Charlie Kaufman
105 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Directed by John Cassavetes
influenced I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Themes
Consider her monologue on the drive home, where an unexpected reference to "A Woman Under the Influence" results in Louisa reciting Pauline Kael's critical review of the film and Gena Rowland's celebrated performance.
In the second half of the film, on the interminable trip back from his parents’ house, Jake says that he likes John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence , which the young woman essentially characterizes as a fake-feminist work of masochism, claiming that Gena Rowlands gives an exhausting tour de force, and that “nothing she does is memorable because she does so much.”
A discussion of Cassavettes’ A Woman Under the Influence devolves into Buckley slipping invisibly into a recitation of Pauline Kael’s negative review of the film .
The Young Woman and Jake talk endlessly about Wordsworth’s poetry or John Cassavetes 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence (Buckley not only mimics Gena Rowland’s performance, she recites famed critic Pauline Kael’s dismissive review).
The two engage in epic conversations, touching on everything from William Wordsworth to the aforementioned Kael’s review of the 1974 John Cassavetes movie, “A Woman Under the Influence,” which Lucy recites from memory (it seems).
In another scene, the pair debate the quality of John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, a clear spiritual cousin to I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
Death of a Salesman (1985)
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
influenced Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Themes
Yet the most surreal segment of the production is the incredibly massive city-size theatrical extravaganza Caden undertakes after obtaining a MacArthur grant for his enormous success with a rejuvenated reworking of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman cast entirely with young people.
The title is both a term meaning a part that is used to refer to the whole, or vice versa, as well as a wordplay on the upstate city of Schenectady, where Caden Cotard (Hoffman) is staging an avant-garde production of "Death of a Salesman."
Caden is currently putting on a revisionist play of "Death of a Salesman," casting young twenty-somethings in much older roles as a way of telling the audience that these actors, too, will end up alone and gasping their last breath like the characters they are portraying.
Beau Is Afraid (2023)
Directed by Ari Aster
influenced by Synecdoche, New York (2008), I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Themes Visuals
The film feels inspired by everything from Kafka to Albert Brooks to Charlie Kaufman’s postmodern masterpiece, Synecdoche, New York , but never derivative.
It recalls films as eclectic as The Ninth Configuration and Jacob’s Ladder in its use of symbolism, tone and imagery and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York in the way Aster plays with ideas of artifice – particularly the overtly theatrical scenes in the forest and the sound-stage setting of the final “trial”.
Sospeso allora tra Synecdoche, New York di Charlie Kaufman e The Truman Show di Peter Weir, con un tocco di inconcludenza alla Under the Silver Lake di David Robert Mitchell (la nostra recensione) o alla Southland Tales – Così finisce il mondo di Richard Kelly, Beau ha paura manca di una chiave di lettura univoca che ci permetta di definire, quantomeno, una prospettiva da cui interpretare ciò che viene messo in scena.
Waarbij Aster met Beau is Afraid dus ook wel z’n meest ‘grootse’ film maakt, want op dit moment schiet zelfs Charlie Kaufmans Synecdoche, New York door m’n hoofd heen.
Charlie Kaufman’ın 2008 yapımı Synecdoche, New York filmini andıran Beau is Afraid filminin son katmanı düşsel olduğu kadar yıkıcı bir yana da sahip.
The ever-changing world and energetic sequences recall an odd blend of Lynchian 70’s horror and Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things .
There is an old man janitor who appears throughout the film and reveals his true nature at the end, and then we seem to go fully into Jake’s fantasies as he imagines winning a Nobel Prize—and delivers John Nash’s acceptance speech from A Beautiful Mind—in front of an audience of young people in obvious high school theater old person makeup.
There’s a hilarious blink-and-you’ll-miss-it joke about Robert Zemeckis and a delightful visual reference to “A Beautiful Mind.”
Where and how these two apparently disparate narratives converge is only made clear by the film’s finale (and even then, it’s not really certain), which goes full-blown “it was all just a dream” hallucinatory strangeness, complete with musical numbers from Oklahoma! and speeches from Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind .
Also in play are a talking pig, a snowbound ice cream shop, a speech from "A Beautiful Mind" and David Foster Wallace's "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."
Alain Resnais’ time and memory fractures; dramatizations of the climactic scene of “A Beautiful Mind”; Pauline Kael’s review of John Cassavetes’ “A Woman Under The Influence”; lightly lugubrious Swedish comic director Roy Andersson’s constructed horizons, palette deracinated and dimmed, gray to green to dun; “Fight Club”; all within a ragingly boldface ET CETERA.
It will help to be familiar with the musical "Oklahoma" especially the dream ballet; with Gena Rowlands' performance in John Cassavetes's "A Woman Under the Influence" and maybe Pauline Kael's review of it; and maybe with the ending of "A Beautiful Mind."
