This movie is both interesting and flawed, which plenty of other reviewers have addressed skillfully enough for me not to get into it. However, after watching this, along with Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine (all great), then some of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and some of Anomalisa, (not so great), it's really struck me how all of these movies star kinda the same guy. He's neurotic, insecure, anxious, an over-thinker, an obvious stand-in for Kaufman, and utterly beguiled by the inexplicably beautiful, self-possessed, intelligent women who move through his orbit and ultimately reject him. It's Woody Allen one step removed. FFS, one of these movies involves the main character having an IMAGINARY girlfriend who still rejects him.
It's particularly grating here and in Adaptation, but at least that movie had enough other stuff going for it I could be distracted from it. Watching Synecdoche, I began to feel frustration and eventually disgust with this pathetic, shlubby Mary Sue groveling around, cleaning his ex wife's bathroom, averting his gaze from flirtation, while crying desperately after relationships he destroys with his own preoccupations and inattention. The disgust grew the more blubbering a pathetic Caden became (mad props to Hoffman, his acting is marvelous). I began to feel how I imagine these women started to feel about him, and when they obviously became fed up with him, it only made him retreat into his shame more. I began to wonder if there was an element of masochism in Kaufman's writing of how these (again, inexplicably beautiful, punching-above-your-weight) women tire of his neuroses and decide there's more to life, leaving him helpless and wounded and in awe of how much better they are than him. Ok, so now I'm being dragged into this masturbatory, masochistic, 2 hour long expressive artwork in which the women are just devices to show us something about the existential dread of a guy who never feels worthy.
Sigh.
It's particularly grating here and in Adaptation, but at least that movie had enough other stuff going for it I could be distracted from it. Watching Synecdoche, I began to feel frustration and eventually disgust with this pathetic, shlubby Mary Sue groveling around, cleaning his ex wife's bathroom, averting his gaze from flirtation, while crying desperately after relationships he destroys with his own preoccupations and inattention. The disgust grew the more blubbering a pathetic Caden became (mad props to Hoffman, his acting is marvelous). I began to feel how I imagine these women started to feel about him, and when they obviously became fed up with him, it only made him retreat into his shame more. I began to wonder if there was an element of masochism in Kaufman's writing of how these (again, inexplicably beautiful, punching-above-your-weight) women tire of his neuroses and decide there's more to life, leaving him helpless and wounded and in awe of how much better they are than him. Ok, so now I'm being dragged into this masturbatory, masochistic, 2 hour long expressive artwork in which the women are just devices to show us something about the existential dread of a guy who never feels worthy.
Sigh.