Breaking the Fourth Wall

Finished last night with a mindfuck of a movie -- Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York".

Kaufman has a well-deserved reputation as an intelligent, playful screenwriter. If you've seen "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", you'll have a strong sense of his style.

Synecdoche is his directorial debut (he also wrote the screenplay). It features an A-list cast (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh) and crew (Fred Elmes was the DOP; Jon Brion provided the music) to tell a story of a theatre director (Hoffman) who combines a MacArthur "genius" grant and a severe mid-life crisis into a simulcra of his life.

In the process of creating this play, the "fourth wall" becomes entirely porous. The scripted life starts to intrude and interact with the real one. Characters are doubled and tripled. Wordplay and visual games abound.

This may be a factor of seeing the film at the end of a long, full day, but it seemed full of detail but a little light on substance. Given the strength of the cast, it's not really an actor's film. There's lots of business that's fun to watch, but overall I left filling a bit unfulfilled.

That said, I'm curious enough about it to give it a second chance, once I've had a chance to get some sleep (:->).

Note: Here's a definition of synecdoche.

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