Funeral Monologue from Synecdoche, New York.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Written/Directed by Charlie Kaufman
http://www.sonyclassics.com/synecdocheny/

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Synecdoche
• Charlie
• Kaufman
• Funeral
• Monologue

[jollybengali887]

The scene is beautiful. Truly, transcendently beautiful. But there's never been a scene anywhere, ever, that's more wrong to pull out of context. The film does not endorse this scene. And that's so much of what the film is saying.

I love the scene but it's fucking wrong to post it here.

[mattyohe]

@jollybengali887 I can find some people who disagree.

[datosmandatos]

@shizzyfinn I guess I'll have to accept that I'm looking at it different than you.

[shizzyfinn]

@datosmandatos this scene is Millicent Weems stepping in and powerfully saying what Caden ultimately wants to say with his play and with his life. Which ends up being "boo-hoo, my life didn't work out how I wanted, and fuck everybody for not kissing my ass all the time"

[datosmandatos]

@shizzyfinn um... I'm not sure if that's what I take from this. This scene in particular explains that he has to take responsibility for his own problems and his trespasses against other people. He doesn't think it's there fault at all, mainly because they are all thinking the same thing, "fuck everybody". He knows they don't care about his problems like he doesn't care about their problems. That's the way it should be.

[mexicansmell]

@datosmandatos The trick - the mind-fucking human condition - is dealing with time and space. Is death the elimination of time and space? Does death exist, even? How about time, does that exist? Or are we just caught in the quantitative aspect of time? Have only a few among us tapped into the qualitative aspect; the kairotic element of time, if you will. It is that essential moment where nothing matters, only what you philosophize, what you theorize, what you fucking do with yourself, there!

[mexicansmell]

Nihilism is too fucking easy, n'est-ce pas?

[angelortiz69]

wow.

[shizzyfinn]

@datosmandatos Caden realized he wasn't special only after losing two marriages and two daughters, and after stringing his mistress on for decades. And to his eyes, all of it was other people's faults. In the end, he winds up shuffling toward death all by himself, unfulfilled, and unhappy. Tragedy City, population: Caden.

[datosmandatos]

@shizzyfinn Does it really matter when a person realizes this point? How can it be a tragedy, if you finally understand how to actually live. Sure, It is late in his life, but at the same time a person is only here for "a fraction of a fraction of a second" learning something like your equality to most of humanity is a monumental accomplishment. The tragedy isn't Caden's, it's the audiences. it's like death, the tragedy isn't the deceased, but rather the living who don't know how to live.

[shizzyfinn]

@datosmandatos I agree it's the point he realizes he's not special. But he realizes it awful late in life, and his takeaway from realizing it is not harmonious ("welcome everybody") but acrimonious ("fuck everybody"). And therein lies the tragedy. Caden is human wreckage. His life story is a horror movie. Fuck him.

[datosmandatos]

@trumpet90909 apparently another Spike Jonze project and a musical. I am excited to see his next works. If they are ever completed.