Pictures and Words

I saw Synecdoche, New York yesterday. Here’s a short review, for people who don’t want to wade through my copious wordage to find out what I thought: I’d give it 7/10, 3/5, 73%. Two word review: “Beautifully dissatisfying.” Ten word review: “I don’t want to see it again, but probably will.” 

Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Synecdoche, New York is a beautiful film.

That sentence doesn’t make any sense.

“Beautiful”, by its very definition, is a subjective term. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure and all that. Something that makes you weep with beauty might leave me cold. Something that makes me reconsider my life and purpose might make you angry at the sheer pointlessness of its creation.

And no, Synecdoche, New York didn’t make me weep with beauty, leave me cold, make me reconsider my life or make me angry at its sheer pointlessness.

The closest we can get to “proving” that something’s beautiful is to have lots of people agree with us. Millions of people watch Big Brother, but I don’t think that makes it beautiful. Millions of people think that Keira Knightley is absolutely gorgeous, but I know people who can’t see the appeal.

The next step is to point to a certain class of people who agree with us. “Every art critic in New York agree, Donovan Steissel is a brilliant artist.” But I can guarantee that there are movies that are critically acclaimed that you think are absolute garbage, and movies that were panned that you love – I think that Spanglish is one of the most beautiful films of the 21st century, but RottenTomatoes tells me that I’m the only one who thinks so.

Fact is, beautiful means something that pleases you. If it don’t please you, it ain’t beautiful.

(some people try to get around the subjectivity of beauty by adding an objective word to it: “Say what you like about Synecdoche, New York, you can’t deny that technically speaking, it’s quite beautiful.” Nope. Makes even less sense.)

When reviewing something, you’re allowed to state your opinions as fact – “It’s a beautiful film. It’s a terrible novel. She is a fantastic actor. The set design is wonderful.” All of these words are subjective, so we know that every time you’re stating one of these “facts”, you’re really just telling us your opinion. It only annoys me when people make generalisations, and tell you that by straying from these generalisations, you are somehow “wrong” – “Anyone who enjoys this book doesn’t know what art is,” “This painting will change your mind about what it means to live, and if it doesn’t, you’re an idiot.”

“Love it or hate it, you have to admit that Synecdoche, New York is a beautiful film.”

The other problem with the that sentence is the word “film”. What is a film?

Technically, a film is “a sequence of images strung together to create the impression of motion”, but I hope we can all agree that there’s a bit more to it than that. The next definition down tells us that a film is a “connected cinematic narrative.”

One more definition and then I promise I’ll start talking about the film:

A million people have had a million arguments about what constitutes a narrative, so I won’t define it too strictly, but I think you need a beginning, middle, end, and a buncha characters to care about.  My personal favourite definition of narrative comes from Tom Salinsky, a British writer/improviser:

A story is a linked series of questions and their answers. When all questions are answered, the story is over.

Obviously it’s no fun when every question is answered, but it’s infinitely more irritating when significant questions go un-answered. It can work when done well – the end of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels springs to mind – but when it’s done badly, it can ruin a film. I loved No Country For Old Men until we reached the end, and I realised that they’d cut out the final third, and all the answers that should have accompanied it. That’s another movie where I disagreed with the critics – Rotten Tomatoes tells me that 94% of critics loved it, it won four Oscars including “Best Film” but I think that ultimately, it was a beautifully shot complete waste of time. 

Synedoche, New York is also beautifully shot and has zero closure, but there’s no way I could call it a complete waste of time. I think that it was beautiful, and I think it failed as a “film”. It’s full of great moments, and it creates at least one character that you care about and one character that you despise, but ultimately it raises far too many questions, and refuses to answer 90% of them.

It’s worth seeing, and as I said in my 10-word review above, I’ll probably go and see it again, just because it’s got me thinking, but it’s also a miserable film to sit through. Bleak, depressing, full of unhappiness – there were devices in the film that really worked for me, snippets that I loved, but this film (“film”) manages to be beautiful without being even remotely uplifting.

After seeing the movie, I went and had a meal. Thinking about what I’d just seen, I suddenly realised the significance of a couple of earlier events, themes leapt out at me that I hadn’t noticed at the time, and I almost cried, thinking about a relationship in the film. At the time, it hadn’t affected me at all, it had bored and disappointed me, but looking back, realising exactly what had happened, I was almost brought to tears.

As far as I’m concerned, that makes it a beautiful piece of cinema.

But the complete lack of closure, the lack of explanation as to what’s happening 90% of the time, the last, bewildering twenty minutes of the film…

As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t count as a “film”.

Spoilers follow. If you haven’t seen the film and intend to, don’t read on.

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