Mostly urban inmates escaping the reality of living somewhere up north for the fantasy that creation has presented the human race across the river in Florida.
In spite of those who would point fingers and try to rearrange the human race. Mostly, we just laugh at their rants to the newspapers and suggest that they form a committee, appoint themselves a chair and try to get some followers.
Have a bigger laugh. But, to the blog in hand. This one has a subversive context. It looked like a Bergman film, but with actual action — people running hither and yon distraughtly. If you are going to continue with the in flames theme, maybe you could dig up a good Telly Salavas sp? The Tarkovsky film is very much in the mold of Bergman—very much a film about faith and God and meaning and, as its title suggests, Sacrifice.
I put the scene up because of the fires, which, yes, are always very much in my mind when they happen. Thank you. I see said the blind man. One of the few episodes I managed to catch was made when the occupants of The Bronx were setting it on fire because of their disgust with the people who owned the place.
The smoke was drifting into Manhattan. Fortunately for my mind, I was privileged to be coming home for a brief visit before flying off to Jamaica, or Guatemala, or Australia. I especially liked Fiji, it was a gentle place in spite of the polarization between the natives and the India Indians. And I have no doubt that if it really were to happen, it would remain just that — entertainment.
So take your Florida pride and stick it in a pipe and smoke it. Or get a thicker skin. And by the way: Castro really is awesome. Like, totally awesome. I have no ill will to LA or to California in general, nor to any other people in any other place that I can recollect at this time. The Bronx really was burning. Disaster is entertainment when it is visited on somebody else and some where else.
But I doubt if any one would wish the place ill. I remember the comments about how much better the napalming of the Vietnamese showed up on color tv. When I lived in Berkeley Anchorage had its big earthquake. There was a tidal wave watch for the San Francisco beaches. Thousands of people showed up with feasts and music to party on the beach and welcome the tidal wave. When St. This reaches a final irony when as far as we know the play is never performed before an audience, but Caden's life is—in the form of the film Synecdoche, New York!
An interesting contrast exists between the increasingly tiny works of Adele and the increasingly enormous work of Caden's. Director Charlie Kaufman said, In [Adele's] studio at the beginning of the movie you can see some small but regular-sized paintings that you could see without a magnifying glass By the time [Caden] goes to the gallery to look at her work, which is many years later, you can't see them at all.
As a dream image it appeals to me. Her work is in a way much more effective than Caden's work. Caden's goal in his attempt to do his sprawling theater piece is to impress Adele because he feels so lacking next to her in terms of his work.
Caden's work is so literal. The only way he can reflect reality in his mind is by imitating it full-size It's a dream image but he's not interacting with it successfully.
The actors playing real people begin to fill these people's roles in reality. Sammy Barnathan the actor who plays Caden claims to have followed Caden for years and is visible watching him on at least three occasions earlier in the film and in a sense he has, as the character is a fictional observer on Caden's whole life.
Fate—and the importance of accepting fate—plays an important role in the film. Cotard's deteriorating physical condition means he has to confront his own death and accept mortality. He reminds his employees that they will all die too, eventually, and must come to terms with it. Much of life is spent in denial as this—note how Adele tells Olive that she doesn't have blood, denial of the body being a way of denying mortality. Cotard is forced to see everyone as a decaying and dying body—note how he imagines his counsellor having a progressively nasty skin disease.
Hazel accepts her fate casually—she even purchases a house which is bizarrely on fire, and lives in it for years even though she knows she will die of smoke inhalation and she does. In a sense, life is like buying a burning house—we know it will be destroyed, but accept it anyway. Hazel's relationship with Caden is similar: she knows he is deeply disturbed and the relationship cannot last for long, but pursues it anyway.
A script is a particular kind of fate, in which virtually all one's actions and words are predetermined, and only tiny variations in tone and attitude are permitted. As a director, Caden works with the writings of other people, and can only add superficial changes to their work, for example casting young actors as the elderly lead characters of Death of a Salesman in order to show that mortality is universal, an alteration the purpose of which his parents and probably most of the audience missed.
