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

[intertribal]

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.

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

sounds interesting. i have to admit, i usually 'like' movies, but very, very few of them leave any lasting impression on me, and i'm always up for giving one a chance to do that, if that makes sense.

Actually, my favorite thing he says (if I have a 'favorite', i mean it's a coherent whole) is right after what you quoted, "That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing." Because I think that feeling is all-too-familiar and prevalent, even glamorized and made magical, but he hits it dead on. He calls it out for what it is.

also, some random person who was apparently born in 1962 decided to add to our little prince/bourdieu/love discussion today. just thought it was funny.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you're like my mom then. I have a way more volatile reaction to movies (and a lot more of them), so it's always interesting to me what you types of people really "respond" to.

I like that part too. But this worked better as a complement to the movie. Also, the "gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing" sounds a lot to me like that ol' crisis of modernity, to beat a comatose horse.

That's scary.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

lol, "you types of people." i don't usu. have volatile reactions. not unless something really violates what i think is Right and Good and True, hah. I'm more likely to be like, well, it had its good points, the cinematography was gorgeous, whatever, but it didn't really approach some higher Truth. or whatever.

Actually, I think it's pretty analogous to "Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved." I don't know what it has to do with a crisis of modernity--I mean, if it's unique to so-called modernity, or why it would be--but I also think 'crisis of modernity' is a label to cover a phenomenon that hasn't been explained yet. It itself isn't an explanation. I started writing a long response to that comment of yours awhile back, then realized it was taking me way too long, and I think I tried to save it somewhere...maybe I deleted it. Dunno. Anyway it might not've been the best response, so maybe it's all for the better.

Really? Why?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Hmm, well, that's not what my mom goes for, so... yeah, I don't know. Are you a utilitarian art kind of person?

No, the crisis of modernity isn't an explanation, but it is certainly a label to a phenomenon. I don't know who coined it, but it was probably someone who felt betrayed by what they thought was modernity. But people who buy into the idea that there is a crisis specific to their time do certainly feel a sense of having lost some infinite thing. That thing is exactly what makes them feel connected and whole - sometimes they label it morality and sometimes they label it ancestor worship and sometimes they label it national pride, and they try to re-discover this infinite thing through religion, war, bombs, etc. What makes the crisis modern is the very idea of loss, the feeling that there is something missing that used to be there, something that the passage of time has taken away. Of course, that's a very loose definition of modern that I'm using.

I don't know.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

What does your mom go for? Utilitarian art? I don't think so...

I really think it's largely a power issue, and modernity is just extra good at making us powerless, or maybe better said, not providing the, er, old-fashioned means of anesthetizing that feeling. That might not the best response either, but I'm supposed to be thinking about the Very Important Issue of metrical structure. (sarcasm) I will find what's important and strip the bullshit away, goddamn it. And there is so much bullshit. I'm pretty sure my thesis is more like, "Why Phonology is a Pointless Endeavor" with a touch of, "How Linguists Waste their Lives." Uh, sorry, unrelated. I think there is something to its being modern (at least in a broad sense, 'cause this is basically what Nietzsche was writing about, about which I will do my damndest to say no more than that...except that it's no coincidence we're talking about Kafka at the same time here), but it is by no means a new problem--more like an old problem in new terms. Like, it's the same problem that gave us a need for religion in the first place. And I don't mean that we feel the loss of that--how can we? We feel the same loss.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Uh, the first two ?'s are separate responses

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

No, my mom hates utilitarian art. My mom hates objectivism like whoa.

Well... of course it's not a new issue. See, to me, modernity existed (in relative terms) as soon as civilization progressed to like, agricultural societies from nomadic. It's exactly the problem that gave us a need for religion in the first place (that's why I said people turn to it!).

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Er, they were intended to be separate, sorry. "What does your mom go for?" *pause* "Utilitarian art? I don't think so..." in reference to what I like, or whatever.

But that's not the impression I had of what was meant by a 'crisis of modernity'? Also, isn't modernity like, post-Enlightenment? Oh dear lord:

"Modernity is a term that refers to the modern era. It is distinct from modernism, and, in different contexts, refers to cultural and intellectual movements of the period c. 1630-1940. The term "modern" can refer to many different things. Colloquially, it can refer in a general manner to the 20th century. For historians, the Early Modern Period refers to the period roughly from 1500 to 1800, with the Modern era beginning sometime during the 18th century. In this schema, industrialization during the 19th century marks the first phase of modernity, while the 20th century marks the second. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by post-modernity and into the present."

Yeah, I think I'm most familiar with the one who takes industrialization as a key part of 'modernity'. And I thought that was tied up with the supposed crisis of modernity. And I thought that was bs.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*the one that, lol

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I have my own definition of modernity then, invented by my Japanese Monsters teacher. *shrug* I actually don't use modernity in everyday language because I think it's such a false term, I just say like, industrial age if that's what I mean. I totally fail as a classically-trained academic, but that's what you get when you don't study the Core. I just use the crisis of modernity because it seems to be the available term to describe Germany and Japan pre-WW II, but I could always come up with a new term to describe what I'm talking about. I like that it has modernity in it because that modernity is a false construct points to the crisis of modernity being a false construct.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

(also of course i liked the bit about what's wrong with merely 'tolerating' the different viewpoints of the atheist and the religious man without talking about how we make meaning and what choice we have in it. but you probably could've guessed that.)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

sorta like...it was enjoyable as art, but not as Art. that is my reaction to most movies i just sorta like. but i don't think the goal of every movie is the same in that respect, or necessarily should be. like, there is a place for entertainment and fantasy, but too much escapism is probably unhealthy and unwise, not to mention unlasting.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

the idea of Art kind of creeps me out, not gonna lie.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

when i say "art," i mean like the original sense of the word--basically a skill. the idea that art needs to have a point of some sort is pretty modern. romantic, actually. that's all i really mean by Art. I don't know if I buy into the ideas of Wordsworth and the like who say that poetry should be about the truths that science cannot reach or whatever, but he is onto something. anyway, most people's points are kind of trivial, so i guess to me they are enjoyable just as art. if this movie were like that, i don't think you could have given it the review you did, so...why is Art creepy?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Prob'ly cuz it reminds me of objectivism.

