Film Seeing Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York at the Cornerhouse in Manchester was a profound experience. Not so much the process of seeing the film, but rather seeing how the film has processed me since. Even to this day, I'm not sure I've quiet come to terms with what happened, certainly not to a point in which I've been able to watch the dvd copy I bought full price not long afterwards as I could have done in preparing to write about it now.
Here's why. At around that time I began cataloguing my dvds and as you might remember, contrary to all sense and after having probably watched High Fidelity a bit too closely, I decided this should be done in chronological order based on the year in which something is set. Full details can be found here and if you're not shaking your head by the end then there's something wrong with you.
Little did I realise at the time just how profound a decision that would become because here I am in 2015 still cataloguing. Every so often when I've collected enough of them together, bought dvds (removed from their amaray boxes and put in plastic wallets to save space) and whatnot, I'll pile them up, enter the details in Access, try my best to adjudicate which year they're set in, usually easier if the filmmaker has decided for me, then sort them across the boxes.
Potentially this can be quite therapeutic and educational. But there's also a certain level of distress involved as I realise that this may never end. Plus there's the idiotic early decision to not also bother to record the year of production so I can't also see the century of cinema or place all of the films produced in a given year together digitally without retrospectively going back. Genuinely can't be bothered.
Like PSH's character in S-NY, I'm stuck in a cycle unable to stop because of all the work done across the previous decade but fearing I may have to stop for my own sanity because it didn't occur to me that I would be doing this for much of the past decade. I keep imagining making huge decisions like separating the television and films and storing them separately or going through a process of "de-accessioning" and only keeping what's important.
Essentially, I need to be able to look at this shot ...
... and not think, "Yep, pretty much. Looks like useful storage."
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