At one point, a TV is switched on, and the movie that’s showing—“My Man Godfrey,” the great screwball comedy about poverty and wealth, from 1936—is now staffed by the same creatures who populate the rest of “Anomalisa.”
After one last encounter with this love of his life, he returns to his room to view a moment of movie ecstasy on television—the finale of My Man Godfrey (1936) with a gaga Carole Lombard, dancing in happiness.
The production design is exquisite, and there are several delightful details, such as the puppet version of black and white classic My Man Godfrey playing on the hotel TV.
Michael is in Cincinnati for one day on business, and his depression is ingeniously illustrated by the fact that all the other characters save one have the exact same voice (Tom Noonan’s) and face, including Michael’s wife, his unstable ex-girlfriend, his young son, the airline pilot, an oblivious cabdriver, and even the actors in the 1936 movie My Man Godfrey, which plays on a TV in his hotel room.
Lo más interesante es ver cómo situaciones abiertamente deprimentes tienen siempre aquí un contrapunto humorístico, y cómo para enfatizarlo, o sugerirlo maliciosamente, la pantalla de televisión en el hotel muestra una escena de la comedia delirante Porfiada Irene (My Man Godfrey, La Cava, 1936), pero en lugar de Powell o Lombard, intervienen clones de las fantásticas criaturas de Charlie Kaufman.
And Michael's tired routines — phone home, dial room service, practice his speech, go down the hall for ice, watch a snippet of My Man Godfrey (also animated) on TV — begin to take on a strange profundity in their bleak ordinariness.
mother! (2017)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
influenced I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Characters Themes
Tonally and structurally, it reminds me a lot of mother!
Her performance in conversation with roles like Jennifer Lawrence in mother!
Una reflexión que, en su pretensión es mucho más que un compendio de citas y una mal encausada farolés teórica (cof cof te hablo Mother! ).
All four build incredible socially awkward tension not unlike Darren Aronofky’s mother!
El desconcierto recuerda también a mother!
It gave me a distinct mother!
Both are intelligent people, with knowledge ranging from an academic understanding of science, to poetry, to classic cinema (be ready to hear references to both Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence AND Forget Paris , starring Billy Crystal).
…whether Mussolini got too much credit for the trains running on time, movies ranging from “Forget Paris” to “A Woman Under the Influence,” the poems of William Wordsworth and a painting by Andrew Wyeth?
Heck, it contains the first puppet sex scene since “Team America: World Police.”
And not that comic, jangly, gratuitous puppet sex from "Team America: World Police."
That is, not unless you want to expose them to some heavy, grown-up ideas, including a memorable and moving portrait of depression and isolation, as well as one of the more graphic scenes of puppet sex you're likely to have seen this side of "Team America: World Police."
In 2004, in what was no doubt a first, the Motion Picture Association of America awarded an R rating to the "South Park" team's infamous "Team America: World Police" for "graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language — all involving puppets."
The overall effect is something like “The Polar Express” meets “Team America: World Police.”
There's a sex scene here that is nothing like the puppet sex scene in "Team America: World Police," for the record.
Perhaps his spin on “Up in the Air” or “Lost in Translation” or, given Michael’s paranoia that society is conspiring to tear apart this presumably true love, “The Adjustment Bureau.”
(Few other movies, besides "Lost in Translation,” perhaps, have been this good at depicting the steady-state vacuity of the generic hotel experience.)
These opening moments of the film — which Kaufman directed with Duke Johnson — are weird, mesmerizing and very funny, recalling “Lost in Translation” in their precise evocation of the rituals, creeping annoyances and numbing dislocation of travel.
Al igual que con Lost In Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) y Barton Fink (Joel e Ethan Coen, 1991) un hotel (con su atractivo minibar, su reducido elevador, su frustrante llave electrónica y un sinfín de tranquilizadoras variaciones de marrones y beiges que decoran habitaciones y pasillos), se convierte en una especie de limbo, en un espacio de transición donde los misterios de la vida se desentrañan, justo cuando él conoce a Lisa (voz de Jennifer Jason Leigh) una joven insegura y tímida, cuya voz le resulta una anomalía que lo hace sentirse vivo y entusiasmado.
It's a tragic stop-motion animated tale with resemblances to Lost In Translation .
For an hour things tick along like a particularly deflating episode of British sitcom I’m Alan Partridge or Lost In Translation leeched of all hope.
In any event: I don't know where or whether it's appropriate to say yes, it's tempting to wish that Synecdoche, lensed by Blue Velvet's Frederick Elmes, looked a bit more polished or had a visual imagination to match its verbal and structural and philosophical aspirations.
He’s like David Lynch if Mr. Blue Velvet dropped the dream logic and applied a more analytical angst to his projects.
I do wonder in a rhetorical way whether the film would be received differently were it a lost Kieslowski or a Godard at the peak of his narrative aggression, though it reminds more as a whole of David Lynch's "Hitchcock" pictures ( Blue Velvet , Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive ), which found in their rhythmic Americana banality the dull thrum of existential horror.
