Saturday, 30 August 2014

Synecdoche, New York


Also Known As:
Unknown
Year:
2008
Country:
United States…
Predominant Genre:
Drama
Director:
Charlie Kaufman…
Best Performances:
Entire Cast…
Premiss:
A theatre director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
Themes:
Alienation | Guilt | Loneliness | Political Correctness | Totalitarianism | White culture
Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
Zoo
Review Format:
DVD

A good look at the White habit of telling stories about themselves as if they were talking about someone completely different. (A bit like telling someone that you have a friend with a problem to avoid admitting that the friend is actually you.)

The result is that Whites live an uncommitted half-life watching themselves go through the motions of living but, not actually doing so. The pointed analogy of putting on a theater play with the way Whites live their lives is well-taken and well-presented, such that pretending to be someone else comes to be what “being themselves” amounts to; leading to a sense of failure and the fear that others are as interchangeable and as expendable as anyone else - even men with women. Here, self-actualization becomes an impossible dream because so little of any value is ever passed on to the next generation - a deficit carried on forever.

Like Zoo, this is ultimately about Death and Dying, yet would have been improved if it were also about Life and lilving. Nevertheless, this could easily have been as self-indulgent as the characters and the screenwriter but, it is very funny and all of the first-rate performers give their all.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.