Kaufman's Film View and Synonymy
To explain the name of the film or to "interpret" the film itself, one has to figure out Charlie Kaufman's view of the film (or at least his own requirements for the film). Kaufman once said, "Drama is alive, and film is dead." He further explained this sentence in an interview with this film: every performance of a drama is a new and living performance, because every time the actors There are different states and interactions with the audience, and once the film is finished and cut, it is a dead stone. In addition, the meaning of the movie is too clear and the audience does not interpret the space is another kind of "death" and "rude way of making movies".
Obviously, Kaufman doesn't appreciate dead movies at all, and in his directorial debut, he can finally resist the structured and rigid American movies. Of course, this is also a rare side of capital creation for geniuses. To do this, Kaufman's approach is "the try to PUT enough in there that people CAN InterAct with SO IT ON AN Individual Basis" - than Netflix "Black Mirror" pseudo-interactive viewing, I personally It is believed that a broader space of meaning is the true freedom that audiences can have. This is a characteristic shared by all excellent movies: ample white space.
However, the limit of white space has always been a very ambiguous standard. Modest as Kaufman summed up the capacity of this film as "enough", but in fact the amount of audiovisual information in this film exceeds the cognitive ability of ordinary people, plus the metaphors and themes composed of these audiovisual information (both greatly The whole movie is not a piece of stone but a piece of compressed biscuit. The dense content and themes, in Kaufman's view, are a sincere way to give the audience freedom to interpret—just as Caden wanted to direct a truethful drama about everyone and the essence of life in the play, and finally built a New York. It's a city in a city, and Kaufman also directed a movie like this.
This is the origin of the film's name: Caden uses New York City Midtown to refer to New York, while Kaufman uses this movie to refer to life -a typical Charlie Kaufman-style matryoshka . Of course, Kaufman also played a homophonic game here. The film is set in Schenectady, New York. The writing order in English is Schenectady, New York; Schenectady (or warehouse 1, 2, 3 built by Caden in Schenectady) ...) In the film, it replaces New York as a part of New York, so here is the rhetoric of Synecdoche (syndrome). Caden's grand theater wants to be Paul Vientiane, which is also the spiritual abbreviation of the entire film (to a certain extent, both succeeded and failed in this goal), and Caden's creative pain is also a true reproduction of Kaufman's pain.
I have repeated the unique openness/complexity of this movie. Next, I will talk about some topics that have a deep feeling for me. I also hope that I can watch it again in a different mood in 5 years, and I hope it can bring me again Come with new feelings and continue to update this short article.
1. The long autumn of life
At the beginning of the film, the host asked a professor of literature in a radio program broadcast by Caden's bedside: "Why do so many people write about the fall", and the other party's answer is "It's seen as the beginning of the end ...If the year is the life,...the beginning of the fall is when the bloom is off the rose and things start to die ”“It's a melancholy month and maybe because of that, quite beautiful ”. The next poem I read can be said to be closely related to the theme of the whole movie:
Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.
After the professor finished reading, the host commented that the poem was too cruel, and the professor replied "But truthful", and at the same time, Charlie Kaufman's name appeared on the screen. This is exactly the film's pun .
Spring and autumn may be short and transitional in the four seasons. People always have a deeper impression of winter and summer. However, if you compare life to the four seasons, autumn is the longest process-when you stop growing, when you are not noticeable The rise and change, when you are just alive... you unknowingly come to the autumn of life: "the beginning of the end", and "things start to die". But the winter of life is short. Most people may only regard the short period of time before going to die as the last season of life, and at this time you can no longer make any changes to your life. Therefore, the autumn of life It is everyone's last chance to make a struggle .
However, as the opening poem says "Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone", this movie does not believe that people can really live in the long autumn (or the so-called middle-aged In the crisis), on the contrary, Caden/Kaufman’s approach is to record, describe and understand this unnecessary struggle in an attempt to obtain epistemological relief.
We are all going to death inevitably, and the "New York Synonymy" is largely a discussion and recording of the helplessness, emptiness, and fear felt inevitable .
2. Solipsistic loneliness
At the beginning, Caden’s theater had no walls or windows. Each room was a sitcom shooting scene and was generally exposed to the eyes of the camera and the director until he said: "This is a lie. Wall it up, all of it."-This is another manifestation of Kaufman/Caden's paranoia about "truthful" mentioned earlier.
The movie poster has many interesting details. The content of the screen is the buildings and windows in the Caden Theater. Each window represents a person and a story in New York, but it is precisely because everyone is in their own way. In the windows, people can't see the whole picture of other people's lives. The title of the film is also box the letters into a separate windows , although completely isolated from each other, but combined together into a "movie."
This is also the source of the huge sense of loneliness in this movie- Caden longs for the understanding that individuals are almost integrated , and the reality is that everyone has their own story and life, and people can always only peek at the stories of others through the "window" And soul, without that wall and window, everything is a lie. In addition, it can also be said that everyone is selfish, and people cannot fully understand each other because any attempt to understand actually has its own purpose and intention behind it, and people only understand the side they want to understand .
