Cas Hours: 2
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Followers
Blog Archive
-
►
2010
(5)
- ► May 16 - May 23 (1)
- ► March 21 - March 28 (1)
Wow, still no comments for this movie? I hope I am writing to the right place then...
ReplyDeleteSo, Synecdoche New York was a really confusing movie. The name of the movie worked very well, since the concept of synecdoche fitted the story: something really small and not necessarily so important is made so big that it spreads.
There is supposed to be a play made about a man´s life. But as the story goes on, what happens is that the play, that is supposed to be the main character´s master piece, becomes as his life. The actors acting as him and his closest people become more real like their role models. The main character starts living in the scenery of the play.
The main character looses himself to the play and his emotions can´t follow the events in real life. The time pattern is builded by the man´s emotional states - getting over his wife who left takes 17 years which in the movie takes like 1 minute.
Did anybody notice that the music was the same throughout the whole movie? At least I think it did, the same song was in some places more quiet, some places louder and sometimes there was only silence.
Last friday we watched the movie Synechdoche, New York, and I must admit I disliked it intensely.
ReplyDeleteIt is not because of lack of ambition, no, as the film had a gigantic one in that department. The movie depicted colossal vision of a theatre producer, and how his play
becomes greater than life, slowly yet surely starting to resemble the city of New York itsef (and thus explaining the peculiar name), characters blurring together into vivid
expanse of life.
I cannot blame the movie for lack of revolutionary vision either. The plot was good, if not bit confusing, and acting solid,
if not very charismatic. No, seemingly it was a fine movie...
but I can't help to think: "is this what they call art today?!"
The movie had no substanial plot, nothing happened, and characters in the end were as dead as in the beginning. I'm not saying
there was non point, only that this one point was bloated into such a size that it eclipsed everything else. As a vision it was startling, as a movie it was a bore, and as an art piece it was (and this is the worst) ugly.
To add up into this, the director of the movie had had to resort into hiding cheap tricks of absurdness into the movie:
as if a miraclous burning house, a carnevalish tattoed woman
or cheap flashbacks could save this sinking ship. It is not my intention to say should tricks are innately wrong, only they should be used to highlight proper characterisation
and techique, not to hide the lack of it.
But enough is enough, and 124 minutes of this was too much. I know it was not such a flop as a movie, only I could not find any source of enjoyment from watching it, and this is inexcusable for an ambitious film.
As a principle I do not give stars to incomplete works of art.
I really liked this movie; it was certainly the best film I have viewed in the year 2009 (well, at least if you count the films I haven’t watched before). This was a total surprise to me, as I imagined that the Basterds were going to receive the title.
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to write, or discuss about this movie, watching it was a personal experience. I can clearly see why other people don’t like this and others love it. As my friend said: “It is easy to be too strict with a movie that makes you think, thus ruining the experience”. Whether this applies to you or not, it’s up to you. I think that this movie should not be analyzed too deeply, so I’m just going to scratch the surface with this review.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the main character Caden Cotard. After receiving massive financial support for his works, he decides to do something that really matters, something that he can be remembered of later. This artwork then swells over the next years to an incredibly complex play about Cotard’s life and his ambition to tell other people about the untellable – about life and death. During the movie the director and writer Charlie Kaufman combines the different levels of reality. Cotard has a different sence of time than others. He is able to deal with only the recent happenings of his life, and the movie proceeds as he finishes dealing with them, sometimes many years seem to pass in a minute or two, and sometimes the time feels to be completely stopped during the movie, as nothing really happens, and the play repeats itself.
Caden has a lot things going about in his head. Usually one uses synecdoches when one uses a part of the thing to refer to the whole thing, like Hollywood -> American film industry. In this film, a huge city like New York is used as a synecdoche to describe Caden’s thoughts. He devotes his whole life into trying to create a play about his life –which he in the end never really lived. The play expands uncontrollably so huge, that he has to hire actors to act his actors.
