Synecdoche, New York

As dogs we don’t often get to see people age. We accept that they’re static (as much as our tenuous grasp on “time” will allow, and what is it, anyway?), but in Synecdoche, New York, we watch a person age right before our eyes. It’s a bit shocking, I have to say. They do some odd things with vaguely dog-like overtones. Consider: the guy mates with a female, has a litter, and then moves on… but he’s more than happy to sniff that female if she comes back around (I’m not saying this is right, and BTW I’m neutered so it’s all academic to me). He buys a huge kennel and assembles a pack, then starts building kennels within kennels. The oddest part of this movie, though, is that there are apparently breeds of people! Why did I not know this? There’s the lead-guy breed, which loses fur on top of its head, and the curly-furred female breed, and the light-furred female breed, and it appears to be the lead guy’s mission to assemble these breeds into identical packs and watch their behavior (his job appears to be that of people-trainer so this is totally in character). He does a good job too, with a couple of examples of each breed, so identical-looking you’d have to smell them to tell them apart. I’ve really never seen anything like it; it’s quite something. No wonder the lead guy gets a MacArthur Fellowship!

(As far as the story goes… You know, I have to be honest here and admit that I was working a rawhide which had me pretty well engrossed until toward the end when I started to realize what was happening with the people-breeds. It’s worth seeing, even without any dogs in it, for the people-packs.)