Like others writing about this film, I find it difficult to explain fully the ways I was affected by Kaufman's work. He showed us truth, without the boundaries of reality, by exposing what we are and how we live it, in a vision of real life unencumbered by the artifice of narrative linearity. Sort of.
This is a tale of how life is, of what we are all doing in this ridiculous dance, of how shared the experience is, of how beautiful the pain is, of where we find ourselves at the end, which is also the middle and the beginning.
Told through the disjunctive story of a theater director who thinks he's dying (but then he is, as we are all, no?) and out of ideas, the film goes on a bendy, twisty, story-in-story path -- similar in some ways to a David Lynch film, except here there IS easily gleanable meaning in the twists -- that lets us see an entire life, many entire lives as they interweave and affect each other.
A short speech by a preacher at a funeral late in the movie sums up much of what the point is; I won't ruin it except to say that our lives can only be one thing, even though many opportunities present themselves, and it isn't worth sitting around and waiting.
Most importantly, I was so deeply moved by this story... that I don't know what more to say. It makes me want to contact everyone I know and unburden myself to them, tell them how much I love them, etc. Which I won't do, because doing that after a moving film is like drunk-dialing an ex. But it will help me live more fully and honestly. It showed me something real, and goddamnit, that's art.
It's not ordinary storytelling, but it's also not as much work as a Peter Greenaway -- so I recommend this to everyone, if they'll suspend their disbelief a little and leave their hearts open.
This is a tale of how life is, of what we are all doing in this ridiculous dance, of how shared the experience is, of how beautiful the pain is, of where we find ourselves at the end, which is also the middle and the beginning.
Told through the disjunctive story of a theater director who thinks he's dying (but then he is, as we are all, no?) and out of ideas, the film goes on a bendy, twisty, story-in-story path -- similar in some ways to a David Lynch film, except here there IS easily gleanable meaning in the twists -- that lets us see an entire life, many entire lives as they interweave and affect each other.
A short speech by a preacher at a funeral late in the movie sums up much of what the point is; I won't ruin it except to say that our lives can only be one thing, even though many opportunities present themselves, and it isn't worth sitting around and waiting.
Most importantly, I was so deeply moved by this story... that I don't know what more to say. It makes me want to contact everyone I know and unburden myself to them, tell them how much I love them, etc. Which I won't do, because doing that after a moving film is like drunk-dialing an ex. But it will help me live more fully and honestly. It showed me something real, and goddamnit, that's art.
It's not ordinary storytelling, but it's also not as much work as a Peter Greenaway -- so I recommend this to everyone, if they'll suspend their disbelief a little and leave their hearts open.