Sure, the whole film is utterly depressing, and slow-paced, but it really has other things in it too. It depends on the viewer whether he/she is willing to view the film fully open-minded and ready to try and see what this film is about. I noticed that whenever I changed my opinion about the film during the movie, I saw the film in a different light. After the half point of the movie, I decided to try and empathize with the movie and its characters, and not to be too strict and have prejudices. I was then able to enjoy the film more, and understand its meaning –at least some of it.
As cliché as it is going to hear, I’m still going to say this. After the movie I felt cleansed and exhausted. I felt like my outlook on life had gained perspective. For the whole day I felt the urge to just go home and lie on my bed, pondering.
All the events and details in the movie had a meaning -at least in my opinion. It is totally up to you how you’re going to interpret what Kaufman wants to say.
“Knowing that you don't know is the most essential step to knowing”
My firtst reaction after the movie was that it had a relavant and creative point, but the second half didn't have enough drive in it. The idea was really good; the way it was presented had the pitfall of getting boring towards the end.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, the message of the film was to question the need for understanding 'the meaning of life'. Our main character, an anti-hero, had this need, and it was this obsession that cost him his life - not the whole, but the control of it. At the end, it was no longer him living his life; this developed subtly, until the point that he was recieving instructions in his ear. In his attempt to display what his life meant in the form of a drama, he no longer lived it.
The director uses the tempo of the play to reflect on what is happening to Caden's life. A good idea, however, not ideally delivered. The film loses its appeal; the audience is no longer fully focused, for the simple fact that it is a drag. The bottom line is that movies are a form of entertainment, used to argue one's views, though, and this should be the basis of the script. It missed the point, because it disrespected this foundation.
All in all, though, the film leaves the audience with the desired shock. Caden is told to die and at that moment the screen goes black - a well excecuted cinematic tool. The audience realises what happened, the main character ended up dying, and it is this that provokes the wave of thoughs and opinions afterwards. The audience leaves the room thinking about what they saw, as opposed to feeling they had a nice time, never to think about what they saw again - with concideration at least. Having the audience ask themselves 'What did i just see?' is the basis of them concidering the answer to that.
The movie does precisely this.
For some reason it seems to be really hard to write here. Sorry about the fact that I’m late. First of all the movie was a hard bite. I totally understand why there are so few posts. It is unpleasant to write about this movie, because it was hard to understand and for viewers it was such a personal experience. But let’s get in business.
ReplyDeleteI understand the point that others didn’t like it. If I would have seen it in TV I would have closed it probably after watching it for 30 minutes. I am really happy that this was not the case and I was in some sense “forced” to watch the movie, because as a whole it was something new and fresh to me.
Synecdoche New York was not a standard Hollywood production, where you in general understand the movie as others do. I’m 100 percent sure that we all saw the film in different ways. I am not going to analyze this move by telling points like the burning house symbolized this and that. No, that would ruin the whole movie.
Life is boring, life is fast, life is slow, and life won’t last. Wow, I made a poem. Yeah, back to issue: The movie was built like life and that was to me something new. During the movie I questioned all sort of things. Charlie Kaufman wanted the viewer to slow down and think about his/hers life and values.
I cannot claim that I understood the movie. No one did. There is no right or wrong views about Synecdoche New York. This movie was not made for groups, but for individuals. If you give it a try it will help you find something new about yourself. I have never got my mind so blank and mixed up at the same time after watching a film. It was just unreal.
The movie guided me to see my personal values and some I wasn’t even aware of. The film asked the viewer what you value in life and at the same time does it really matter? In the end what does matter? After all: “I'm just a little person. One person in a sea.”
Okays, sorry if this is a little late, but you know how time consuming life can be.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of a time consuming life, isn't this the whole theme of the movie? How one can get so consumed by looking for the meaning of life, that they end up wasting it away.
