Synecdoche, New York Sony Pictures Classics (2008)
Early on in Synecdoche, New York, theater director Cadence Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is sitting at his kitchen table perusing obituaries when he remarks to his wife, “Harold Pinter died—no, wait, he won the Pulitzer Prize.” Cotard’s wife, an unhappy artist, doesn’t seem to care either way. This biting soupçon of gallows humor lays the foundation for Synecdoche’s central themes: the inherent narcissism of the artistic process and the existential floundering of the modern human.
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The film marks the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, the mastermind behind Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and perhaps the greatest failed-relationship movie ever made, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The plot of Synecdoche (or part of it, anyway) follows Cotard as he receives a MacArthur Grant and spends the next few decades attempting to produce his life’s masterpiece (literally) by building a life-sized replica of his entire world inside an enormous warehouse in Manhattan and casting actors to play everyone he’s ever known. It’s almost impossible to synopsize the rest of the film without describing every single detail of the story, and Kaufman intentionally leaves much of Synecdoche open to interpretation. But whether you attempt to “solve” the Möbius strip of a plot or simply sit back and enjoy the brilliant dialogue, haunting performances, and surreal imagery, Synecdoche, New York is a powerful, hilarious, and deeply moving film. And it boasts the strongest female cast this side of The Hours, including Hope Davis, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, Dianne Weist, Michelle Williams, and a luminously heartbreaking Samantha Morton as Cotard’s multi-decade love interest.
Milk is director Gus Van Sant’s enthralling biopic about the late Harvey Milk, who was elected to the San Francisco City Council in 1977 and became the first openly gay man to hold public office in California.
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The film follows Milk from his days as a New York insurance salesman through his move to San Francisco’s Castro District in the early ’70s and his transformation to gay-rights activist, politician, and defiant civil rights icon. At the center of the film is Sean Penn’s towering portrayal of the outspoken, charismatic Milk. Van Sant also gets strong supporting work from James Franco as Milk’s longtime lover and friend; Emile Hirsch as a swaggering young supporter of the movement; and especially, Josh Brolin as Dan White, the disgruntled politician who assassinated Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Mascone in 1978. The film is shot on location in San Francisco, and Van Sant sprinkles in archival footage and ’70s-esque montages to add to the sense of period, including a swirling, candy-color shot comprised of an ever-expanding Hollywood Squares-style grid of silhouetted phone callers that serves as a metaphor for getting the word out. But perhaps the best thing about Milk is its timeliness: California’s Proposition 8—which banned gay marriage in California in November 2008—looms large as this country moves into the Obama Era. Milk reminds us not only that Harvey Milk was a true pioneer in the gay-rights movement, but also that the work he started is far from finished.
Stranded:
I've Come From a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains
Zeitgeist Films (2008)
(In Spanish with English subtitles.)
Stranded is a gripping documentary about one of the most incredible and inspirational survival stories in modern history. On Friday the 13th of October 1972, a plane carrying a young Uruguayan rugby team to Chile crashed in the Andes mountains, killing roughly a third of the 45 passengers on impact or shortly afterward. The rest were left stranded above 10,000 feet in the harshest conditions imaginable. Seventy-two days later, 16 survivors were rescued after two of them—Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa—completed a miraculous 12-day trek through miles upon miles of treacherous Andes to find help. The most notorious aspect of the story, of course, is that those who lived were forced to resort to cannibalism in order to survive. Many are familiar with this amazing story, as there have been at least three books on the subject (including one by Parrado) and two film versions—a low-budget, unauthorized one from the early ’70s (Survive!) and a Hollywood blockbuster from the ’90s (Alive—i.e., the one with Ethan Hawke). What sets Stranded apart, however, is that it is largely composed of firsthand interviews with all of the survivors, now in their late 50s and early 60s. The survivors recount the ordeal in intimate detail, including tactful and respectful discussions of the cannibalism and heart-stopping descriptions of an avalanche that buried the group alive as they slept and claimed eight more lives. Above all, though, Stranded is anchored by a quiet dignity and grace that can only come from men who lived to tell their miraculous story.
