The most challenging film of the 2000s, that’s also as rewarding. Even Mulholland Drive unlocked for me after a couple of viewings, but I’ve seen this three times now and still feel ill-equipped to write about it. Charlie Kaufman’s surreal comedy about death and the long time it takes to live to that point contains enough material for a lifetime of work. I fully believe a much longer version of the film remains locked inside a hard drive. I hope it never gets out.
While Caden’s life work keeps adding bigger layers, his ex-wife works on an increasingly smaller scale. The daughter becomes a human tattoo project. Actors are cast to play actors who were cat to play real people. Meanwhile, the house is always on fire. This is all real good stuff, ambiguous yet surprisingly easy to play along with. It all comes to a head in the final movement, a masterful piece of editing where Kaufman ties all his ideas together, while giving one of the great summations of life and death in modern cinema.
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