But Adele, as a painter, can create new works, which makes Caden jealous. He attempts to create his own script, but ends up just copying real life. Even his relationship with Claire follows a very similar "script" to his relationship with Adele: they have a daughter and gradually grow apart, Caden retaining an emotional attachment to Hazel. Caden ends by following a stage manager's directions in life via earpiece, even obeying her final command: "Die.
I just saw it for a second time this week and still couldn't make much sense of it. So to try and clarify Kaufman's intentions as well as attempt to take a deeper look at the themes of the film, I thought I'd turn to Kaufman himself. This all began with a simple question: What does the burning house mean? Kaufman's answer, unfortunately, only seemed to make it all so much more confusing and complex.
Before we get too far into this, I think it's appropriate to start with the basics. What does "synecdoche" actually mean?
The word is a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part. In relation to the film, "synecdoche" is referring to the main character's eventual decision to build a scale model of New York City within a warehouse to put on a stage production of his entire life.
But that's only just the beginning. Kaufman's actual intention was to write a horror film screenplay for Spike Jonze to direct. As time went on, the project fell back out of Jonze's hands and into Kaufman's, who decided to direct it on his own. So how exactly did a horror film turn into this?
This gives the story a chance to grow as I learn more about my subject. I'm sure anyone who is interested in this has seen the trailer , and read the plot synopsis, but neither of those really explain what Synecdoche, New York is actually about. It's a film that deals with death, illness, despair, loneliness, relationship problems, metaphysics, and heartbreak. What is noticeable throughout the film is that most of what is happening to Caden Cotard played by Philip Seymour Hoffman are things that Kaufman himself is terrified of, which ties this back to the notion of it being horror.
It is indeed funny, but also so complex and expansive as Caden starts to put together his play that, in my own opinion, it starts to become less of what it's attempting to be about and more of whatever you make of it yourself.
Exploring Kaufman's interest in storytelling furthers also allows us to start understanding why he chose to make the film so open to interpretation. You can start to fly in a dream and in the dream it's just, 'Oh yeah, I can fly'—it's not like what your reaction would be in the real world. So everything that happens in this movie is to be taken at face value, it's what's happening. It's okay that it doesn't happen in real life— it's a movie.
So let's get back to the root of it all - the question I asked that started my further investigation. You might get more out of it if that particular metaphor speaks to you, but you don't need to. Hopefully the movie will work on a lot of levels and people can read different things from it depending on who they are. In actuality, Kaufman doesn't want it answered.
Instead, he wants me to either take away whatever I want from it or look at it as something that is just a part of the film and not question it any further, like in a dream. Those who have seen the film may finally start to understand how that can be done.
At this point I've done my job - I've given you a glimpse into the mind of Charlie Kaufman and introduced you to some of the dynamics within Synecdoche, New York.
The next step: see the film and start some discussion. You'll be even more confused trying to figure it out before you've even seen it. It's a good film, there's no question about that, it's just a matter of interpreting it if you so choose or at least making some sense of it.
No seriously, your interaction with the movie is really all that matters. Some things will resonate with you and some things won't, but that's going to be different for different people and that's exciting to me, so I thank you. Synecdoche, New York arrives in limited art house theaters starting this Friday, October 24th.
Find more posts: Discuss , Editorial , Indies. A friend of mine was able to hang out with Kaufman not too long ago after a screening of this film I was so jealous I have always enjoyed Kaufmans writing and stories on screen This post has missed the entire point of the film.
Synecdoche, New York isn't confusing or complex at all. It's frustrating, because you want it to be plot-driven and moving toward a specific end-point, but that's not what life is. Charlie Kaufman has spoken on numerous occasions about, much-like his character Caden, making film truthful and brutally honest. It doesn't get much more brutal or honest than this. It's simply what you make of it. What does the burning house mean?
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