Jeffrey Wells caught the film everyone else has been waiting with bated breath: Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” and his initial reaction is that it’s brillance needs brevity. “I’ve just emerged from the semi-nourishing, semi-tortured Fellini-esque Chinese box mindfuck-dreamscape that is ‘Synecdoche, New York…,”‘ he wrote before hurrying off for the film’s press conference (Note: Executive producer Spike Jonze was there, expect someone to ask him about ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ in the press this weekend)
The Associated Press said, “it seems fitting that Charlie Kaufman’s directing debut, which offers enough enigmatic ideas to fry viewers’ brains, should also come with a title that will twist their tongues.”
“Every script he writes I feel is that much more raw and honest and audacious and brave,” Spike Jonze said. “He’s by far my favorite writer.”
Kaufman also brushed aside that the difficult title would be confusing for mainstream audiences.
“I like titles that are a little difficult, because it’s kind of counterintuitive,” Kaufman said, adding that he chose “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” “because it was really hard to remember that title. I couldn’t remember it for the longest time.”
The Toronto Globe and Mail called Kaufman’s film a “disappointing directorial debut.” And the write Liam Lacey said as the main character (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) goes “off the rails, so does the movie, in a series of bizarrely contrived dilemmas, punctuated with mournful monologues.”
Kaufman told reporters that the film doesn’t have any larger hidden message or creative agenda to push from the outset (note outside the big names PSH, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams and Samantha Morton, the cast also features Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Hope Davis and Tom Noonan).
“The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. “I have something I’m interested in and then I decide I’m going to explore it. I don’t know where the characters are going to go, I don’t know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that’s the way to keep it alive. …I tried to approach the directing in the same way. We have the script, we have the actors, and we’re trying to figure out what this is, and you don’t know what it is. You have to be open to what it’s going to become rather than have this thing that you’re trying to get to, which is boring.”
Toronto’s largely conservative newspaper loved it. “The resulting film, which is by turns laugh-out-loud funny and achingly melancholic, touches on themes of ageing and death, loneliness and love, connection and belonging. It is a metaphor for film, for life, perhaps even a metaphor for metaphor itself. Many movies provide food for thought; this is a banquet.”
ScreenDaily suggests it’s a film for his core audience, but not mainstream ones (fine by us). “Unadventurous audiences may feel the film is a two hour struggle to understand the meaning of its intentions but as the story appears to move in ever decreasing circles, it remains incredibly engaging and ultimately very moving.”