Synecdoche, New York

A: That was stupefying. Downright stupefying.
B: I know. Kaufman's movies always, always make me think. But this has got to be the worst! Damn that guy!
A: (laughs)
B: Initially, the line--if there was one, initially, that is--between reality and otherwise was imperceptible. Then it appeared, just enough for one to sense that there was one. And then it kinda opened up, very gradually, until it became a gaping mouth. You know, like this (gesturing with the left hand, in an attempt to illustrate the point). Unbelievable.
A: Cool. You've always been better at words.
B: Oh, yeah? So, we might say that I'm more...what's the word--articulate?
A: Yup. You're more articulate.
B: Which means you're deeper than I am.
A: Oh, yeah? How's that?
B: You know, because the more one talks, the more out there it is. And once it's out there, it stays the way it is. But because you keep it all in, you keep going deeper and deeper and it never really ends. You just keep finding stuff, you know?
A: (laughs) I never thought of it that way.
B: Oh, sure you have. But, hey, did this get shown in the theaters?
A: You mean, here? Hell, no. But in the US, yeah it did.
B: Wasn't a hit, was it?
A: Nope. A movie like that? No way.
B: But what did the critics say?
A: It wasn't as well-received as Kaufman's other films.
B: Hmm..
A: 'Cause it's not really much of a movie experience, you know. More of an art experience. It's too complex. Obtuse, at its worst. Kaufman must still have been on screenwriter mode when he directed this.
B: See, you're articulate, too.
A: (laughs)
B: The ending is just something else. Damn, that was a good one.
A: So, time for Roger Ebert?
B: In a while. So, hey, what about that Genius Grant?
A: Yeah, sure would be great to be given that. Would mean a lot of pressure, though. Did you know that David Foster Wallace had one?
B: Hmm. Probably why he killed himself.

Yesterday afternoon, I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's," where Audrey Hepburn is Givenchy-clad, heart-breakingly lovely and impossibly sad and naive Holly Golightly, Truman Capote's eccentric heroine struggling to come to terms with herself. Henry Mancini's music was wistfully (I think I'm going through an "adverb phase") beautiful. The ending deviates from the book, but we wouldn't have had it any other way in this romantic, feel-good movie.

I do remember shedding more than a few tears when I read the book, though.

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A few hours ago, I stared, bewildered, at the screen as the credits of Charlie Kaufman's and Spike Jonze's "Adaptation" rolled (or did they blink? I have to say I don't remember). I was, like, "what the hell was that?" Kaufman's movies, I have observed, have that effect on me: bewilderment comes first, then, an enlightenment of sorts, where I go "ah, so that was what it was." In this case, I mulled over the movie for a good long stretch of minutes, my mind turning, doing cartwheels, then settling.

In "Adaptation," Kaufman goes into meta-fiction mode, depicting the dilemma most writers (screenwriters, specifically) go through in their craft.

I was pretty settled into the movie and then, boom! I was jolted into puzzlement and wonder when, from a sad writer from The New Yorker, Susan Orlean suddenly becomes a drug-addicted, severely depressed woman with tendencies for murder. Then there's death all over the place, with John Laroche dying from a crocodile attack (how dreadfully cliche, but that was exactly the point).

To think that it was all orchids and sadness and a writer's anxieties over his balding head, his pot-belly and his desperation resulting from digging his heels at the kind of screenplay he wanted to write when the film began. The turning point came when Kaufman attended a seminar on screenplay writing, where he got yelled at for even suggesting that there wasn't enough drama in the world (or in the book he was trying to translate into film, for that matter).

Etc, etc.

Incidentally, I read a review where the writer criticized the film for going "haywire" after the first half. I think he didn't get the point Kaufman was trying to make. Isn't that sad?

Like the rest of the Kaufman movies I've seen, needless to say, "Adaptation" was brilliant (this adjective always comes to mind when I hear the name Charlie Kaufman). He is just sheer genius and talent. His movies make me think (understatement here).

And now I'm just plain exhausted.

Time to stop this nonsense, hit the mattress and curl up into a dreamless slumber.

Provided I stop thinking about Kaufman's madness, that is.

On Being John Malkovich

I put my hands down to writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze for creating this genius of a film. The premise is brilliant and demented; the treatment utterly surreal yet plausible--except for the ending, which turned me off. But, hey, that's just me.

The film is a reflection (albeit a crazy one) on, among other things, the idea of the self, churning out a number of philosophical and metaphysical questions.

First, what happens when one person enters the mind of another through a portal of some sort? In the film, an eccentric puppeteer named Craig Schwartz discovers a (literal) door by which to enter actor John Malkovich's brain, after which, occurrences branch out that ultimately lead to chaotic consequences (but what else could come out of it?).

Second, in this kind of "possession," whose is the mind that's working? And, if this entry were indeed possible, what effect will it have both to the intruder and the one being entered? Initially, the one able to enter Malkovich's mind can only stay there for 15 minutes, but through his talents as a puppeteer, Craig finds a way to stay for an indefinite period of time, possibly, even, forever, as his skills enable him to take control of Malkovich's brain the way he would control one of his dolls. Incidentally, giving Craig his profession was a stroke of sheer genius. The entire movie is held together by his "puppeteering," becoming the perfect foil and metaphor to build the story around. Once he was able to penetrate and take control of Malkovich's mind--and, consequently, to manipulate and pull the strings on Malkovich's life--he gets the chance to give the greatest performances of his life, a chance not accessible to him when he was just, well, himself.

Next, if you could enter your own mind, what will you see? When Malkovich went inside his own brain, he saw only himself. The world was full of John Malkovich--everything was John Malkovich. I had to wonder, then, was this a unique outcome, in the sense that, if everyone else entered their own minds, will they also see themselves and themselves alone, or something altogether different? What will it be like, to be your own voyeur?

The premise is extremely thought-provoking. I'm still thinking about the movie and reeling from its "newness," hours after I've seen it. Elements of the strange abound here. The plot is dizzying; the implications endless and exhausting to enumerate.

Let me ask one other question, though: If it were possible, at all, to go inside someone else's mind--or head, for that matter--would we want it?

In the early part of the film, Craig says to Elijah, the chimp, "consciousness is a terrible thing." To be in someone else's mind is to double the consciousness.

Would we want to replicate the ugliness he spoke of?