Kaufman expressed his desire for this integration through the mouth of Sammy, which is similar to God in the play:
Because I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about you. And I wanna fuck you until we merge into a chimera, a mythical beast with penis and vagina eternally fused…two pairs of eyes that look only at each other…and lips ever touching.
This kind of high expectations for the degree of human connection must eventually lead to extreme disappointment and loneliness , just like this line of Hazel.
In fact, this loneliness of longing and disappointment also continues in Charlie Kaufman’s next film "Aberrations": the male protagonist finds a special voice that only he can hear in the same voice, a desire to become The story of "chimera" is staged again, and the ending is also the ultimate loneliness of solipsism.
Attached are some of the lyrics of the ending song Little Person written by Kaufman for this film, which well depicts the silent expectation of a lonely person:
I'm just a little person,
......
I'll find a second little person
Who will look at me and say:
"I know you.
You're the one I've waited for.
Let's have some fun."
......
You're the one I like the best.
I'm glad I've found you,
......
Somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll meet a second little person
And we'll go out and play.
3. Deterministic life
"Every decision you make affects the direction of your life" is another occasional theme in this film. For example, Adele's ignorance of her own cough eventually led to her death of lung cancer, Hazel eventually died of smoke and dust because she bought a house on fire, and the book Caden read on the plane no longer had the next page because he rejected the other party. Invitation...
Continue to talk about the "windows of New York". As mentioned above, everyone is an isolated individual behind the window. The understanding and connection between people is limited by individuality; at the same time, "window-individual" is also a decision Argumentative metaphor :
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.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.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.
This pastor’s line at the funeral connects the lonely individual with determinism. "They say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create" is undoubtedly a confession book of a determinist, and "maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own" talks about The absolute distance between individuals.
Melancholy and determinism are always connected . If you still recognize the existence of free will, try and figure out your own divorce for various events is nothing more than a process of constant self-blame; if you completely deny free will, you cannot even be responsible for your own existence (Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born). So no matter how you think about it, it's a very mourning life.
4. In fact, you can wipe the floor for a while
Soon after Adele left, Caden was nostalgic for the past on the one hand, and on the other hand was overly concerned about his health-all with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Caden is sitting in Adele’s underground studio staring at his sick leg. The TV shows him appearing in chemotherapy advertisements (the female version of Caden, which is Ellen’s childhood, etc., is also shown, but this theme is not mentioned here. ), and then when Caden started cleaning Adele's studio, the TV program suddenly became normal, positive content (even a little exciting).
This seems to be the only time in the entire film that there is not only dead content on TV/media, but also the only positive and positive content. When Caden is cleaned and cleaned up, the TV content becomes creepy again, and it sings "there's no real way of coping...you're falling down. you're going down. you fell. then you die~" "
In Kaufman's first film as a screenwriter, "Become John Malkovich," he used the words of a puppet master (also a kind of "director") to say that consciousness is a curse for human beings . And here he just wants to say that it is useless to temporarily numb his consciousness with mechanical simple things. After the ground is wiped, it is a new round of despair . Like any advertisement, "The Miracle Brush" will not bring you to your life. Real change.
There is quite a smell of ascetic monks here-when life needs to be avoided, consciousness also needs to be paralyzed, if people are always aware of their existence, it is not such a painful thing, but Kaufman But Nietzsche's spirit is staring at these pains, perhaps this is another manifestation of his "truthful" obsession.
However, this is Kaufman's choice. As viewers, we can understand that we can disagree and not follow suit. There are also many people who think that this kind of loneliness and depression is Kaufman's narcissism. It is understandable that he is narcissistic about the pain of genius.
For people who have not seen or experienced this level of pain and loneliness, this movie is more boring and asking for trouble. However, what Kaufman himself thinks and how he creates, naturally, it is not our turn to worry about and dictate. Kaufman’s life attitude of choosing "harsh but truthful" may be a portrayal of "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied", but I still want to say: Actually it can Wipe the floor a little longer, there are other things you can wipe after you wipe it.
In addition, I really want to talk about Caden’s emotional line, but I can’t generalize a topic, just talk about it casually~
The role of Adele Lack is very special. She and Caden are almost completely opposites, so she boldly guesses that her last name Lack represents everything that Caden lacks, such as never caring about her health, ability to live in the moment, and taking everything The art of becoming simple... She is a symbol of the completely other, foreign object to Caden, and it can even be said that Adele is the antidote to prevent Caden from his pathological self-obsession. If Caden wants to see the world beyond his own small world, he can look at Adele. In fact, the rupture of their relationship is a result of Caden’s inability to see him from outside (and vice versa for Adele), but Caden has always wanted to pursue Adele until the end, which means that he has always wanted to get rid of him. Their various obsessions, although their huge differences have made the two of them never communicate successfully.
And Claire is also incommunicable for Caden. Claire’s admiration for the great director Caden has created a feeling of admiration, but there is more than one suggestion in the film that Caden thinks she is stupid and not a peer-to-peer communication partner-this is not for Adele. The opposite of communication. The only person who can communicate and make Caden want to become a "chimera" with Caden is Hazel. The soundtrack played in the movie when she brought Caden home for the first time was the song "Ltitle Person", and she was what Caden wanted to meet. "A second little person".
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