Quote:
Originally Posted by octagon
I absolutely loved it (based also on one viewing only). Often when films are difficult to decipher there's something of a manipulative feel to the supposed depth and complexity. Almost like they're trying a little too hard and being a little too cute.
I never got that impression here. I never felt they were doing anything just for the sake of being clever. I didn't understand much of it but I never felt cheated or toyed with.
So far Charlie Kaufman scripts (Being John Malkovich, S, NY and Adaptation in that viewing order) have impressed the hell out of me. I'm almost a little reluctant to watch Eternal Sunshine for fear of breaking the streak.
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One problem with my first viewing is that I watched it on a 15" laptop and was frustrated by my inability to keep track of the meta elements visually. When it was over, I had all these bits in my head that I loved for their oddly playful melancholy but it was more fragmentary than it would have been had I seen it properly. At least that's what I suspected, and when I watched again a few weeks later when I had access to my 42" TV most of my reservations ebbed. I say most because I still felt there was an odd pacing that I attributed it to it being a directorial debut by a writer. That may or may not be fair. On that second viewing the pieces did gel and while the film still felt fragmented, this time it was to a natural degree based on the structure.
It's time I pop it in again. My life has changed a lot in the intervening years and the strongest impression the film made on me is that it is one of those films that needs revisiting not just because it deserves it, but because the nature of the story is one which is likely to reveal itself differently depending on one's own passage through life. That is a rare thing I tend to cherish.
As to Eternal Sunshine, I think it is an ingenious movie. It isn't at the same level, perhaps, but that may have more to do with Gondry perhaps amping up the "cute" factor some (Could be Carrey, too; I'm not a huge fan). Nevertheless, I'd say see it with your mind on it as a lesser Kaufman film and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And it has held up to multiple viewings for me, revealing new character, thematic and even production nuances each time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hypnosifl
To me it was a great movie but it had a pretty nightmarish quality, it seemed like it was externalizing all these alienating aspects of the Hoffman character's experience--his sense of life passing by too quickly, of feeling creatively blocked on a forever unfinished artistic project, and especially a sense that the character is so much in his own head that it's claustrophobic, that the boundary between other people and his mental images of them is constantly confused, and this makes it hard to connect with anyone. It felt to me a bit like one of those psychological horror stories that puts you in the perspective of someone who may be going crazy and losing track of the boundary between reality and fantasy, like Jacob's Ladder or The Innocents. Later I learned that the movie did actually grow out of Kaufman's inspiration to do his own kind of horror movie:
So while it obviously isn't "horror" in any conventional sense, I think this is one lens you can view the movie through. Like you said, it didn't seem like the complicated self-referential structure was just to show off his cleverness, it felt very personal to me. |
I love this reading of the film! It's been so long I wish I could have been so specific. I think calling out the nightmarish quality is spot-on. Much like Adaptation., Synecdoche also externalities neuroses and narcissism, but without buffeting it with all the comedic elements. In a sense (boy, this is gonna be a shite analogy), if Adaptation. were Kaufman's Annie Hall then Synecdoche might be his Husbands & Wives in that it zooms in painfully close on something the former flirted with and instead of playing with the darker elements (à la Allen's signature films between: Hannah & Her Sisters and Crimes & Misdemeanors) it attacks them head-on.
I'm going to watch Synecdoche tomorrow and afterwards check out that Guardian link. If I can handle the emotional heft.
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