...and thought it sucked!

I'M KIDDING.

I thought it was really, really good. Obviously I'm kinda biased, but I'm not sure in which direction: do I have a tendency to favour his films because I'm a fan... or am I hard on him because I'm a fan, and don't want to come across as fanboyish? Who can say? (Occasionally I get emails from peple who think I don't like Charlie. Go figure.) In any event, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine are my two fave Kaufman films (Eternal might have a slight lead), and Synecdoche has now joined their ranks -- it might just edge them out, too. I'll wait and see.

My major concern was that I'd find the film a monotonous, glum slog. Happily, I didn't think it dragged at all (though I know it's a complaint from some who didn't dig the film), and I thought the tone trod a nice line between seriously bleak and comedically bleak. I'm a big fan of dark humour; in Synecdoche's case, I thought the comedy was very subtle, but not too subtle to be appreciated. It's there if you want to see it.

More than any other Kaufman film, this is one that will hold up well through repeated viewings. There's a lot going on -- a stack of small details to be noticed and examined, if you're the kind of person who likes to wonder What It All Means. Sometimes I'm one of those people, sometimes I'm not. This time I am.

I know quite a few people had trouble understanding what the hell was going on. My approach was to basically go with the flow, and try not to impose meaning on isolated parts -- I looked at the forest instead of the trees. And then, the second time I watched it (yeah, I've seen it twice since Wednesday last week -- this is a good sign) I looked more at the trees. The little details and such. People have theories that Caden is dead throughout the film, or is in some kind of purgatory; that he's looking back on his life, and we're seeing his exagerrated mental image of it; or that he's alive, and we're seeing his reality through his subconscious. There're a lot of theories, so now when I see the film, I'm looking for info that might indicate whether Charlie had a particular interpretation in mind, or if even he's not sure exactly what's going on.

Anyway. Aaaanyway. It's by no means a movie for everybody -- this won't attract the exact same audience as Eternal Sunshine -- but I really, really enjoyed it.

And the girl who played Youngest Olive was cute. Pity she had such messed up parents...