"Synecdoche, New York," Sony Pictures Classics, 2008

At first blush, we’d like to hear Žižek’s full-frontal reading of Charlie Kaufman’s "Synecdoche, New York" (2008), except, since we’re talking about Kaufman, the movie rolls out already packing loaded pistols of autocritique -- what could one say that Kaufman hasn’t already implicitly said within the film? Simulacrum wrapped in theatrical conceit wrapped in self-consciousness -- bring me the head of Jean Baudrillard, please. One of the great critical mud-wrestles of 2008, Kaufman’s film is a daunting, fabulous construction that dares to be both magical and depressively reductive, just as the George Clooney-directed “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” dared to be a faux-biopic comedy without laughs, and Spike Jonze’s “Adaptation” dared to be an autocritique that gradually, deliberately became the kind of movie it professed to loathe. (But did it really? No, it didn’t, but yes, it did.)

This kind of culture work can veer into self-negation, into Dada, and can in any case explode like a hand grenade you don’t throw away like you’re supposed to. "Synecdoche" -- eponymously defined as a film that stands in for its fragmented layers, and vice-versa -- is a busy, absurdly inhabited, love-filled chronicle of catastrophic loneliness, as well as a portrait of titanic creative achievement (not unlike Kaufman’s, of course) that is nonetheless frustrated by a self-conscious hollowness. The contradictions extend to Kaufman himself, who reaches for significance and emotional connection even as he insists on the impossibility of doing so. The movie, the dogged self-torture of which is never less than admirable, can be torture for us, too; I witnessed a suburban filmgoer demand his money back after he’d sat through all 124 minutes, and eventually I knew how he felt. But simultaneously it’s a monumental thing, a magnificent testament to one man’s existentiality (which man, however, is your call), and one of the great films, with Renoir’s "The Golden Coach," Carné’s "Les Enfants du Paradis," and Jia’s "Platform," about theater. I swore I’d never watch it again, but then I did.

"The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema" (Lone Star Productions) and "Synecdoche, New York" (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) are now available on DVD.

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