I just got a copy of 2666 from the library, and should be starting in on it, but I wanted to at least throw a few words down about Charlie Kaufman’s latest.
First off, the cast. Philip Seymour Hoffman has to have the best homerun average in the game right now. Though I wish he’d get roles a little closer to Talented Mr. Ripley than the usual depressed shlub, this shlub is every bit as great as this guy or the guy from Happiness. Hoffman’s the center, but there’s a huge number of first-rate female performances here: Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis – and then showing up late and re-igniting the whole movie again – Dianne Wiest and Emily Watson. This can be a frustrating movie I guess. Time is screwy, sores ooze, injuries mental, physical, psychological and self-inflicted are heaped on to a man who is so predestined for failure that his award of a MacArthur Genius Grant is almost summarily ignored by everyone.
But I’ll let Manohla and Roger say a little:
NY Times’ first line:
To say that Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York†is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.
I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to. It will open to confused audiences and live indefinitely.
Having only seen it once, I can’t claim to get it all (I’ve actually learned quite a bit I missed by reading some of the better reviews after seeing it), but I can at least tell you some of the reasons I loved it.
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