None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories.

Based on an essentially speechless review in moviebuffs a while back, I decided I wanted to see Synecdoche, New York. As luck would have it, it came to Lincoln this weekend, so my mother and I went to see it. Lincoln's one "independent" (university-associated) theater was the most full I had ever seen it, jam-packed with people who were going to see the other indie movie opening this weekend, Slumdog Millionaire. I have in all honesty never seen so many people go to see a movie at the Ross. It had gotten a two-page spread in the entertainment section - the spot reserved for movies like Lord of the Rings, Benjamin Button, etc. Those spreads tend to work wonders in Lincoln.

So we're sitting in the other, tiny theater at the Ross, with the eight other people who are seeing Synecdoche, New York instead of Slumdog Millionaire. A trailer comes on for Slumdog Millionaire. It's bright and colorful and has "Hoppípolla" playing and Time magazine says it's a hymn to life and oh! My mom leans over to me. "It might be interesting just for the visuals of India." I just snorted. Then they showed a trailer for Stranded: I've Come From A Plane That Crashed in the Mountains, and my mom was like, "There, that's more your thing." But anyway, our movie started - Synecdoche, New York - and I can tell immediately that it's not going to be a visual feast, it's not going to be a "hymn to life" in the typical sense, and I'm afraid my mother is going to hate it. I already have the feeling that I will love it, from the opening frames, partly because I love Charlie Kaufman's work. Well, I love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich. Those are the only two of his movies I've seen.

I don't know how to give a review of Synecdoche, New York. Basically and importantly, it's directed and written by Charlie Kaufman and stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's brilliant as always. I'll give the barest of plot descriptions: A theatre director who's spent his professional life directing adaptations of other people's plays gets a MacArthur genius grant after his super-famous-artist wife takes his daughter and relocates to Berlin, and he launches into the construction of his magnum opus, a "brutal" and "tough" and "honest" work that is true to his self, whatever that is. He takes over a huge abandoned warehouse in New York City and starts building within it the world inside his head - replicas of the apartments and houses that feature in his "real" life, replicas of the people that have featured in his life, replicas of himself. That's about as far as I can go. I read several reviews of this movie before seeing it and none of them did it justice. It's definitely a Kaufman movie both in style - extremely surreal and dark and loving and hilariously absurd - and content: mental processes, memory, desire, creation, the self, the self in suffering. Synecdoche, New York in particular reminded me very much of a commencement speech Lindsey gave me a link to, by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. So Lindsey, I especially recommend this movie to you.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and [unintelligible -- sounds like "displayal"]. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

After the movie ends my mother sits there staring at the screen. (I have been crying, but I'm always crying these days) Usually she jumps up at the end of movies and gets me up and on our way out. She's not a movie buff - she sees them once, enjoys it, and the experience is over. Not this one. It reminded me of the time we went to the Lied to see some very bizarre singer whose name I can't remember and my mother was totally overwhelmed by this one song about what goes through the mind of someone who's dying. I can't get her to look away from the screen until the credits were over. And of course she is my mother and I'm an only child and my father is dead, so it's strange for me to see her so absorbed in something that has nothing at all to do with me, something that has spoken to her own self... whatever that is. After the credits end (and we never stay for the credits) we push our way out of the Ross, because it's now overflowing with people who are there to see Slumdog Millionaire. My mother says, at last, "And all these people are going to see that other movie!", laughing and shaking her head. When we get out into the open she takes a deep breath, points to the sky, and exclaims, "Look at the moon!" It's very bright and full tonight, and the clouds look all layered and textured. Then she sighs and says, "That was one of the most amazing movies I have ever seen."

I can't really say much else, except that it left me feeling peaceful and strangely centered given that it opens with the main character getting a sink blown up in his face, and I'm very happy to have seen it. I give it the strongest recommendation I've given to a movie in a long time, but be aware that it's a movie you'll either love or hate. To me, it was absolutely beautiful. Perfect, as Caden Cotard would say. I'm going to include one last thing - a monologue by an actor playing a minister presiding over a funeral from late in the movie that my mother and I and apparently some IMDb user agree is the psychological and narrative climax of Synecdoche, New York:

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. And the truth is I'm so angry and the truth is I'm so fucking sad, and the truth is I've been so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long have been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own, and their own is too overwhelming to allow them to listen to or care about mine. Well, fuck everybody. Amen.