I adore Charlie Kaufman

There's complicated, and there's complex. Life is both, but while many films get complicated, with twists and shifts and surprises and weird juxtapositions, very few capture the essential complexity of life. Charlie Kaufman's movies do. And how!

Being John Malkovich was the first. Adaptation was the second. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was third. Each was better than the one before at conveying the bizarre, multi-layered (no, multi-dimensional) nature of reality beyond what we see and feel and think, but including all of those.

If you've never seen any of those, or didn't "get" them, then don't bother with his new film, Synecdoche, N.Y., because it goes even further than the others, further and deeper and longer and for that reason, it's even harder to understand. And accept.

I love magical realism in movies, movies that add a magical twist to "reality." At its best, you get films like Groundhog's Day, Defending Your Life and dozens of others. On another level, you get The French Lieutennant's Woman, which only seems magical but is in fact entirely realistic (the actors and the characters they are playing shift back and forth, shifting the frame of reference).

Kaufman is more in the nature of The French Lieutennant's Woman, but goes way beyond that, and you have to go with him. It isn't shtick, it isn't conceit, it is an attempt to really express the unexpressible complexity of reality. If this sounds unappealing, or just badly expressed on my part, it's because it's a BIG subject, an impossible task. Words sorta fail me right now.

But that Kaufman tackles those intertwined subjects so boldly and beautifully, and with so much heart is so very encouraging for me. In fact, it brought me to tears several times. Like all great art, art that is about loneliness and death and love and loss and what can feel like the sheer futility of being alive - Synecdoche, N.Y. aims high. And it made me, for one, feel a connectedness with Kaufman and - this is so hard to do without cliches - the human condition.

This is a blog, so I won't go long, but honestly, I can't recommend this movie highly enough. It is NOT a light night at the movies, it doesn't just have the crazy wit of Malkovich or the off-kilter romance of Spotless Mind. It is a more mature work, a sadder work, a slower-paced work. I did miss Spike Jones' relentless forward motion, which he brought to the first three movies as director; Kaufman himself directed this one. But it is a glorious, profound work. I will be cruising the web to find out more about this film, because it's that kind of art - you want to know more about it. If I find more of interest, I'll post it.

But let me just say that this is a film that anyone who saw the first three Kaufman films listed above should at least check out. It's deeper and more complex than the other three, and I wouldn't say it was my favorite of his four (I'd have to go with Spotless Mind there), but anyone with a sophisticated taste in art (it's ok to say "sophisticated" again now, under Obama? It's not too "French"?) should make every effort to see this remarkable film.

Just sharin'.