Where the part is used for the whole, the specific for the general.

Okay, i have two movies already.

the first - The French Connection - 1971 Academy Award for Best Picture, i finally got around to it because i could dvr it on AMC. i thoroughly enjoyed it for several reasons. it's a cop/detective movie where Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider try to find some french guys and catch them smuggling heroine into the country. it was complex enough to merit a movie, but simple enough to not be confusing. It's based on a true story, as well, if the epilogue had any merit to it.

It had a great early 70s look and feel to it - a lot of shaky camera work, but in a gritty "we didn't really have a choice, it's a giant camera and we had to run around with it" way, instead of the Paul Greengrass, intentional nausea way (which, for the record, i also enjoy when implemented well). as with most movies made before, say, 1990, i was struck by the pace. it's slower, but never uninteresting. there are several chase sequences that go on for a decent amount of time, but the chases are frequently on foot through NYC, and frequently unaccompanied by music. that's just the kind of thing that most movies cannot get away with nowadays. there was one really great chase where a car is trying to keep up with a subway train, but it wasn't littered with explosions or anything, just a few brief near-misses and small crashes.

for 2-hour movie, a lot happens in a way that feels like not a lot is happening, and still manages to be exciting. who does that anymore? as for awards and status - i think it definitely merits its place as a Best Picture winner in the context of it's day as one of the earlier cop movies moving towards a more realistic approach to the style before the genre got copied and rehashed into attempts at box office success with less narrative integrity. i do question Gene Hackman's Oscar for Best Actor, not because he wasn't good, but because it appeared to be a fairly simple role to play - some good dialogue, a lot of passion for catching the bad guy, but frankly, i didn't see much of a "character" outside of the function of the movie. but oh well, still worth checking out for all the other reasons.


Now, on to the second movie, which i watched this morning - Synecdoche, New York:

i'll be honest, i do not have a clue how to respond to this movie. it was wonderful, fascinating, sad, crazy, a little disturbing, (very) darkly funny, and just all around a really awesome kind of movie-going experience that we don't really get a lot of these days. you have to really work to keep yourself engaged in order to follow parts (that is, without getting frustrated at the oddities), but at the same time, that's not difficult because the movie is so engaging in spite of the occasional frustration. for what it's worth, i'll direct you now to Roger Ebert's review of it. he doesn't quite make more sense of it, but he's at least more eloquent when talking about the movie he would later call the best film of the decade.

Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman (who is responsible for writing some of my favorites - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - one can immediately expect a weird movie. but it's some how more than that - about a theatre director who wants to create a massive theatre piece with a miniature reproduction of new york, art is constantly imitating life constantly imitating art constantly imitating life constantly imitating... and on and on. it's about the performances we play as ourselves (a phenomenon i once remarked on when mentioning All About Eve), and about remembering to remember that everyone else in the world is playing themselves, and that ours is not the only story, it's just usually the only one we choose to focus on. at it's most depressing themes, it is about the utter hopelessness of our ever finding happiness because we keep delaying smaller happinesses in confidence that something better will come along. however, i simply cannot believe that is truly Kaufman's worldview, so i suspect there is something deeper at play, some irony which i can only glean from repeat viewings (of which i'm sure there will be several down the road).

i am reminded now of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, in which the central theme, as written, was something like, "The spirit gone, man is garbage." but i do not believe that Heller or Yossarian truly believed the spirit to be gone, in the same way that i believe Kaufman does not believe our lives are a truly a waste, but rather that we must work that much harder to be honest with ourselves and appreciate the goodness while it is there. at a sort of climactic scene, a character in the play, a minister at a funeral, goes off with the following (and forgive the profanity, as i am merely quoting):

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen."

is the problem here whether what he is saying is true or false? or is the problem that he has devoted so much energy to dwelling on these complexities and uncertainties that he has, perhaps, not only drained life of the joys it does have to offer, but also drained himself of the capacity for recognizing them?

Maybe Synecdoche, New York, is the town where one man is meant to represent us all? i wonder if the Whole has ever been asked how it felt about being represented by just One Part of it? i think, just maybe, Synecdoche, New York is less of a worldview expounded as the narrative of a sad life than it is a cautionary tale. but i'll have to figure it out next time, or the time after that, or the time after that, or the time...