So, if we agreed on the point above, would that mean that the meaning of life is to accept that there is no meaning? Or that simply, we shouldn't look for a meaning? How contradictory, summarizes the movie perfectly: Confusing and pointless.
The movie basically dealed with a man so concerned with his own mortality, he began to incorporate his life (sub-conciously or not) into his own play. The more he began to disregard his real life, and lose all those around him, the more he would begin to integrate those lost aspects into the play. In the end, he was was left with no life, and no play.
The theme of the movie was in essence the fact that all life is pointless, that we all die, and all we do in our mortal lives leads to nothing but a dark abysmal void that by definition is the concentration of nothingness.
However, this seems to have been understood pretty plainly by everyone, so I'll add here a rather interesting psychological theme I found. As the narrator kept integrating his life into the play, he in effect got two different characters to play himself in the play. The first, was an old man who would simply state whatever the narrator was really thinking. He would do this without thinking about what consequences this would have on himself, or others, much like the freudian id. Id is our most carnal characterisitc of desire, that which does not reflect on any matter other than eminent wants.
Later, this man commits suicide, and a lady is hired to play him the play. This represents the death of his id, and the birth of his superego. The lady gives the narrator an earpiece in which she conveys orders to him. In the end, the man cannot do anything at all without being instructed by the lady. This represents the fact that in the end, we all become controlled by out superegos, in a never ensding struggle to fit into the social norms--which we may only do by supressing the desires of our id, and ego. Finally, his superego explains to him that mortality is the only thing er all have connecting us, and orders him to die.
This movie offered little self-reflection to me, but observing others relfections based on this movie furthered my own understanding of humanity.
VEERA VEHMAS' COMMENT:
ReplyDeleteSorry that this is so late! Blogspot is freaking retarded.
Anyway, to the point:
Synecdoche, New York is one of the rare films I've seen that ruthlessly sucks you into its world, and then just as ruthlessly spits you out.
Let's just say that it isn't a film that you might recommend for a nice relaxing movie night.
If you want to leave understanding something, it definitely requires a lot of will power, and coffee.
The film itself is a pretty ambitious attempt to really dig deep into understanding life and death and whatever meaning it has.
We are first introduced to the main character, Caden, as he comes to the belief that he is dying. Because he believes that he will die soon, he comes to the conclusion that he must leave his mark on the world. He must create something that is brutally realistic on life.
Basically the fact that he understands his morality results in him wrecking his own life, or atleast letting his own life be wrecked. His pursuit for creating something honest catalyses his own down spiral. That is atleast how I viewed it.
While being pessimistic in many senses, I saw the film acted as an encouragement for all of us to live our lives to the fullest, and not spend it analyzing life.
Going through this film and systematically analyzing it is nearly impossible. I'm sure everyone got something out of it; something that they personally can only reflect upon. There really is no simple way of explaining the complexity of this, and how layered it is.
Though the film was far from enjoyable, it was most certainly something to think about for all of us.
Sorry for writing this late, I've been a little busy with school and farmville.
ReplyDeleteI am sure that most of you have probably already said what I have to say. This is partially due to the fact that most likely all had the same sentiment of utter awe following this movie, which in a sense makes the analysis of it quite difficult. It is clear that the effect it had on its viewer was one of its main objectives.
This sentiment of awe could well be called catharsis on my behalf, since it awakened its viewer to one's reality; we are all going to die. This consequently is the main message of the movie.
But how people deal with this imminent approaching of the inevitable was what really made the movie. It can easily be seen that the fear of death began in the main character already within the first few minutes. This could be easily seen not only through his deteriorating health but the foreshadowing shown on television. This at that point gave me the impression that the main character was in fact crazy and we were living inside his head since reality became more and more distorted according to his experiences. This could be seen throughout the movie.
I found the symbolic meaning of the fire in the house of utmost importance. Unlike one would imagine, this fire that would usually devour a house within minutes did not do so for years. Yet the fear that it caused was imminent. This is a clear link between the main character's stand on death; it is imminent and ever approaching and yet when you start waiting for it it seems as though it never comes.
