Wrapped Up In Itself

That wacky writer Charlie Kaufman, the man behind Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is at it again. I recently saw his newest film, "Synecdoche, New York." The movie stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a director with an unraveling family life who receives a grant to embark on a great new piece of theater -- a warehouse in New York City in which actors play everyone in New York City in a giant recreation of the city itself.

Yes, it's another strange Charlie Kaufman premise, but this movie is distinct in that it also marks his first directorial effort. But I found it difficult to say how successful it was, because it also turned out to be his weakest writing effort to date. For all the strangeness of the other movies I mentioned (and Adaptation as well), each earlier script from Kaufman had fairly coherent stories to tell and themes to explore. Synecdoche dabbles in a lot of what seems to me like weirdness for its own sake.

The opening scene plays out like a single morning at family breakfast, but various audio and visual clues casually dropped in the scene actually tell us that several months pass in the span of a single breakfast. A secondary character purchases a house that is literally on fire, despite the concerns she expresses to her realtor about the fire. (She then goes on to live in the house for years... Spoiler Alert! ... before ultimately dying of smoke inhalation.)

The movie had strangeness in spades, but very little sentiment. The cast is phenomenal, and fully engages in a blatantly false set of circumstances, but they only occasionally make things interesting. The movie is simultaneously very creative, and very boring. I'd suggest skipping this C- effort.