LEWIS enjoys Synecdoche, New York

Despite his ridiculous workload, LEWIS manages to watch not only one movie this week, but two. Included in this ambitious endeavor is Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York. "I do enjoy a good movie with some chocolate-peanut-butter-treat every now and then," states LEWIS, massaging his achilles.

While the critical reception to Charlie Kaufman’s recent film Synecdoche, New York has been united in acknowledging the project’s ambition, it has been divided as to the net worth of that ambition. Manohla Dargis of the NY Times: “to say that [it] is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.” Conversely, film critic Ben Lyons declared it “the worst movie of the year.” Clearly, the questions of how good or to what end? are relevant ones for a film as sprawling, difficult, and self-indulgent as this. Yet perhaps a more interesting question is as follows: does Kaufman’s hyper-aware and obsessive self-referential bent meaningfully contribute to the already existing (and some would say fatigued) array of explorations in this vein?

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is assembling the play of his lifetime. With the unlimited funds of a MacArthur Genius grant he builds a replica of the Manhatten theatre district within a warehouse, itself in the theatre district. (The set soon becomes impossibly elaborate, involving, yes, wait for it, a replica of the replica: the warehouse itself is modeled within the warehouse. Ad infinitum.) In an attempt to be, as Caden puts it, “honest” the cast plays an ever escalating set of characters from his own life, compulsively repeating the traumas and interpersonal slights of Caden’s own past. Caden casts a doppelganger of himself and, striving for full accuracy of the representation, this doppelganger has a doppelganger. You get the point.

Caden Cotard is consumed with the sickness onto death. His symptoms are scrutinized, his complexion analyzed, his poop picked through (its color and the possible harbingers of doom thereof). His moniker derived from Cotard’s syndrome, a neuropsychiatric disorder where the sufferer is consumed with delusions that range from believing they are missing discrete body parts (their heart or brain…), that their innards are rotting, or that they do not exist (*see footnote), Caden has indeed ceased living in the present. As his play reaches extravagant proportions, any action in the present moment becomes impossible given the oppressive layers of self-reflection and the astronomical complexity of the attempted concurrent representation: Caden is paralyzed and, in accordance with his appellation, recedes from the film itself, his every action controlled by a stand-in director who reads stage directions to him through an ear piece. It is a well-worn motif, as any reader of Doestoevsky will surely point out.

What’s interesting is that, in the wake of postmodernism, literature has tired of this algorithm- its tropes played out, its themes explored ad nauseum by scores of overly- intellectualized self-congratulatory writers well-versed in all modes of fashionable critical theory. Modern literature, in a tired shrug, has turned back to story-telling in a sense (not without the knowing nod here and there to acknowledge that, even though we can acknowledge these thorny thematics, we need not be bogged down in them.) Film is no stranger to this form of investigation. One might ask what point, if any, there is in getting so thoroughly entrenched in this mode of inquiry after Fellini’s 8 ½. We return again to the opening question of this response: that is, does Kaufman’s film advance this set of self-generating questions in any meaningful way. The only appropriate response at this time is that the question is misguided.

While Jacques Derrida can be derided in regards to many things (memorably, at his death several years ago The Onion ran a piece titled Jacques Derrida “Dies”) one of his insights stands strong: that the reflexivity of literature, its ability to both say something and show something (often in such a way that contradicts the saying) is not a quality of a certain sort of writing, it is a quality of writing in general: that is to say, there are extra-textual (if that descriptor even means anything in this day and age) meanings to a text regardless of authorial intent, its structural or psychoanalytic concerns. Texts are reflexive in a peculiarly self-defeating and yet self-sustaining way prior to any smart-assed critical theorist’s reception of them. Hence, the notion of advancing the problematics of self-referentiality is flawed: they are always already advancing/advanced on their own. If anything is said to be advanced in this case, it is our own appreciation for the boundless depths of depressive narcissism.

As such we will close with one additional question: 1) to what extent is an obsession with the infinite nesting dolls of self-reflexivity itself simply a representation of the vicious circle of a certain psychopathology? As any iterated representation is necessarily incomplete, the writer (or director, playwright, or viewer for that matter) is reminded at each turn of a congenital inadequacy that, even if preceding the investigation to begin with, rises to the level of paralyzing obsession. 1A) Does the depressive narcissist generate their own psychopathological tendencies through their predisposition to this type of thought or are they simply drawn to it as an expression of their own desperate psychodynamics?

(*) Eager young psychiatrists may note that Capgras syndrome is also evoked at one point in the film. This neuropsychiatric disorder (** see footnote) is characterized by the delusion that individuals close to the patient him or herself have been replaced by identical-appearing doubles that, despite their exact resemblance, are nonethless imposters.

(**) Thought to be, in many cases, secondary to orbitofrontal lobe damage and the resultant inability to initiate appropriate autonomic bodily responses to the presentation of an emotionally salient individual.

LEWIS celebrates April Fool's Day, divulges chocolate peanut butter treat recipe

As devoted followers of LEWIS! will remember, in 2004 April 1st was declared "A Day for New Beginnings, a Day for Chocolate Peanut Butter Treat." Fast forward 5 years and Chocolate Peanut Butter Treat is the only dessert that can satisfy the poor hungry LEWIS. Even after eating out at a nice restaurant and having a healthy-sized dessert, he returns home to cook up a batch. "I do enjoy a bit of chocolate peanut butter treat every once in a while," states LEWIS, his mouth full with his second serving of the day. In a brief moment of uncharacteristic generosity he then divulges his secret recipe:

1. Take a glob of peanut butter and put it in a pan with a generous handful of chocolate chips.
2. Turn on the heat and melt the chocolate while stirring.
3. Add a handful of oats, continue stirring.
4. Let cool and enjoy!

In other news, this morning LEWIS puts down 2 hours of running in yet another snowstorm.