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.”

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Here are my Favorite Pre-2022 First-Watches and Discoveries of 2024:

“The Son of the White Mare”
“Pin: A Plastic Nightmare”
“Simple Men”
“Joan the Maid, Part 1: The Battles” /
“Joan the Maid, Part 2: The Prisons”
“The Devils” (1971)
“Henry Fool” / “Fay Grim” / “Ned Rifle”
“My Heart Is That Eternal Rose”
“Gangster No. 1”
“Camouflage” (1977)
“Perfect Love” (1996)

“Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease” /
“The Supplement” (2002)
“White Heat”
“The Strangler” (1970)
“Felicia’s Journey”
“Act of Violence”
“Code 46”
“The Vast of Night”
“Lost Illusions” (2021)
“The Kid Detective”
“The Bed You Sleep In”

“The Public Eye” (1992)
“Hotel” (2004)
“Scene of the Crime” (1986)
“Exile” (“Exil”) (2020)
“Hold Your Man”
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Here are my Favorite Pre-2022 First-Watches and Discoveries of 2023:

“Humoresque” (1946)
“Max and the Junkmen”
“Le Trou” (“The Hole”)
“Streets of Fire” (1984)
“Le Corbeau” (“The Raven”)
”The Man from Laramie”
“An Impossible Love”
“Women in Love” (1969)
“Splendor in the Grass” (1961)
“Bruno Reidal, Confessions of a Murderer”
“A Girl Missing”
“Black Sunday” (1977)
“Lover Come Back” (1961)
“César and Rosalie”
“Twentieth Century”
“Bad News Bears” (1976)
“Elizabeth Harvest”
“Serenity” (2019)
“Pastorale 1943”
“Fran”
“Executive Decision” (1973)
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Here are my Favorite Pre-2020 First-Watches and Discoveries of 2022:

“Prince of the City”
“The Last Family” (2016)
“Harvey” (1950)
“White of the Eye”
“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me”
“The Hidden Fortress”
“Hollow Man”
“Mommie Dearest”
“Adoration” (2019)
“Landscape Suicide”
“One Deadly Summer”
“Vinyan”
“Vampire’s Kiss”
“Angel Face” (1953)
“Frenzy” (1972)
“Charley Varrick”
“Wild River”
“The Last Waltz”
“Bluebeard” (1963)
“Turkey Shoot” (1982)
“The Colour of Lies”
“The Keep”
“Série Noire” (1979)
“La Bouche de Jean-Pierre”
“Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl”
“Rendez-Vous in Paris”
“L’Amour Braque”
“Lifeforce”
“Showgirls”
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Away From Herself...

Martha has been gone for a very long time. The one who took her place was a much more gullible and subservient young woman named Marcy May. It cannot be denied that she was very happy in her dazed, obedient bliss. To obtain this, she had to stretch her mind wide open for Patrick – her teacher, leader, and lover. This fifty-year-old man renamed her. “Marcy May” sounds more rustic and appropriate for her to stay in the Catskill Mountains, an unspoiled plantation that Patrick rules. It is the promise of this open land that awed the first settlers of America. Martha seeks this promise, lives the dream, and eventually wakes up trapped inside of a nightmare.

The movie begins as Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) escapes the cult one day. The fragments of her original identity are scattered and lost in the recesses of her molded mind. Upon further reflection of writer-director Sean Durkin’s insidious character study Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), it is a miracle that she even remembers the phone number that belongs to her older sister, Lucy (Sarah Paulson). Martha takes refuge in a small town that she could not place on a map. A visual tell that grounds us geographically is an American flag drooping in the cold, which is seen out of focus behind Martha as she makes that pay phone call.

After a three-hour drive, Martha settles in a large vacation home that belongs to Lucy and her well-to-do husband, Ted (Hugh Dancy). Instead of a member of the family, she feels like a visitor. Some families don’t know how to go beyond the polite obligation of having to take in one of their own. Martha suffers greatly from existential angst as well as guilt, depression, confusion, and bottles up a deep rage she cannot direct. Lucy is torn between concern and irritation. After all, Martha is so irresponsible to have gone off the map for two years without calling. Surely, she must have had a ball while shirking off college along with her future opportunities.

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I decided very early on that the hero of my short movie would be someone who has already lost so much and will continue to lose much more at the end. The title Bridge No. 29 suggests another chapter in the miserable life of Glenn (Matt Seeley) who has a nasty habit of burning bridges. The movie stands as a cautionary tale for those unwilling to take personal responsibility for their mistakes until they are thoroughly helpless. Another meaning of a bridge is what people at the mercy of despair are compelled to jump off of.

The helping hand that Glenn is reaching for this time is Sandra (Julia Harnett), an old friend he hasn’t seen in a long time. Their reunion couldn’t be more awful. When we are introduced to Glenn, he has already betrayed Sandra by breaking into her home and enjoying its comforts. Glenn feels justified to trespass because he is newly homeless. Surely, anyone willing to let him starve and freeze would have to be truly evil. His friend Sandra wouldn’t be that awful! Sandra’s empathy, however, is being thoroughly tested by a toxic friend.

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