Synecdoche, NY

Ass-Headed Bottom: In almost every way, this film (we'll call this one a film) is better than the best movie of the last ten years: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (we'll call that one a movie). Take the film's lead actor--Philip Seymour Hoffman--and compare him to the lead of the earlier movie--Jim Carrey--and it's not even a fair fight; it's a Germany invading Luxembourg kind of situation. And take the set design: the fanciest Eternal Sunshine got was Montauk, and as far as I could tell that really was a Barnes & Noble; any one of the twenty-odd apartment sets in Synecdoche trumps all of Eternal Sunshine for budget. And the sets are supplemented, and wisely too, with CGI; sure, Montauk and Barnes & Noble got deconstructed in Eternal Sunshine, but now we are treated to a strange fascistic dirigible floating over a New York seen both before and after World War III.

But the new film impresses beyond the technical and professional elements; the psychology behind Eternal Sunshine was so unsophisticated that it might well be termed innate, whereas Synecdoche requires a degree to follow, and doesn't just recycle Freud (which would be lame) but adapts him to the 21st century (which is probably badass). The humor in Synecdoche is more consistent, too: I laughed about once every three minutes from the opening fade-in to the credits, while I dimly remember being vaguely annoyed by Jim Carrey acting like a baby in the sink. Or how about my personal favorite element of filmmaking: literary allusion (because all great filmmakers know that their medium is not quite enough)? Well, the title Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is itself a line from Pope, and in case that's not clear enough, Kirsten Dunst (of Bring it on fame) quotes it for us, and provides the surrounding lines, for those of us too lazy to look it up. Synecdoche employs a lapidary allusive technique worthy of an infinitely subtler T.S. Eliot. Even the fucking soundtrack is better in this movie than in the last, and at times Kaufman gets down to poetry of his own, never mind Pope (who does seem an odd, pre-Romantic choice for this millennium; after all, "Eternal sunshine" is from a verse epistle from Eloise to Abelard). And let me tell you, in case you're an English professor and sometime poet yourself, determined to wield your considerable command of the rhetorical trope of synecdoche to help you understand of this film: well, you're bullshitting yourself; your command of synecdoche does not amount to command of Kaufman (you're like a king, mistaking his crown and throne for sovereignty). Finally, this is a brutally honest movie, and in retrospect Eternal Sunshine not only can but should seem like one long pulled punch. There really is no way around the realization that Synecdoche, NY is a better film than anything else Kaufman has done, and probably the best English-language film in whatever doubles for post-postmodern memory.

It is also not worth sitting through. Synecdoche presents us with the mind at war against itself, and I guess that's synecdochal for the modern condition--to be sure, Kaufman earns his WWIII. Whatever. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind broke my heart and then reassembled it, which is still, after all of this thinking, the best single thing a work of art can do.

Slothrop: "It is also not worth sitting through." Clever, ye Ass-Head, but wrong. Slothy registers the point: Love and ruminations thereupon are more pleasant than thoughts about the imminent coming of decay and death. But to say that the one film broke your heart and reassembled it while the other confused and broke it does not lead to the conclusion that the one film is exponentially better than the other. Slothy, too, enjoyed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind more (much more), but I reckon that's because death is not meant to be enjoyed, exactly. The best we can do, after all the theater, is represent to our own warring, incredulous mind what it will be like, and rarely will the task be fun nor comprehensible. Yes, intellect for its own sake can leave a cold zephyr in one's heart, but Synechdoche, Ny was as sad as it was smart. And it bears a second viewing, at least, to figure out what the fuck is going on so that the sadness and futility of the project will be that much more understandable, literally and metaphorically.

Koko: You're both dopes. Not only is Synechdoche, NY smarter and more ambitious than Eternal Out of Context Pope Quote in the Sunshine (yes, I also liked it) but it hurts the head with such dizzy rapture as Wordsworth felt on revisiting the banks of the Wye on a tour, July 13, 1798. New England Trope beat me into submission and left my mind blank, all the while so reeling from giddiness and what-the-hell hawhawing that I felt both speedy and faint, overwhelmed by possibilities and delighted to be buried under them. How is Spotless 2 any less enjoyable? Scary and confusing experiences can also make us smile.