Synechdoche, New York (2008, USA)

It was perhaps both the best and worst timing to watch Synechdoche, New York the same weekend as Nightwatching. Two very opposing views of the creative process, I felt that the former ended up lacking. Why? I couldn’t help but get hung up on the females of Synechdoche (also, I think that Kaufman came up with that title mostly to screw with critics and copyeditors). They’re all so crazy. Sure, the main character (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is no prince, not by a longshot, but he’s surrounded by a variety of treacherous bitches, played (quite well, actually), by Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton (love her), Hope Davis, Dianne Wiest, Robin Weigart (Calamity Jane!), Emily Watson, and the crazy to end all crazies, Jennifer Jason Leigh. (Seriously, does anyone cast her in a film now to do anything but lose her shit?) In comparison to Nightwatching, Synechdoche comes up short in the muse department – its heroines may be different from one another, but they’re not nearly as complex or understandable as the quartet from Greenaway’s film. Was the only way to make Hoffman’s character at all likeable to place him in contrast to these bitch goddesses?

That being said, my other issue with Synechdoche was that it never really let me in. It wasn’t until the final sequence that I really felt able to get emotionally involved with the film. For a piece about the creative process, this is an issue – but the protagonist’s aforementioned unlikability (no criticism of Hoffman’s excellent-as-usual performance intended), combined with Kaufman’s tendency to keep the audience at arm’s reach, made me feel as if the film was more of a cerebral exercise than a fully immersive experience. It would most definitely be expanded by repeat viewings, but I left it not really inclined towards a second watch.