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SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK To attempt to encapsulate Synecdoche, New York, in a few hundreds words seems a daunting task – akin, perhaps, to building a gymnasium out of wet sand or watching video clips of Ann Coulter without feeling a bit of puke rising up into the mouth. Writer Charlie Kaufman (also making his directorial debut) has never felt the need to be constricted by what conventional wisdom declares are the boundaries of the motion picture form, as evidenced by his scripts for Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. While hardly his best film, this might perhaps be his most outrageous one yet. It takes the notion of life as merely one sprawling play – or, as Shakespeare put it in As You Like It, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" – and literalizes it, as theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), reeling from a life full of illness and unfulfilled relationships, mounts a navel-gazing play that will consume him until his death. He hires actors to play himself as well as acquaintances, and he's constantly updating the material as his real existence shifts in different directions. On paper, this all might sound gimmicky, and a lengthy running time (just over two hours) allows many of the scenes to feel like nothing more than Kaufman taking jabs at narrative conventions; i.e. his unpredictability becomes predictable. But as the film enters its final chapters, his musings on memory, identity and especially aging stir up a gathering storm of audience empathy, and as the final credits roll, we reflect not on the cleverness of the script but, rather unexpectedly, on its emotional impact. ***
TWILIGHT Working from the first novel in Stephenie Meyer's literary franchise, director Catherine Hardwicke and scripter Melissa Rosenberg have made Twilight a love story first and a vampire tale second. Kristen Stewart stars as Bella, who moves to Forks, Wa., and finds herself attracted to the enigmatic Edward (Robert Pattinson), who sports a pasty-white complexion and avoids the company of the other high school kids. But he is likewise drawn to Bella, and as their relationship grows, he exposes his true nature to her. Twilight is occasionally overwrought, yet Hardwicke turns that into a blessing rather than a curse. The astute director, who previously helmed Thirteen, understands her teen protagonists, and rather than speak down to them (and, by extension, to the film's youthful viewers), she allows their angst-filled behavior, their oversized emotionalism, to register as the most important thing in the world (because, to a teenager caught up in the moment, that's exactly what it is). This ripeness in the movie's form and content fuels the heated romance between Edward and Bella, and the romantic sessions between them have an aching sweetness, marred only by an obtrusively florid score (by the usually reliable Carter Burwell) that threatens to turn these sequences into Viagra for Teens commercials. There's some late-inning action when Edward and his family must stop a "bad" vampire (Cam Gigandet) who's determined to snack on Bella's blood, but this part of the film feels rushed and tacked-on. Clearly, Hardwicke's interest remains firmly on matters of the heart – a heart unencumbered by the traditional wooden stake, of course. ***
OPENS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12:
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL: Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connelly.
MILK: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch.
NOTHING LIKE THE HOLIDAYS: John Leguizamo, Debra Messing.
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto.
