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]

...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]

Um, that sounds more like propaganda. "Art should exist to make you believe what this group of people believes?" Yeah, no. The point is only that art need not have any message whatsoever. It's woodcarvings and pottery and decorative patterns. I really don' t think that's all Art is. And when i say the value is in the interpretation, I mean that Art makes you think, not tell you what to think. All that tends to do is cater to an audience. And this is how a lot of people condemn aesthetics as a value judgment based on taste, which pretty much all other aspects of art are, except the admiration of skill in and of itself. And if that's all most people want to make of art, well, so much the worse for them. I'm not saying all art should be Art or anything of the sort. I also don't mean that it should lay out an argument like an academic work. That's not art's medium. That's not how it draws things together. And that's certainly not the only sort of thing capable of interpretation, profundity, making people think. It's often one of the less profound, really...

No idea what you're talking about.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

*tells

There's also the point that distinctions in artistic style are totally bound to time and place, are distinctions of taste and thus related to class and stereotypes and all the rest, and this is the other aspect of rejecting aesthetic judgments. I suppose. I do think there's an argument to be made that while this is all very true, for one, the matter is more complex, and for two, there are certain principles upon which art works that, while surely manipulated in different ways by different people, perhaps past the point of appreciation by others from totally foreign backgrounds, are in essence in operation universally. That's right. I said something was universal. Feel free to kill me now.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I have no idea if there are certain principles upon which art works that are in essence in operation universally. Like what, you know? Symmetry? I tend to put much more stock in the distinctions in artistic style that are bound to time and place.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, a lot of the meaning of art is bound up with time and place. I'm really talking about semiotic principles. Maybe. But no, not just symmetry. A variety of things to do with likeness and proportion and other relations. But they don't really matter in and of themselves, until they're part of a tradition or have some historical context or whatever. But like, harmonics are universal. Tuning systems are not. That sort of thing.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Uh... sure.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

lol. some people care about these things. just like some people care about sonorants and aspiration, and how these features translate into moras. i think that sentence made sense. maybe.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

(i'm having to deal with this sort of shit lately talking about things like rhythm, which are pretty...basic. with basic sorts of functions, too, like continuation, expectation, tension, etc. but yet the specific patterns vary from dialect to dialect.)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Really, I'm taking the art/Art distinction from the section of Hum devoted to the Romantics and their rebellion against the falseness of Enlightenment reason and all that. Of course, I personally think that the best science and the best art shares the same sort of logic that's exemplified in things like metaphors, diagrams, "the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement". Other than that, they differ in many ways.

But perhaps it's better if I say that I enjoy many movies stylistically, whether that's considered in terms of visuals, music, plot progression, character development, or what-have-you. But I rarely enjoy a movie in terms of its content apart from that. I rarely come away changed by it.

I think in the end, though, these are related notions, whether you frame it in terms of "Truth" like Wordsworth does or not.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and I content-wise enjoy lots of movies, but I also don't believe in an ultimate truth (as we know), so maybe that's why. Although I would rather say that I find Truth in many movies.

To be honest, though, I don't like to separate content from style and I don't see how it's really possible. I think the whole thing is experiential, and the content would change with a different style. Of course, there are movies where you think, yeah, that could have been much better with a different director, or, I think that was just empty pretty fluff... but I'm not sure even those are judgments that I really agree with, because to me they're so tied up together, part of each other. Which is perhaps part of why I can't separate art from Art. Then again I've decided that I'm susceptible to Stendhal Syndrome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stendhal_syndrome), so what can I say.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, I believe that there is a reality, and it operates according to certain laws. Even social reality. So there is truth. I don't distinguish between truth and Truth, though. Yeah, content-wise, most movies are kinda lame, imo. Relationships and humor and all these trivial, fleeting things. This may be the real disagreement, haha.

I don't really disagree that content changes with style, and style has content, but there is some distinction between the 'form', so to speak, and what it 'means'. The style itself means things, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that it works with form. Incidentally, though, iconic signs are the hardest to split up this way, because the form actually resembles the 'meaning', so to speak. So I don't mean that the style itself has no 'content', only that when it's not used to convey anything insightful, i forget it. When it's formulaic, generic, conventional...these sorts of things.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, there are a lot of movies in the world, and I would probably agree that most of them are kinda lame content-wise, although not because they're fleeting and trivial, but because I don't care about the content.

I think maybe I just find insight in either a lot more things than you do, or a looooot fewer (as in, in none). I mean, I find insight in Jurassic Park. You know? Is that Art? Who knows. I even find insight in movies I can't stand to experience and fall asleep during, in the three minutes that I'm awake.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess I think a lot of human existence is fleeting and trivial.

Hm. Actually, Jurassic Park left some sort of impression on me, though that may be because I was so young when I saw it. I think a lot of things are really awesome at the time, then forget them a year later and think back and wonder how I could've been such an idiot. But the movies that leave a lasting impression on me are quite rare. I'm learning to distinguish them at the time, to recognize what it is about the movie or whatever that resonated with me, but it's a slow process. The immediate reactions you seem to have of "this is amazing" or "this sucks" are kind of foreign to me. I'm usually somewhere inbetween, unless it really was just that amazing or really, really awful. And the sort of buzz in the head I get after movies that resonate with me, leaves me sort of inspired or like, stuck on a feeling of the movie...that happens with movies and plays I think are stupid, too, but it's also something very impermanent. Unless it's something very new to me, something that actually left a change in how I see the world, I'll forget it.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

also, I think...I defeat my own awe with a moment's reflection. Partly because the things I have that reaction to are often so very very stupid. and somehow i managed to separate being involved with the characters from some sort of insightful reaction. ummmm...thoughts dead now.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Wow, really? But it's all we have.

There's some movies that definitely don't "last" for me too - a lot of prestige pics - and some movies last because they make me so angry that I can't forget them (Pan's Labyrinth). Some movies are definitely helped out by the music, like 28 Days Later. But anyway, the whole thing about recognizing what it is about the movie that resonated - or, rather, why do I like this or why do I not like this - is something my film professor in Melbourne introduced me to, and it made me appreciate movies even more.

I guess I wouldn't say that I necessarily live with and by all the movies I like and think are good - although the movies on my "top ten list", like Apocalypse Now and Picnic on Hanging Rock, did change my life - but that doesn't make me any less excited and loving of movies, you know what I mean? The fact that I may forget it later doesn't really matter to me. I mean, I try to make that my approach to life in general.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, it is propaganda, but the objectivists don't see it that way, they just think that art should propel man towards the truth (but that truth is their truth, so obviously it is propaganda). I just don't get classifying some things as worthy of being called Art and other things as just an exercise in skill. Are you saying that what is Art is subjective, or not?

Treason of the Intellectuals - talked about it a while back, theory that intellectuals should never get involved with politics. When you were talking about artists and money it reminded me of that.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

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.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

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

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

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.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

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.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I also like what Dewey said about aesthetics...like that all art is experience, only that the focus is on a different aspect of that experience. "Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just rest upon the earth. They are the earth in one of its manifest operations."