Next stop, 'Synecdoche'

By Steven Zeitchik

We take it all back, Charlie.

"Synecdoche, NY," the alleged disaster with the unpronounceable title, is nothing of the sort. Well, the title is still a tongue-twister. But the film is not at all the surrealist muddle early detractors had described -- it's a work of profound ambition and artistry.

The best way to characterize the movie (without going into animated discussions about metafiction and ontological reality) is as a tragi-comic lifetime portrait of a nebbishy theater director who has the grandiose idea to re-create an entire city, and the many social interactions thereof, inside a giant warehouse. (The Cannes program describes the pic as a story about a man whose wife leaves him, which seems to us a little like saying "The Godfather" is about a man who kills people.)

Don't get us wrong -- the movie can be messy and doesn't hit all its spots. But it's funny, stylish, poignant and crammed with ideas. The last scene will break your heart. (Read Ray Bennett's review here.)

There had been talk that Kaufman had gone too far, that without a director to rein him in he had lost the sharp wit and sense of purpose that marked his writerly efforts. It isn't true.

There's irony here, and worlds just a little off-kilter, and grand metaphyiscal ambitions, and a pervasive sense of loss, and all the other elements you'd want. "Synecdoche" is not just a study of a man's life but a metaphor for all lives, at least creative ones, a testament to the need for but perils of ambition, a parable about the relationship between imagination and divinity (a Kaufman favorite)...we can go on. You get the point; it's all there.

Distributors should be all over this movie -- not because it's attractively commercial, but because with a small edit and some savvy marketing, it could become an oddball masterpiece to rival "Eternal Sunshine."

Sunshine, it should be noted, is not exactly the word that should be used for Kaufman, at least as he appeared at the Cannes press conference Friday. Perhaps not quite prepared for the attention that comes your way as a director (in a reversal, Spike Jonze was there, but as a producer sat to the side and didn't speak much), CK was vague and sometimes ornery, particularly on questions that tried to get him to open up about his films' meaning. ("I'm not sure I understand anything ... I'm not trying to send a message about anything.")

Catherine Keener had the line of the session when a reporter very reasonably asked Kaufman if, given all the melancholy in his work, he was feeling better.

"Are you feeling better?" she said, turning toward CK with a smile. "It was better then (on set) but I'm not sure about now."

The matter was brushed aside, and they all went back to discussing the film. Hoffman jumped in with his own interpretation: "I think it's about a lot of things ... I really dont want to put the movie into any kind of sentence or word."

He couldn't, and shouldn't. No one should. Like all Kaufman movies, you kind of just need to see it.