It's hard to know what to say about this one. It starts out as just a bleak movie about a depressed guy with mysterious ailments, and for a good chunk of the movie it looks like that's all there's going to be. Then odd surrealistic elements start popping up and time comes loose from its moorings. And eventually the central concept of the ultimate play is introduced.
All this weird stuff is kind of interesting, and kind of intriguing, and there are some really clever ideas mixed into it all, yet the movie seems aimless and far too depressing. Not that depressing is bad, but in a way it doesn't mesh with the surrealism.
I think Kaufmann just had too many ideas he wanted to stick in. The central play is a really great idea that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but I feel it would have worked a lot better if that had been the entire focus; in other words, make a fairly straightforward movie with a weird but almost plausible mechanism rather than pile weirdness on top of weirdness. Kaufmann's goal seems to have been to out-weird his previous screenplays, and he certainly succeeds there, but it just loses focus. And you can argue that a self-indulgent, unfocused movie is perfect when it's about a self-indulgent, unfocused play, but ultimately it seems like Kaufmann is just saying, I'm messed up, the world is messed up, and I'm just going to toss the whole mess at you and let you manage it as best you can.
Sure, it's art. But Kaufmann has in the past been great at combining art with entertainment, and here the entertainment has been tossed out in favor of a statement that is never clear. And by making a less entertaining film, Kaufmann has managed to simply highlight where he fails as an artist.
All this weird stuff is kind of interesting, and kind of intriguing, and there are some really clever ideas mixed into it all, yet the movie seems aimless and far too depressing. Not that depressing is bad, but in a way it doesn't mesh with the surrealism.
I think Kaufmann just had too many ideas he wanted to stick in. The central play is a really great idea that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but I feel it would have worked a lot better if that had been the entire focus; in other words, make a fairly straightforward movie with a weird but almost plausible mechanism rather than pile weirdness on top of weirdness. Kaufmann's goal seems to have been to out-weird his previous screenplays, and he certainly succeeds there, but it just loses focus. And you can argue that a self-indulgent, unfocused movie is perfect when it's about a self-indulgent, unfocused play, but ultimately it seems like Kaufmann is just saying, I'm messed up, the world is messed up, and I'm just going to toss the whole mess at you and let you manage it as best you can.
Sure, it's art. But Kaufmann has in the past been great at combining art with entertainment, and here the entertainment has been tossed out in favor of a statement that is never clear. And by making a less entertaining film, Kaufmann has managed to simply highlight where he fails as an artist.