Cofounding and strange, but rewarding too. – Rodrigo Perez
“I’m Thinking Of Ending Things” lands on Netflix on September 4th.