So Art is what, the stuff that has a point?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

...how? (keep in mind, i know hardly anything about objectivism)

the stuff that isn't done for the pure pleasure of skill in movement, composition, sound, etc.--yeah, basically. Except it's probably a bit more specific than 'has a point', else you could say advertising is Art. It's more like the point isn't one of utility but of meaning, truth, insight, something more like that. Where the point is the interpretation itself, rather than what your interpretation will make you buy, which is more a use-value. Lol, now I'm going back to like medieval and classical thinking--art is not for money! art is for its own sake! I'm pretty sure Augustine said that any actor who got paid was not a true artist because he wasn't doing art for its own sake, or something.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I read something once about objectivism that said something about how art should only exist to lift man to a higher state of whatever it is the objectivists believe in. I don't really see the point in segregating between art and Art, I guess.

Uh-oh, Treason of the Intellectuals.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

this reminded me of the "Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do." part.

also occurred to me the other day that he didn't kill himself the way the people in his speech did, he didn't "shoot the terrible master."

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

yes, that's the part it reminded me of too.

nice song.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

blargh...this is why i hate "misunderstanding" humor. like, wtf is funny about that.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I actually didn't catch any words, I just liked the sound/beat. Can't be bothered to look it up, you know.

it's long. i have not checked these for accuracy.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

chorus: Things in life aren’t always quite what they seem,
there’s more than one given angle to any one given scene.
So bare that in mind next time you try to intervene
on any one given angle
to any one given scene.

My name’s Mark, I go to Uni and College,
don’t socialize that much,
I just revise and build knowledge.
At times I find that I become a virtual recluse
and let my belt of interruption hang decisively loose.
But I came here to learn, that’s the life that I choose
and if people think I’m boring then they can bring their abuse.
See, a lot of people think I’m boring and say that maybe I’m a weirdo and maybe I’m gay but that’s cool,
‘cause when I get a good job and good pay I’ll get a house for just my brother and me some day.
That’s the reason I’m here,
just to build for my future.
If it means better grades I’ll even sleep with my tutor.

chorus

My name’s Paul, I’ve been a guard for six months and the shop that I guard is better than most dumps and I like it here, my boss is a pro, he’s taught me tricks of the trade other guards wouldn’t know. He’s taught me in this game there’s some rules you gotta bend and not to forget these thieving pricks ain’t your friends and appearance is key there’s a message to send and above all it’s your fellow guards to defend. Today my boss was stabbed by some low-life psycho, He’s in hospital now so every night that’s where I go, he’s on the brink but he’s showing no fear though ‘cause if he dies there, he’ll be dieing a hero.

chorus

My name’s Keith, I ain’t so much a racist. But if one reached out their hand I'd decline their embrace. I work security in a shop, in charge of 5 other guards, I got all their respect ‘cause I run this shit hard. I nicked one kid today, didn’t show enough respect and attention. I grabbed him by his neck as my form of redemption. Didn’t do no harm, just made sure that it hurt, it ain’t going by the book but believe me it works. Then I sent him on his way, this little shit knows the score now. I saw a little bit of fear, he won’t darken my door now. That’s what I do, stop these kids from decline, do what their parents won’t do. Put down some boundaries and lines.

chorus

My name’s Billy. I’ve been beaten since I was three, Mum died when I was born and Dad takes it out on me. He ain’t a bad man, He just gets drunk and feels alone, I tend to go for walks and hope he’s asleep when I get home. Don’t like to talk about it though. As I said, it ain’t his fault, it only happens when he’s drunk as a last resort. Wanted to get him a gift, to show my support, but had no money and I stole and I guess I got caught. At times like that, I tend to switch of my mind, stare blankly into space and let what happens unwind. I seemed to anger this guard, he put his hands around my neck, he said it’s time for me to learn some manners and respect. It hurt. But I’ve had worse before, it made me realise life is just a series of wars. I went straight home that day and locked the bathroom door. Took a blade to both wrists, they won’t hurt me no more.

chorus

My name’s Mark and today I was told my brother is dead. I returned home from university, tears on his bed. On his pillow I found his suicide note and read what had happened that day and what had fucked up his head! The anger I felt there are no words to express, I filled with so much rage there is no way to digest. I grabbed a knife, I went to town, it was time to regress. Back to an eye for an eye, last breath for last breath. I went straight up to the counter, I said I’d like to speak to the guard who nicked my brother on Tuesday of this week. As the girl knocked on the door and disappeared out of sight, I put my hand in my pocket, gripped the knife tight. This was it, as she pointed me out to the guard, My hand began to shake I held the knife so hard. As he approached me, there was nothing to say. I stabbed that Fucker eight times, before they could take me away.

chorus

Re: it's long. i have not checked these for accuracy.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*bear
*Union College
*the future
*off my mind
others

Re: it's long. i have not checked these for accuracy.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That's supposed to be funny?

Re: it's long. i have not checked these for accuracy.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

no. i was talking about why i don't like misunderstandings in comedy.