Antkind
Even those of us who consider ourselves fans know it is not so easy to describe or recommend Charlie Kaufman movies. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: It’s a ??romantic?? movie about a couple that erases each other from memory and then tries to stop it. Adaptation: Charlie Kaufman wrote Charlie Kaufman trying to write an adaptation of a book about flowers. Being John Malkovich: a desperate puppeteer discovers a back-room portal into the mind of character actor, John Malkovich. Synecdoche NY: an insomniac playwright uses a mysterious genius grant for an ongoing theater piece on his life that gradually involves scenes from his past, present, future, scenes of scenes, and scenes within scenes. No matter how much I lose them in the pitch, I can end by saying, ‘Trust me. Just watch it.’
A narcissistic film critic B is at the end of his rope. He feels the world is against him. His actor girlfriend is leaving him. He is unemployed. His writing and reviews are ignored. He hates everyone, especially overrated filmmakers and the masses who praise them. He seems to have a particular hatred for writer/director Charlie Kaufman, who gets too far up his ass to make any sense. The only filmmaker elevated above his scorn and worthy of praise is Wes Anderson.
B catches a lucky break when his neighbor invites him to watch a movie he has spent most of his life making: a stop-action puppet movie that requires at least three months to watch in its entirety. A cast of thousand puppets was made by hand, all with extensive backstories and families/friends that never appeared on screen but were made as well. B watches the movie and realizes the monumental, world-changing achievement it is. When the neighbor dies, B takes it upon himself to show the film to the world, assigning himself as the premier scholar and advocate of the piece. The only copy of the film is destroyed by a mysterious fire. B then has no choice but to recreate it, from memory, but to remember the 3-month-long movie, he has to use therapy, hypnotism, and multiple copies of himself. And that is just the part of the premise that makes the most sense.
I recommend Antkind to anyone looking for a fresh, innovative story. You will never read a novel like it, although I would advise watching its film cousins Synecdoche and Adaptation to anyone unfamiliar with his style. Fellow fans of Kaufman’s cryptic and meta-humorous films should be excited to read his novel debut; Antkind is true Kaufman form. It is just as zany, head-spinning, and oddly endearing as any of his films. I feel like he had a story but realized that it would be impossible to portray it on screen with hopes of audiences understanding anything—and that is saying something considering what he and frequent collaborator Spike Jonze have filmed. Kaufman utilizes the freedom of first-person narration to play with his consistent themes of identity, mortality, gender identity, and commentary.
