Freak Engine

I originally rented Synecdoche New York (SNY)  because Charlie Kaufman wrote and directed it and I’ve loved his work in the past.  It certainly wasn’t because I’d seen a trailer or any other advertising for the film.  I don’t even know how I found out about it in the first place.  It baffles me that studios, in this case Sony, will put money into a project and then leave it to die on the vine.  This one didn’t even get a decent theatrical run, but that’s beside the point.  The point is that SNY is one of the most brilliant films I’ve ever seen.  I watched it twice in a row the first time I rented it and I keep going back for more now that it’s available as a Netflix stream.

The story defies description in that way that most of Kaufman’s work does.  You remember Charlie Kaufman, right?  He’s the writer who Hollywood has embraced as their “quirky” cousin who’s allowed to sit at the big table as long as he doesn’t flick any peas at other family members.  The awesome thing is that pea flicking is almost all he does.  He wrote Adaptation, that indictment of Hollywood wherein Nic Cage plays a fictional version of Charlie Kaufman and the actual screenplay credit is shared by the real Charlie and his fake twin brother.  He also wrote Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Michel Gondry film that proved to me that the French director could do more than direct super cool Björk music vids.  There’s also Human Nature and Being John Malkovich on the list but the subject today is his directorial debut, SNY.

The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of Caden Cotard, a successful theatre director with a troubled personal life.  His problems drive him to seek answers through the only medium he understands, the theatre.  That hardly does this absurdist creation justice but it’ll have to do as I’m not fond of describing plots and even if I were I wouldn’t know where to begin here.  The film is about everyone’s life.  Singular.  Life.  Our life.

The film is honest despite being steeped in layers of fakeness.  It represents our world within the concentric layers of it’s plot and players.  Stephen King once wrote that a good writer reveals the truth through lies.  Charlie Kaufman is a very good writer and his lies are some of the best going.  The film is all the things I want a good film to be–engaging, funny, sad, disturbing, thought-provoking, entertaining, surprising… Those “I laughed, I cried” sorts of reviews usually make me wanna upchuck but in this case it’s true.

This is the kind of movie that makes you think about it for a long time after you’ve seen it.  I think there are a great many different themes and ideas the viewer can walk away with so I won’t impose my own on you except to say that the lead character’s surname, Cotard, is most certainly a clue.  I believe Kaufman is pointing out how our modern society has pushed many of us into a state of being very similar to that of the Cotard Delusion.  Then again, what do I know?  Maybe I’m not even writing this.  Maybe I’m having my stunt double handle it today.

I’ve heard that a great many people hate SNY.  They say they don’t get it and it’s slow and boring.  I can understand why a brain dead mollusk might think that, but it doesn’t make the mollusk right.  I encourage you to see it with an open mind and decide for yourself.  We Americans have been trained by our own cinema to accept external action as the only kind of valid onscreen action.  Fortunately, films like SNY reveal a vibrant world of internal action that can actually be created expressly for the screen.  This story was never intended to be read on the page but to be seen onscreen.  If the art of filmmaking has it’s William Faulkner, surely Kaufman must be him.

Wes Anderson is the rare sort of filmmaker who appears to be making his films outside of any real calendar.  Almost every one of his movies inhabits its own universe wherein elements of real times and places exist but in combinations we’ve never seen before.  Now Anderson has turned his attention to Fantastic Mr. Fox, a classic Roald Dahl story, and the result is extremely entertaining.

On paper, most of Anderson’s films shouldn’t work and the same can be said of FMF.  It’s as if he forces it to work through sheer force of will.  The stop motion animation is shot at 12 frames per second and most of the characters are furry.  That means that the animation is jerky and the fur on the characters moves around as if it has a mind of its own.  Invisible animator fingers push and pull and and I just don’t care because the characters and their story are so damned entertaining.

Lots of Anderson’s standard cast members are here (Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, etc.) along with newcomers George Clooney and Meryl Streep.  It’s easy to see why fine actors gravitate toward Anderson.  His films actually give them characters with depth who all have things to feel and do.  Clooney is especially gifted as a voice actor.  A while back I heard a professional voice actor complain about the fact that the big Hollywood stars were taking all the roles away from the voice talent because the studios wanted names attached to everything, even animated films.  I hate to break it to this guy but actors of the status of Clooney, Streep, and Murray bring so much more to the table than any vaudevillian voice actor ever could it’s a wonder the voicers (my new name for them because I’m tired of typing “voice actors” and you’re probably tired of reading it) still get work at all.  They just try too hard to ACT.  Acting is being, in case you voicers haven’t heard.

