synecdoche, new york

Synecdoche, New York (2008)
directed by Charlie Kaufman
****1/4

I've never seen anything like this film before. In a way, that one sentence seems the most eloquent praise I can give, before I make a fool of myself trying to explain what I mean. Part of me wishes I could just tell you that this film is unique. You would have to decide for yourself to see it - or not - and have your own experience with Synecdoche, New York. But that's not how a review works, is it?

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman has become a cause célèbre for his wildly inventive (and yet thoroughly human) films, such unclassifiables as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and - one of my all-time favorites - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Where this quirky virtuoso gets his ideas, I'm almost afraid to ask. Here's a hint: you'll know you're in a Kaufman film, because the premise is so bizarre that you'd swear it had to be a science fiction flick (except it's not). For instance ... A filing clerk accidentally discovers that an unused door in his office is actually a portal into a famous actor's brain (Being John Malkovich). A manners-obsessed scientist finds a man raised in the wild and determines to try out a Pygmalion-style enculturation (Human Nature). Halfway through having his ex-girlfriend erased from his memory, a depressed man realizes he can fight the process and save his love (Eternal Sunshine). Strange? Yes. POE-free? No way. Absolutely wonderful? Absolutely yes.

Kaufman's newest enters stage left to reveal an aimless theatre director, a man who has entered mid-life crisis at least a few years too early. This is strange - his self-obsessive uncertainty - because this is also a man who has just won a MacArthur Grant, and can fund the project of his dreams. If only he could figure out what production to put on. Now that, as a premise, sounds like a certain stinker of a film to me. It sounds like a Ron Howard weirdo-feel-good special, or a dankly morbid indie from some no-name on Xanax. Hey, I judge a book by its cover just like everyone else.

Joyfully, splendiferously, I've forgotten to factor in the Charlie Kaufman element. You know, that magical catalyst that turns lead into gold and an odd idea into a masterpiece? That's the one. A story begins spinning out like silk from this zinger of a premise and soon we're tangled up in one of the most human, most original stories I've ever seen on film.

Caden Cotard (embodied magnificently by Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose magnificent performance was horrifically robbed of the Oscar) thinks he's dying and wants to do something meaninful before he goes. He over-analyzes every weird medical tic. He determines to create a work of agonizing realism, one that will shake his audience to their senses. He wants his marriage to work out, even though his wife left years ago, taking their daughter to Germany.

Adele, his wife, paints microscopic works of art to great acclaim. Caden determines to make his play life-size, and rents out a massive warehouse where he begins to recreate his own life in living color - including a scaled-down version of New York City itself. In addition, he casts actors to play everyone in his life (including himself). By putting his life on display, Caden hopes to discover his reason for being, while also making a statement. Soon, though, his obsession for self-analysis gets out of control, and Caden is casting characters to play the actors themselves, and has a set built inside the first set. Months go by, and eventually, years. His cast gets skittish - are they not good enough to go on Broadway, or is this continuous rehearsal actually the performance itself, with the same people as both cast and audience?

Kaufman became inspired to make the film when realizing how different plays and films are from each other. Plays, he found, are different in every performance, but a film is always the same. What if, Kaufman countered, a film could be different every time you watched it? Not just a Sixth Sense sort of double layer, but a truly new experience, complete with new discoveries, new impressions, new meaning. I have yet to see the film a second time, but I can already tell that he succeeded. Synecdoche goes by at the speed of life, which is an amazing feat in itself, since a very real-feeling passage of time ends up covering decades of time in the space of a couple hours. But within that real-life pacing - just as in each of our lives - so much happens that we don't appreciate the first time around.

When I began writing this review, I was going to attempt to dip into some of those layers - the certainty of death, the difficulty of living well, the pain of loss and passing time, our longing for things to be made right, the life we live at the expense of others, art and its conflicted contributions to the world, and so on. I was going to talk about what an amazing number of fantastic women's roles Kaufman wrote into the film, what probably amounts to the best ensemble cast of women's performances on film (Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest). But it would be pointless for me even to start. You just need to decide whether you're going to watch this film or not. And if/when you do, you need to throw away all of your preconceptions about what a film is supposed to be and do. You need to sit back and enjoy the experience of Synecdoche, New York, with all its weirdities and wonders. And then, if you get the chance, you need to watch it again.

Warning: This film does contain POE. If you're unsure about whether it would be a good fit for you, read a little more about it first.

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Will. Thanks for this review. I finally got around to seeing this film (for the first time), a decision motivated in no small part by your review. I was not disappointed. Thanks again.

[John Chiafos]

i saw this film once. my sister just rented it for me, not knowing i'd seen it, so now i'll have to decide between re-watching that and re-watching "American Splendor," which she bought me for $2 at Blockbuster. i'm thinking "American Splendor."

i still don't know what to think of "Synecdoche" yet. i love the performances--especially hoffman and samantha morton, who doesn't do enough films--and it's extremely well-made. it reminds me a lot of welles' 'the trial.' it has a dream logic (which is quickly becoming a glittering generality to me) which is sometimes annoying, sometimes hilarious, sometimes cool, sometimes surprisingly romantic.

what's weird is that the first twenty minutes of the film is its most off-putting and gross section. it's almost like kaufman's trying to sift his less courageous viewers away before giving us the meat of the story.

it's ridiculously creative, which is kaufman's greatest strength/weakness.

i still liked 'eternal sunshine...' better, if only because i knew i liked it the first time i watched it.