Synecdoche, New York

Here we follow a morose, weepy, self-absorbed character around for two hours while his behavior alienates everyone with whom he comes in contact.  He starts out depressed and gradually goes lower and lower. midpoint he gets a MacArthur grant and uses it to stage a minute-by-minute reconstruction of his miserableness using hired actors and those friends who haven't been chased away yet.

This film could be used as a definition of solipsism. Why Charlie Kaufman thought anyone would want to watch something like this is baffling. It comes across more than anything as an embarrassing display of the filmmaker's neuroses,  similar to the piece Woody Allen contributed to New York Stories. Too bad. His past efforts were creative, fresh and delightful. They did contain some similar elements but were leavened by humor and outrageousness. 

I was sorry to see such fine actors wasted here, particularly Emily Watson, who I see as marvelously skilled and seldom seen in recent years. Here she contributed a short, pointless nude scene which wasn't at all credible that I found degrading.

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