The strange, pedantic tenor of “Anomalisa” works to its credit, becoming hypnotic and intoxicating in the same fashion as Richard Linklater’s slacker redux, “Waking Life.”
Co-directed and written by Charlie Kaufman, “Anomalisa” is animated in a hyper-realistic, oddly off, stop-motion style that produces an uncanny effect similar to that in Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped “Waking Life” (2001).
Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (1945)
Directed by Robert Bresson
influenced I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
During the return trip (with the chains on the tires), the couple’s discussions take on a tenser tone—and Kaufman makes notable, noticeable use of the sound of the car’s windshield wipers, a sidelong reference to a famous line of film criticism, from a 1951 essay by André Bazin and referring to Robert Bresson’s 1945 film “Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne”: “The sound of a windshield-wiper against a page of Diderot is all it took to turn it into Racinian dialogue.”
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Directed by Spike Jonze
influenced Anomalisa (2015), Synecdoche, New York (2008), I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
It's the first movie this year that demands at least two viewings to absorb its densely textured humor, which makes earlier Kaufman works such as "Adaptation" and "Being John Malkovich" look positively straightforward.
For all the unprecedented daring and invention in "Being John Malkovich," "Human Nature," "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," they have struck me as academic and cool, alluding to emotions rather than truly mining them.
One of the most insightful and philosophically observant writers in any medium, Kaufman won an Oscar for his "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and was nominated for "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation."
Re-reading what I wrote about other films written by Charlie Kaufman ( Being John Malkovich , Adaptation , and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ) I see that I've compared his work to origami pieces, and I still think that's apt.
With Charlie Kaufman, the writer of such movies as Being John Malkovich , Adaptation , and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , one expects something weird and wonderful.
Synecdoche, New York was originally supposed to be shot by Spike Jonze, who gave Kaufman his break from working on sitcoms and The Dana Carvey Show by directing Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, and much of what’s good in this film could well be attributed to Jonze’s absence.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Plot Visuals
The conceit might remind you of the finale of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and the theme of time shifting is italicized by the fact that at one point a television is shown playing an old Mr. Peabody and Sherman cartoon.
And then there’s the ending, one which may prompt as much confusion and conversation as the conclusion of “2001: A Space Odyssey” did a half-century ago.
The surreal final half-hour — departing drastically from Reid’s book while remaining strangely faithful in spirit — defies any logical description save to say it’s a depressive’s equivalent to the stargate sequence in “2001: A Space Odyssey” by way of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Still, the story's twists and turns maintain our interest throughout, with the narrative taking on a cleverly deconstructed play-within-a-film format reminiscent, at times, of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York.
Synecdoche stands in relation to Kaufman's best previous screenplays (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ) in the same way that David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE stood in relation to Mulholland Drive, which means that Synecdoche is, on the surface, a less seductive work with less lubricated points of audience entry, and yet it has the chops and the conviction to amplify while also deconstructing the earlier films.
Like David Lynch's Inland Empire, there will be people who tell you they understand every twist and turn and what it all means in the grand narrative.
There's another film I thought of a few times while watching this one: David Lynch's Inland Empire , in which an artist even more trapped in his head than Kaufman got to make a movie almost completely without outside interference.
It happened in 1961, with that high-society puzzle obscura Last Year at Marienbad, and in 2006, with David Lynch's through-the-looking-glass bore Inland Empire.
His task would be to study and profile the elusive Tooth Fairy (Tom Noonan, Heat Synecdoche, New York ), a brutal serial killer who kills only during full moon nights.Ignoring his wife's (Kim Greist) protests, Graham begins researching the case.
Yet, ironically, every person in his world seems exactly the same and – in one of the most brilliant cinematic uses of sound ever – has the same voice, Tom Noonan (Manhunter, Last Action Hero).
(You might remember his heart-stopping turn as Francis Dollarhyde in “Manhunter,” his extremely tense film “What Happened Was…” and his part as the priest on “Louie.”)
Kaufman acierta al elegir a Tom Noonan como el intérprete de estos personajes: un actor, magnífico en papeles perversos (The House of the Devil, Manhunter), con una voz apenas masculina, inquietante pese a su tibieza.
David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh (both excellent) play Michael and Lisa, while Tom Noonan (best known for 1986’s “Manhunter”) is credited as Everyone Else.
I’m thinking of the dream logic of David Lynch with “Eraserhead” and Charlie Kaufman with “Synecdoche, New York.”
…it’s something like The Blair Witch Project spliced with Cube blended with Synecdoche, New York, mostly shot in liminal spaces lit in queasy mono-yellow.
The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972)
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
influenced I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Visuals
One thinks of a film like R.W. Fassbinder’s The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972).
In the beginning of the film we see Cotard staging Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" using actors deliberately chosen to be too young for their roles.