taa455

So we are supposed to believe that one grant was enough money to fund all that elaborate set construction and all that crew for 30 or 40 years or however long that was?

whotony

I watched this yesterday and I thought it was great.
I'm not sure I understand what was happening but I loved watching it happen.

Watching everything he did become the play.
His life became the play to the point were he was non essential anymore
because his "role" was played by someone else.

I was moved to tears at the end mostly because then the end.

BambooLounge

The film is obviously not supposed to be taken literally to such an extent, but we are supposed to accept that the MacArthur Grant was unlimited funding for him to make art for art's sake.

You can read it a lot of ways...I mean, he just kept on going and going. So it could be commentary on the necessity of a producer to keep a director in check and reign him in even if it just means setting a parameter through financing limitations or a deadline.

redrum

Hoffman should of been nominated for this instead of Doubt

BambooLounge

He deserved the Best Supporting Actor win for Doubt. But, also deserved a Best Leading Actor nomination for this. Didn't deserve the win for it as I think Rourke did, but he should have gotten a nomination at least.

RichC2

I didn't think he was all that great in Doubt, just a bit loud. He was very good in this.

Hokeyboy

I FINALLY saw this movie Wednesday night, after sitting on the Blu-Ray for a few days and not having the time to give it proper time and attention.

Holy cow.

Synecdoche, New York has just ripped past MULLHOLLAND DR. and HABLE CON ELLA to top my list of the best movies of the decade. What a wicked, nasty, heartbreaking, and insanely perfect delineation of a sad man's dreaming mind. Delineation is probably a bad term to use, as nothing here is truly linear. The opening scenes, in which a few moments take place over the span of six months without even realizing it, clues you in to the fractured, oblique reality of Cotard's existence. The radio says it's early October, he gets the mail and it reads mid October, he goes to the refrigerator and the milk is expired ("October 20th"), then he hits his head and goes to the doctor's office (which has Christmas decorations all over), on the ride home the radio says it's the first day of spring.... WHAT is happening here? Time is accellerating in a way unfamiliar and uncomfortable to the viewer, yet within the context of the movie we're hurtling through Cotard's life in a way works within the framework of recalling and recollecting. He wakes up as 7:43 am turns into 7:44 am, and at the end he's being told by Ellen (the cleaning lady who becomes him) that (paraphrased) "One moment it's 7:43 and you're here, now it's it 7:44 and you're here, and then you're gone..."

My favorite parallel is when Hazel asks him to beg her for a kiss, and then later his dying daughter begs him to admit he was a homosexual, underscoring his self-stylized victimization by women. Nothing is "real" here in the sense that everything shown to the audience is how Cotard has envisioned, reimagined, recalled, or exaggerated about his life.

I loved this movie. What a challenging, heartbreaking, and exhilerating piece of work. Easily Kaufman's masterpiece.

Zen Peckinpah

Wow. Just finished it. Beautiful, sad, heartfelt, apocalyptic, bewildering, funny, complex...it touches on so many emotions I don't even know where to begin, and it has truly affected me. I don't know if it's my favorite of Kaufman's scripts, but the ambition in this one puts them all to shame.

tylergfoster

This is what I thought, every event in the movie is like a literalized neurotic version of what might have actually happened. I didn't notice the thing about time, though. Very interesting...

Shilex

Just watched it and damn....this is a challenging film. I'm a HUGE fan of Charlie Kaufman, but this was something on another level. It's a very scattered piece of work. It was almost too stream-of-conciousness for me to actually enjoy it on first viewing.

I'm sure this was Charlie's grand opus that was meant to only truly make sense to him. No matter how much dissecting we do, I don't think anyone will ever really get it. This isn't to say it was a bad movie. Any movie that is different and that challenges a viewer should be regarded on a higher level. There were some really beautiful moments in the film. I, for one, really enjoyed the speech given by the pastor near the final moments of Cotard's life.

What I took from the movie is that life is just a play, separated by moments. Time is not important. Only people are important. I loved the idea of how Cotard's life is wrapping in around itself (like a Russian Nesting doll). Even though he was surrounded by people, he was always lonely. So focused on this loneliness, he couldn't even see when he had loving people around him until it was too late. This was a man truly living in the past and with too much regret.

I'll really have to watch this again to see what I can gain from a second viewing. I'm still on the fence. There was a bit of pretentiousness to the film that turned me off. In terms of enjoyment, at this time I would rank this film near the bottom of Kaufman's work.

hardercore

Anyone else recently revisit this film? Saw it again on DVD for the first time in about a year. My estimation of the film has gone up, but I'll be damned if I have any more idea now than I did then what sense to make of it all. Individual moments shone for me, and I loved how Kaufman exploited the two-hour temporal unit of a movie to give a sort of heightened awareness of a really harrowing sense of time's exponential passing, which is how Caden would feel.

red1138

I have not seen this film in a while but I plan on watching it again within the next week or so...This is one of those movies I think about pretty often and always have a desire to watch. I find it very depressing (my girlfriend and I admitted to each other we were both down in the dumps for about 3 days after viewing the first time) but somehow uplifting at the same time. I cannot explain the full philosophical implications of this film, but I definitely think it captures the feeling of time passing by way too quickly and being able to do absolutely nothing to stop it...I think you explained it perfectly HARDERCORE when you said that it shows a "heightened sense of time's exponential passing" - to me, that sums it up perfectly. Time often feels like a freight train that you are on and cannot stop, you continue to get older and watch everyone around you get older, and in some cases, pass away. It really reminds us how short life truly is and how insignificant we can sometimes feel in the grand scheme of thing. Again, I really feel I cannot explain exactly what this film means and cannot necessarily wrap my head around all the points Kaufman was making, but I do know that he told the story in a really unique way that almost (as close to any movie I can remember) put you in the shoes of the main character. Incredible stuff.