Moreover, his fear of death also brought out yet another aspect in the relationship between life and death; one must accomplish something of importance before one's death. This endeavor, however, in stead of giving him that satisfaction consumed him as he took the challenge that has faced all great artists alike; how to depict life in its sincerest form.
I will not go into how this played out in the movie, since I'm sure that it has been the predominant topic at this discussion. However, I would like to note that what I really got from the movie was this: We're all going to die and instead desperately clinging onto something to give it meaning, (because this in itself will inevitably consume you) enjoy each second that is given to you and DON'T THINK TOO MUCH.
If this darned (thanks Gabriel x.x) thing posts me as HeyIts- blah blah, there´s hell to pay. Anywho, this is Nicholas Nikkinen and this is my input/interpretation of Synecdoche:
ReplyDeleteFirstly, who in the world chose to make this movie? Whose bright idea was it?
Quite some time has passed since we saw this movie, so I really have to think back to what actually happened. It basically deals with a couple composed of a theater-addicted husband (Caden) and an artist wife. They have a daughter named Olive, and all seems to be going well. After receiving her big break, the wife takes part in her art exhibition in Germany, and ultimately decides to stay in Germany with the daughter.
Meanwhile, Caden has received a scholarship, (I think that´s what it was), and he´s trying to create the perfect play; he wants to make the scholarship proud (if that makes sense).
The plot then continues with the creation of the play, the creation of the creation of the play, and the continuation of the life that the play is based on. The play takes so long to finish that many of the original cast members die, and are therefore replaced. If I remember correctly, the play takes place in a warehouse that has a world/set built inside of it, which inturn holds another warehouse with another world/set inside of it. All in all, it´s a humongous mess. Just trying to separate the different layers and events in this plot would make your brain suicidal.
If you could follow along for atleast the first third of the movie, you´ve accomplished something. After that point there´s no return. Every second must be spent following the plot while at the same time meticulously separating the plot into separate sub plots, or lines.
Personally, I feel that this movie was a desperate attempt at creating something avantgarde. Maybe in the future this movie will be better understood; but for now, to put it bluntly, watching this movie is a waste of time.
To conclude, all I can say is that this movie was and is serious brain damage.
(P.S. I´ll make a more in depth analysis of the next movie we watch; it´s been so long since we saw this one that I really can´t recall any of the [deep] conclusion I/we made)
Review: Synecdoche New York
ReplyDeleteSynecdoche New York is a film about a man who discovers he's dying, and with this, he decides to create a play about his life. Unfortunately he loses his wife and kid because of his depression. Then he moves on and encounters new people who he adds to his play of his life. The film has the unusual twist of mixing both the "real" world in the film with his virtual play, which is actually all in his head. There is never a clear indication of when we are in which reality and the the two can only be distinguished through how absurd each is. For example, when we are in the imaginary world we often see people acting out the scenes which the protagonist just witnessed.
As a film to recommend to others to see, well, it is definitely not a film for the entire family, as the kids will definitely not understand what is going on and will be bored very quickly as there are no action scenes or even of fairy tale romance, which some may enjoy. This film is more for the serious viewer who is looking for something intense and perhaps a thought provoking view on life. The fact that during much of the film the protagonist is very depressing, keeps saying throughout the film that he's dying. Which, is true for all of us, all the time, we are all, always dying, but the truth in that can be painful. In my own humble opinion of the film, I thought it had some amusing moments, that try and keep the viewer from falling into a manic depression and some interesting points on the way the world turns. However the film ended rather abruptly and left me with a sense of numbness which is good for a film with such philosophical beliefs. A film to be watched by the serious viewer, but avoid at all costs if your looking for a happy, charming film.
Timothy Jacobson
Hello, its never too late
ReplyDeleteSalim