Anderson’s standard visual repertoire (my sixth grade science class springs to mind) is here too, but it feels more at home in the stop motion world than it ever has before.  That disconnect with reality is part of the charm of Anderson films like Rushmore and Life Aquatic but here the whole world is a disconnect of sorts.  The story appears to take place in a bizarre alternate universe version of the UK but all of the animals have American accents.  The animals live as humans do (Mr. Fox dresses an awful lot like Anderson) but also have to deal with their basic animal natures which drive them to do strange things at times.  They also use the word “cuss” for every curse word in the book.  It’s cussing awesome!

My favorite character in the film is Ash, the son of the title character.  Voiced by Jason Schwartzman, he has many of the same idiosyncrasies as another Schwartzman character, Max Fischer from Rushmore.  Ash is quite a bit younger than Max but he’s just as much an outsider and underachiever.  He parades around in his homemade superhero outfits and while he’d like to be thought of as athletic, he is not.  He’s as capable of cruelty as any young boy (or fox) but deep down he’s very hurt by his father’s opinions of him.  Mr. Fox eventually bandages that hurt and allows his son to be the fox he wants to be.  I don’t know how much of this is in the original Dahl story but it’s touching and amusing and I loved every second of  it.

The soundtrack is made up of 60’s British pop and a score that sounds a lot like the work of previous Anderson collaborator (and Devo frontman), Mark Mothersbaugh.  I’m not sure if there was a falling out there or if Mothersbaugh simply didn’t have the time for this project, but the work of composer Alexandre Desplat sounds like leftover tracks from Rushmore.  I expect the older recordings were used as temp tracks during production of FMF but that shouldn’t have kept Desplat from bringing anything new to the work.

I’m not sure that this film was made for children or that they would even enjoy it.  At an economical 90-ish minutes it’s not too long and there’s plenty going on but most of the amusing bits seem more adult in nature.  Most scenes are talky (by today’s standards) and linger in the moment longer than in most kids’ films.   Maybe children will just enjoy seeing the animals walk around in human clothes and that will be enough.  Somehow I doubt it though.

I loved the film.  I’ve watched it twice this week and am thinking of purchasing a copy if for no other reason than seeing the extras.  Beware, the Netflix Blu-Ray comes bare bones with only the movie.  I don’t believe any such retail version exists.  Yeah, I know–blah blah blah.  I’m just cussing mad about it.

Fight Club is simply one of the best translations of a book to the screen…ever.  If you’ve read Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club you’ve pretty much seen David Fincher’s Fight Club and vice versa.  I saw the movie first so the book was a little bit redundant and boring.  I could predict every turn of phrase and every image.  There were slight differences, of course, but they hardly mattered.  That doesn’t mean that I hated the book…only that I felt like I’d read it before.

The meat of Fight Club exists in both works.  That’s hardly ever the case in Hollywood film translations of literary works.  Just ask Stephen King.  The best parts of King’s novels (to me anyway) are his characters and their internal struggles and observations.  Yes, sometimes rabid dogs attack people in cars and that can be exciting but it’s only interesting if you care about those people in that car and you’re clued into what they’re thinking.  Mostly this is left offscreen in Cujo.

In Fight Club, whether we know it or not on first viewing, much of what we see is internal.  That’s why the voiceovers work.  We see the world from the point of view of the lonely, nameless,  insomniac narrator (Ed Norton).  The extreme closeups used throughout the film mirror the hyperfocus of the main character.  They show the details first and the big picture later, much like the way the movie treats its audience.  Everything resonates with the main point which is…well, I suppose that depends on your personal point of view.  You could see Project Mayhem as either the salvation of our culture or the death of it.  The movie (and book) are really more concerned with the reconciliation of the two main characters.

Nihilism, terrorism, humanism, and many other isms are espoused by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) and even though some of his arguments contradict themselves they can still be persuasive.  But does that mean those arguments are endorsed by the filmmakers (and the writer of the book) as well?  I’d argue that they’re not.  But at the same time, I think that there’s a lot to be learned from Tyler Durden, soap magnate and part time terrorist.

I think the original novel was a response to the overwhelming, politically correct corporate speak that we are subjected to daily in advertising and news.  Fincher uses the very format of the film to reinforce this idea.  Tyler Durden is essentially the voice many of us would like to hear and believe.  He is anti-media.  In one of the film’s more brilliant moments, Durden’s close up vibrates to the point where the projected film appears to be pushed off it’s sprockets by his force of being.  He also appears as single-frame “subliminal” blips within scenes that happen before he’s introduced.  Both main characters exist within boundaries that they loathe and by the end of the film they have each broken free in their own way.

I should also mention the score by the Dust Brothers.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with their name, you’re very likely familiar with their work as producers.  They produced the best records by both the Beastie Boys (Paul’s Boutique) and Beck (Odelay).  Their music mirrors Fincher’s shots and editing in such a way that I can only imagine the sounds and images evolved simultaneously.  Their work on this picture is flawless.  It amazes me that they haven’t been asked to compose music for any other films.  Oh and I almost forgot – the movie ends with a Pixies song (Where is My mind?).  How awesome is that?

