On Synecdoche New York
Synecdoche New York: A Movie Review
By John David Ebert
Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche New York, recently released on DVD, is his directorial debut and very possibly his finest work to date. Kaufman made himself famous as an auteur screenwriter in a medium which rejects the very idea of a screenwriter becoming an auteur, since film is primarily a director’s medium. Screenwriters are a dime a dozen in this business, and few of them ever manage to carve out recognizably distinct signature visions, since screenplays are usually so heavily trademarked with the director’s style and personality that there is not often much left that can be credited as unique to the screenwriter. But Kaufman, beginning with Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, managed to rise above the limitations of the medium with a vision so wry and sardonically Kaufmannian that it was also immediately its own trademark; in the films that followed, such as Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, it became evident that Kaufman’s own particular way of looking at the world is unmistakably his own and as readily identifiable as, say, Stanley Kubrick’s. No one can duplicate the feel of a Stanley Kubrick film; Kaufman’s vision, it is becoming apparent, is just as inimitable. Read the rest of this entry »
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