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

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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.

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Under the definition given, I think, art encompasses Art. It's the broader term. I don't even think everyone values Art as an ideal or strives to reach it. In that sense--that of the artistic ideal--it's totally relative. A lot of people never thought art ought to serve those ends. If you actually think Art is striving or should strive at Truth, I suppose Art would be subjective, but Truth would be objective and universal.

Yeah, politics totally ruined Chomsky and Lakoff, haha. Not that intellectuals should never get involved with politics, but if you, you know, care about what's actually true, you can't pursue that and simultaneously pursue what would be most convenient for a political goal.

Ironically, the main character in the movie is totally obsessed with making his play strive for Truth. It's pretty hilarious, at least to me.

so...what is the value of art to you?

I don't even understand what this question means.

For me the value is in the experience, which leads inevitably (to me) to an insight of some form or another. But I enjoy the experience more, and it's for the experience that I partake in art.

and it is for the experience of insight that i partake in the intellectual endeavors i do. that's what makes them exciting, even when they're wrong. but if there were no truth, there would be nothing to strive for, so it would be utterly pointless. so close and yet so far?

and yeah, i enjoy experiencing art, but i don't think it leaves the same sort of lasting impression on me? except maybe music. funnily enough, considering.

well, go for it.

art to me means a hell of a lot more than intellectual endeavors. I recognize the value of intellectual endeavors and I'm sure they were good for my mental development, but I just don't like it and respond to it and am moved by it the way I am by art (art of all kinds).

i'm still convinced this is because you do not understand the art of intellectual endeavors, haha. not that you need to pursue it, but it IS there, and it's the only goddamn exciting thing they have going for them. i am going to make a stupid quote post.

I'm sure it is there, and maybe I don't understand it, but maybe I do and I just don't care for it.

yeah, i suppose that's more likely.

sometimes I think you suffer from a grave inability or unwillingness to understand that we are not motivated by the same things and thus do not find the same things exciting.

I guess I just find this ("i'm still convinced this is because you do not understand the art of intellectual endeavors, haha.") sort of thing annoying, sarcastic and joking or not.

not exactly... I just think we aren't as different as you seem to like to imagine us sometimes, or that that difference is more superficial, or that casting it in terms of INTP/INTJ or whatever doesn't describe it right...etc. I mean, we clearly have very different reactions to things, but why is a different question. And I think there is a core of similarity in the insights we have, and excitement about various things, but it's all taken differently by each of us.

Sorry it was annoying. I didn't mean that like, if you understood them, you would suddenly be inspired to follow the intellectual path. More like you seemed to not get what I saw in them...not in the sense of not sharing my feeling, but that I doubted you saw what I meant at all. Maybe I was wrong, though.

Well, we're not like WHOA different but we're still pretty different in the endeavors we take, even if we have similar principles or end-goals. I don't do intellectual endeavors and that's just how I am. That probably means I don't see what you see in them, but you also don't see what I do in other things, you know. That doesn't necessarily mean anything about "understanding" the appeal, in a sympathetic rather than empathetic way, of paths not taken. It just means we're looking at it through different sets of eyes.

but intellectual endeavors can make people see what you see in other things! they are all-powerful! kind of like telepathy. sorry, i just can't be serious about this anymore, because i want to shoot myself for being serious about it. that and i'm kind of delirious. But i really do think that quite a lot of things can be explained, if you find the right way of explaining them. like, of course we're looking at it through different sets of eyes, but i want to understand the eyes.

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intertribal.livejournal.com - 2009-01-11 20:36 (UTC) - Expand

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royinpink.livejournal.com - 2009-01-11 20:45 (UTC) - Expand

as to whether you can tell if Art is actually reaching Truth and thereby distinguish what is truly Art...yeah, I dunno. This is why art is not science. i guess you've just got your own experience to compare it to. does it ring true? do you feel enlightened? i suppose you could attempt to prove it, but then it's not an artistic endeavor anymore. i'm not even sure exactly how Wordsworth conceived of Truth. Or what he meant by things like, "Poetry is the image of Man and Nature." He had a certain theory built up around these things, but certainly his own ideal was, well, Romantic.

And anyway, this gets even sillier when I want to apply it to Rachmaninoff or something. The point for me, I guess, is that I want certain forms of art to give me some sort of insight, not just an experience. How good of an insight it is will 'stand the test of time' or whatever, I don't know. But that's probably what I'll remember it by 10 years later.

Fair enough, and for me insight is tied up with experience.

That said, I don't really search or strive for enlightenment per se, so maybe this just doesn't work for me.

I don't understand what you mean by that. Of course insight is part of experience. But some experiences don't offer insight. I don't get it.

I disagree that some experiences don't offer insight. I think in terms of art they are all one and the same, always and forever, a world without end. Ohm.

Don't get it. This may be because I think false insight is worthless, I dunno.

I don't think there is such a thing as false insight. But I think I am using a much wider definition of insight than you.

i'm so lost.

i mean, like a feeling of potential connection. A not-yet question. Those are what is insightful and exciting, but they just kinda die without some way of realizing them.

Well, I feel like even things that I think are stupid make me think, if nothing else about what the producers think appeal to the audience and why, and that's what I mean by insight.

But I'm also not taking this conversation seriously anymore, so.

Well, yeah, me too. But I mean like a "flash of insight" or "the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement" or something like that.

sorry?

Well, those "flashes of insight" are nice, yeah, and those are the movies that change my life, but I guess I don't necessarily insist on it. Like you said, there's lots of movies that are just enjoyed, that don't change your life or the way you think or anything, but to me that doesn't make them any less worthwhile, because I still get so much joy out of watching them. I don't turn off a movie and be like, "damn it that didn't change my world view." Whereas I get the impression that you don't see much point in things that aren't Art.

Sorry, I just... I don't know. This is one of those conversations where I'm just doing devil's advocate half the time.

What do you mean by insight? I might be using it more narrowly (and not in the sense of 'true', either).

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