All in all, this is an almost perfect film.  It’s simultaneously sad, funny, horrifying, repulsive, exciting…you name it…AND it’s filled with interesting ideas that you can take home in your mental pockets.  What else could you really ask for?

Now that Blade Runner has been released in every incarnation ever seen by anyone anywhere, it’s hard to know which version to talk about.  What exactly is Blade Runner?  Which version is THE movie known as Blade Runner?  Even though I like the version without the voiceover, Blade Runner will forever be the version I saw in the movie theater during its initial release.

My friend, Steve Sewell, was the only one I could talk into going to see the movie with me.  At the time I remember thinking that Harrison Ford’s extremely short haircut was really weird and now I sit here typing this with hair that’s much shorter.  NOT less hair, mind you, SHORTER hair.  There’s a big difference.

We watched the movie in awe, not entirely certain of what we were seeing.  I don’t think either of us (or the other twelve people in the theater on that particular Saturday night) breathed a word while it played.  We even sat silently through the credits and neither of us were the type to insist on watching credits).  We were stunned.  What exactly had we just seen?  To this day, I’m not sure.

I went back the following week and saw the movie by myself.  I think it was the first time I’d ever done that and I was practically alone in the theater.  BR wasn’t exactly the smash hit that Warner Brothers had hoped for.  According to BoxOfficeMojo, it made just over $6 million in its opening weekend.  Not horrible but then again this was a $28 million sci-fi movie.

At the time I knew nothing about the business of filmmaking.  Sure, I read Starlog and the other movie magazines but they hardly ever told the complete stories behind anything film-related.  To me the success or failure of a film simply boiled down to one question.  Did I like it?

Blade Runner was, and continues to be, a hard sell for some people.  It was marketed as an action movie but there really was more angst and brooding than there was action…and that was exactly what I liked about it.  1982 was also the year that Khan almost got his wrath on and Arnold hit the top with Conan for the first time.  There were lots of other quality movies that Summer (including the ET juggernaut) but none of them had the tone of BR.  None of them, not ever Khan, felt like they were taking you to a place you’d never been to before.  The world of BR was a sad place.  It was a difficult place to be and that was reflected in all of the elements of design.  Sadness pervades the picture making it appealing to an angst-ridden teen but not such a good date movie.

I guess I sorta understand why many people don’t want to see “downer” films.  A lot of the time I don’t either, at least if that’s all a movie has to offer.  I skipped Hostel, for example, for the same reason.  But real tragedies, in the Shakespearean mode of the word, usually have a lot more going on than just tragedy.  Tragic characters often have the most to live for.  They experience tragedy because of their desire to make things better for themselves – because they’re alive.

At the beginning of BR, Deckard might as well be dead.  He’s anesthetized to the point of being a sleepwalker.  In 1982 I saw him as the typical adult.  I saw him as exactly what I didn’t want to be when i grew up.  To me, most adults were asleep.  They didn’t appreciate the power they wielded in the world.  They weren’t trying any more.  They had accepted their lots in life and were just going to make it to death’s door.  Oh, there were a few people I looked up to, like Keith Richards or George Lucas, but most of the adults I actually had contact with in Macon, Georgia from day to day were wasting their time.  I liked seeing that an adult could be roused from their slumber even if it meant there was that drive in the country at the end of BR.  I also liked wallowing in the darkness that preceded that ascent.

I should also mention the music.  I was never a big Vangelis fan but the BR soundtrack truly captured that movie for me.  I liked that it was mostly constructed of minor-key electronica that essentially faded into the background of the BR world but somehow stuck with you.  It was a crime that the original tracks weren’t released until 1994.  The New American Orchestra version of the music (which I bought on LP at the time) paled in comparison to Vangelis’ originals.  According to usenet sources, this was Vangelis’ choice because he resented the use of other music in the film.  I’ve never figured out how withholding their work from release has ever helped a recording artist, but that was his choice at the time and we all paid the price for it.  I sat through those credits the first time because that music was the world of BR.  Listening to it, even now, plops me right back into that theater seat.  Before the coming of the VCR, soundtracks were pretty much the only way you could relive the experience of the movies.  That’s probably why a good score in even the crappiest movie can win me over every time.

Looking back on the film and all of its different versions, I’m left with the thought that the original BR achieved greatness and the subsequent versions perfected it.  I suppose if I had read PK Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep before I’d seen the movie, I’d have felt differently.  Much like The Shining, the book and movie are such completely different entities it’s hard to accept the second one you encounter.  But BR was my first encounter with the work of PK Dick and it was a wonderful, dreadful experience.