Synecdoche, New York

I know I'm pretty late to the party on this one but I recently bought and watched this and wanted to write about it in an attempt to maybe peak some more peoples interest in it. There are some movies you put in when you just want to mindlessly watch something, this is not one of them. Synecdoche, New York is a movie that takes a lot of effort and thought to get something out of it, but its things like this that are always the most rewarding in the end.

Synecdoche is Charlie Kaufmans first attempt at directing one of his own unique scripts. The writer behind such eccentric movies as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman definitely offers a different vision of movies. So much so that the term Kaufman-esque has already been coined and used on such films as Stranger Than Fiction and the upcoming Cold Souls. Let loose on his own work, with the directors chair and final cut, could have been a disaster, and in some eyes it probably is.

It all depends on how much you want to put in. Synecdoche is metaphor layered on top of metaphor layered on top of metaphor layered on top of metaphor. Its an amalgamation of every single one of a paranoid mans fears throughout his entire life. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a man inordinately obsessed with death, or maybe he thinks he is dead. His last name also happens to be the name of a syndrome with which the sufferer believes themselves to be dead, or putrefying, or has lost his/her own blood and internal organs.

Really it doesn't matter though, you can come to a million different conclusions on why Caden believes the things he believes. At the core, the movie is about time. The first scene, which takes place in what Caden believes and acts like is a day, really is almost 6 months long. We hear news reports of holidays coming and going and see newspaper headlines changing as Caden goes about his life blissfully unaware of how quickly it's slipping by. One of the other characters in the movie, Hazel played by Samantha Morton, buys a house that's currently on fire, it takes the rest of her life to burn. Everything in the movie plays with time.

It's possible for every scene to affect someone in a different way. I listened to a lot of discussions on the movie after viewing it and everyone had a particular scene that moved them the most. None of them mentioned the one that really shook me. One in which Caden attempts to track down his daughter, countless years having passed for her but almost no time at all having passed in his mind. He's found her from a magazine cover she appeared on, covered in tattoos, yet when he confronts her lover who won't let him see her he forgets how long has passed and screams "She's 4, she's a 4 year old".

It can be a bitterly depressing movie, that leaves you in a reflective mood for quite awhile after. But even so Kaufman still peppers in some genuinely funny writing. I haven't even mentioned the main plot of the movie, in which Caden attempts to create a play that slowly becomes his life, with actors playing actors in the movie and a warehouse so big that he eventually recreates all of New York within the warehouse that's within New York. Like I've said, it doesn't matter, its all a thick layer of metaphors, and could be interpreted in a myriad of ways.

If you like that sort of thing like I do, then dive right in. Here are some resources to help you out of your post Synecdoche watching funk:
The Life of the Mind Pt. 1
The Life of the Mined Pt. 2
Roger Eberts Review
/Filmcast Discussion
Creative Screenwriting Magazines Kaufman Interview