Charlie Kaufman: The hopeless romantic. Emphasis on hopeless. In the midst of his invariably abstract looks at memory, self-loathing, and the capacity of media itself, his depiction of love always feels like it’s being viewed through a neurotic screen. Romantic leads who can’t allow themselves to experience love, and when they do, it only serves to rip the guts out of that feeling being real in the first place. His latest feature finds him well and truly in this mode of storytelling, going even further down the abstract path to deliver one of the single most pessimistic depictions of love I've ever sat through.
