Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York is such a sad movie. The last time I saw this I had experienced so little of the life I was to experience -- I lacked empathy for a variety of critical human experiences. I lived in my own mind and life had hardly happened to me, I had hardly ever felt the control of external circumstances.

It is also a humorous movie, which I also didn't understand the last time I saw it.

The movie appealed to me instantly, in my youth, because it confronted human issues that I found to be most beautiful. It spoke bluntly about topics I longed to talk about but for which I could never find an outlet. I was troubled by issues of meaning at the time -- as troubled as a by-nature perfectly healthy and stable adolescent could be. I felt everything in my environment was coated in convention, and concealed. I longed for interesting things to happen, to have to face reality. Synecdoche is honest, serious, and unconventional. I have always taken life seriously, and was essentially bored or sickened by the stability of my upbringing. Synecdoche was fascinating, and it felt real.

Watching it isn't as beautiful to me as it was for the first handful of viewings, probably because I've dealt with some of these issues now, because I no longer need to deal with some of them, and because I've seen it so many times it can't possibly strike me as profoundly. Yet I still believe this movie, and I still find it entirely admirable and impressive, and it amazes me in new ways. Synecdoche feels as real as it always did. It's not as timely for me now, but however much I've changed I still feel a fundamental connection with the movie. It speaks my language, even all these years later. There's a part of me that still thinks in this way, and still needs to be ripped out of my suppressive stable environment. But now I know its lesson all-too-well -- I think about it all the time, how to achieve the confrontation this movie achieves, but in real life. Complacency is a trap which is all around. I hope I am doing well by my always-favorite-movie, and not failing within my means to achieve that which it inspired in me.