Introduction to the VIFF Centre’s 21st Century Classic SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008)
On the evening of August 30th, I volunteered to introduce the VIFF Centre’s screening of Charlie Kaufman’s film “Synecdoche, New York” (2008). This is my speech in its entirety.
Good evening, everyone.
I am very grateful that I get to introduce Charlie Kaufman’s film “Synecdoche, New York” (2008) tonight. Out of all the inspired films that were selected as part of the 21st Century Classics at the VIFF Centre, I agree that this extraordinary directorial debut by one of the most important voices working in cinema today is the one to close out the series.
This century is twenty-five years old and it’s begun to produce less collagen and lose its metabolism. I believe within the next seventy-five years that Charlie Kaufman will be regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the 21st century. Having Kaufman’s films playing on the world cinema stage is just as novel as when Sigmond Freud and Carl Jung set foot in America and inevitably transformed the psyche of an entire nation. People will be thinking and talking about “Synecdoche, New York,” God willing, well after we’re dead.
It is quite extraordinary that a movie this profound and strange and challenging and raw and ambitious exists at all. There’s so much ingenuity and invention. Every ten minutes fulfills the promise, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” A movie that doesn’t just circle around the abyss, but plunges wilfully into the abyss, damn the consequences. A movie so human that it really smarts. A movie so generous and overflowing with such charged and illuminating ideas. As the makeup artist played by Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Adaptation” (2002) would say, “It’s like a brain factory in here.”
