Julianna Yau’s blog

I’m already waiting for Synecdoche, New York to be released on DVD, because I suspect it will take another two or three viewings for me to get the full impact.

My summary review after the second viewing is that Charlie Kaufman is absolutely brilliant.

I was right in my suspicion that there was significance to the clocks/time in the movie. The first ten or twenty minutes of the movie was an absolute delight to decipher, and I was relieved that Kaufman kept the same cinematic grammar consistent throughout the movie. The film demands your complete attention, and Kaufman’s use of props is comparable only to the Coen brothers‘ attention to detail.

As much as I’m glad I saw the movie again, I’m also glad I saw it two weeks ago for the first time. That experience was, and probably shall always be, unrivalled to any other I’ve had. The audience I “had” today was mediocre, at best. Two people crunching popcorn on either side of the theatre, three guys infront of me who only got the most obvious of the girlfriend jokes which aren’t even Kafumanesque, and about four other people who barely reacted audibly to the movie.

Oh, and about 10 minutes of the movie was interrupted by someone triggering the fire alarm in the building, the manager coming on the loudspeaker to announce that everything was okay, the alarms being triggered while they were being reset, a pre-recorded announcement informing us that we had to leave, and the manager coming back onto the loudspeaker to announce that everything was still okay.

The 20-minute pre-show from the first viewing seems to be unique to Cineplex Odeon. I saw the movie at AMC theatres today, and merely two or three previews were shown before the movie. The print, however, was of a lower quality than the one Cineplex Odeon had.

I did manage to get the name of the artist who painted the works of Adele Lack–Alex Kanevsky. A search with both their names resulted in many hits, but finding the connection without both names was fruitless (for me, anyway).

At some point, I’d love to have my own little retrospective “film festival”, with all of the Coen brothers’ films, followed by Kaufman’s.

I saw Syndecoche, New York today, and I don’t even know where to start with the review. To avoid this being a mess of randomness, I’ll attempt to write this chronologically.

Firstly, it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the cinema. Before seeing The Dark Knight and the Cinematheque Waterloo screenings in the past few months, I had been boycotting the movie-going experience for over four years—a boycott I only broke to see the X-Men and Pirates of the Caribbean movies. After sitting through movies at The Princess Cinema in Waterloo and the Kingston Canadian Film Festival where the movie-goers insisted on discussing the movie while watching the movie, and seeing more mainstream movies like Mystic River, Master and Commander and Tears of the Sun (all of which were horrible, by the way) where people insisted on answering cell phones and slurping their drinks, I badly needed a break from seeing movies with the public.

So, the 20 minute “pre-show” of commercials was a tiresome surprise. With the amount of money they must be making from the sale of ads, I’m upset that ticket prices are still as high as they are. I did, however, get to enjoy a hearty laugh at Stella Artois‘ attempt at making their “beer” seem like something worth drinking.

The movie was absolutely amazing. I do wonder whether people who aren’t familiar with Kaufman’s work would get the full effect of it. His world is unique, but entirely consistent, and Synecdoche, New York was an extremely fine presentation of it. I’m both relived that his direction lived up to my expectations (hopes?) and that he has finally been able to direct one of his own screenplays so I can see exactly what he had intended.

Synecdoche, New York had the fuller version of the world we started to see in Being John Malkovich but, more surprisingly, seems to be a refined version of the themes in Michel Gondry‘s video of Bjork‘s Bachellorette. The absurd humour in the movie was in keeping with what Kaufman did in Adaptation, and the actors did a fantastic job with maintaining the understated delivery required for it to be “Kaufmanesque”.

What we saw on the tv, books and magazines of the main character were obviously created by Kaufman, much like what he did in Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. And what has been driving me mad is I forgot the name of the artist who painted the work by the character Adele Lack. The artist had been properly credited at the end of the movie, but Kafuman has once again been able to fabricate a character into real life, and the internet has once again failed me for finding what I need.

The casting was perfect. Philip Seymour Hoffman continues to amaze me, and I’m glad Catherine Keener was able to do another Kaufman movie. (IMDB doesn’t give a unique link for joint venture searches, so you’ll have to do it yourself if you’re that curious.)

I will be trying to see the movie again before it disapears from the cinema. Although it was worth the four-year wait, I missed the significance of the clocks/time in the movie (please, don’t tell me what it is—I want to find it for myself) and want to capture the artist’s name. The thought of waiting at least another year for the DVD release is maddening. And although the circumstances are entirely different, a part of me is terrified I’ll relive what happened when I missed the Cremaster Cycle when it was at the Guggenheim.