"Synecdoche New York" was Charlie Hoffman's directorial debut, and expectations for the film were high thanks to Hoffman's previous writing of several influential screenplays -- so high that some later After the film critics found that the film was actually quite bad, they all agreed that it was a kind of bad bad, not a mediocre bad.
The synopsis of the story is this: A 30-year-old man sat on the bedside crying and said: I am so lonely, I am going to die. A 50-year-old man sat on the bed and cried and said: I am so lonely, I am dying. A 70-year-old man sat on the head of the bed and cried and said: I am so lonely, I am going to die. Then, he finally died.
Well, the true plot of it goes like this: New York-based theater director Caden tries to direct a grand play that replicates reality, and in the decades since making the play, his first wife, a painting that can only be seen with a magnifying glass The artist who arrived at Xiaohua kicked him and ran away. Although he kept reading about her, saw her works, and even sneaked into her apartment, he could never find this person again. His lover, a woman who lived in a house that was permanently on fire, also kicked him and ran away, although he came back later. His second wife, an actress who admired his words and deeds infinitely, kicked him and ran away because he couldn't bear his obsession with his ex-wife and daughter. Caden lives this desperate life of constant abandonment while bemoaning it through his plays. In the end, when the drama was so complicated that it got out of control, he decided to give up his directorship and instead played a female cleaner in the play and let this female cleaner be the director. Under the direction of the female cleaner, the play ended, and he himself died in the arms of the female cleaner's dream mother.
You might say, it's all a mess of stories. Yes, I thought so too. For the detective or educated audience, he may be able to decipher life from codes such as "House on Fire", "Infinitely Small Painting", "withered petals on tattoos", "colored shit" and so on. Hoffmann's "Master" talent is astounding. If he can still think of Kafka Ulysses Lakant, his detective and pedagogical addictions are at a higher level, but I, really, didn't see anything. .
Except for a pot of burnt porridge.
If there is one theme for this movie, I guess it is how people live in the shadow of death. From the beginning to the end, the film has been dying: Caden's father, mother, daughter, drama actor, lover, ex-wife, corpses all over the street, and finally himself. Caden's favorite newspaper section is also the obituary section. The "eternal artistic theme" of the shadow of death, of course, is understandable, but Hoffman's performance of this theme can be described as procrastination, sticky, and trite, only to see the hero roll from one woman's arms to another. , cried for decades and finally died. The sad thing is not despair, but despair in the same posture and expression for decades. Some people face the wanted of death, they will run away with agility, like the mouse in "Cat and the Mouse", and perform a wonderful life until they are caught, but Caden, in the face of death, is like a deer irradiated by the strong light of a car. Unable to move, he was completely frozen in his own panic.
Of course, the porridge is gradually burnt. At the beginning, the movie was relatively normal. It seemed to be a middle-aged family crisis movie, which was quite absurd in the style of Woody Allen. Later, after the ex-wife left, Caden's sense of time and space began to get confused and the porridge was too thick. Later, when Caden finds Sammy, who plays him, living a parallel life with him, the plot starts to get completely scorched. By the time Caden and the female cleaner switch roles, it's clear that Hoffman is starting to give up on himself. Like a painter, he went from Realism to Impressionism, then from Impressionism to Surrealism, and finally turned into Splashing Ink School because of his desperate creation. After the ink dries, he asks the cleaning lady to say to Caden: Die.
Caden reminds me of George from the sitcom Seinfeld. Once, George suddenly found out that he was participating in a volunteer project to help the elderly. After learning that the old man is 86 years old, he has been puzzled how a person can be so happy at such an old age. He kept asking the old man: Are you afraid? Do you know how many years you will live? You are so close to death, how can you not be afraid? how can that be possible? You must be in pain, right? Finally, the old man couldn't bear it anymore and said: Get out!
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