Movie Review:
Synecdoche, New York
R / 2 hrs., 4 min. / 2008
A synecdoche is a literary device in which an emblematic object is used to succinctly express a reality. When the order is for “all hands on deck,” the captain of the ship certainly expects more than just hands on the deck; he intends for fully-intact sailors to report. The word “hand”, then, is a synecdoche, emblematic for the sailor’s entire being. Until I reminded myself of that nugget of trivia picked up in college, I was at a loss to explain the title of Charlie Kaufman’s latest script and first directing effort, since the fictional Synecdoche, New York takes place in the very real Schenectady.
There is an air of despondency around Caden Cotard. His alarm clock wakes him up with a radio interview of a poet who thrives on verses about Autumn and its death-like symbolism. Every morning he turns to the obituaries in the newspaper. He regularly visits medical specialists who advise him to see other medical specialists. And he is wrapping up rehearsals of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, set to open soon.
It doesn’t help that box office manager Hazel has a crush on Caden, or that his wife Adele confesses in marital counseling to fantasizing about Caden’s death, or that the set for the play falls down shortly before Opening Night, or that Adele clearly shares no enthusiasm for her husband’s work anyway. Indeed, Adele is too busy preparing her display of paintings for an art show in Berlin to be much good as a wife to Caden at all.
When Adele departs for Berlin with their daughter Olive and the trip abroad begins to extend itself indefinitely, Caden finally realizes that he has been left, abandoned. As a director of performing arts, he decides to explore his feelings by staging a play; a play designed to be real, not full of pre-scripted phony emotions but raw and true to life’s pains. To accomplish this realism, Caden stages the play in a vast warehouse, where the set is a life-size replica of several city blocks.
Here in Caden’s personal synecdoche, he hires actors to play people he knows, including someone to play himself. His set includes a scale model of the warehouse they are performing in, and within the warehouse set is yet another warehouse set. Over a rehearsal schedule lasting several years, Caden’s real life and his theatrical life blur until the difference between what is true and what is theater become indiscernible.
Charlie Kaufman is certainly one of the most original screenwriters in modern cinema. He enjoys taking topics that other writers would treat mundanely and bending them, exploring issues like love and self-image in surreal ways. From the comparatively prosaic Adaptation to the bizarre fantasy of Being John Malkovich, Kaufman gives us a memorable and distinctive take on reality.
In Synecdoche, New York, he goes one step further, making it hard to peg reality at all. The first fifteen minutes take place in September, October, December, January, and March despite the immediate continuity of the events involved. The morning cartoons all seem to be about disease and death; and an animated Caden even appears on the television screen. After Adele leaves him, Caden thumbs through a magazine in a waiting room, only to find an interview about her inside. Caden discovers his daughter’s diary under her pillow, and the entries keep updating themselves over the years even though she has never been home to write more. A woman buys a house that is perpetually on fire. Another woman dies in a hospital, and her tattoos die with her. It is as if Caden is wide awake but dreaming at the same time, which is pure Kaufman.
Kaufman is also very thorough. As I sat watching the film for the second time (which is almost required if you’re going to review it intelligently), I was impressed with the way everything relates to Kaufman’s topic. Issues surrounding death, disease, or loneliness infect every scene. Dialogue that seems trivial on the first viewing turns out to be critical to the themes once you hear it again with awareness. And it is no mistake that Caden’s last name, Cotard, is a reference to a mental disorder in which a person believes he is already dead and no longer exists. Kaufman is a man clearly alert to the smallest of details, impressively so.
As Caden, Philip Seymour Hoffman more than capably plays a weary, downcast soul whose every attempt at finding joy and purpose is frustrated. At least three different women enter his life, and he always seems to want the one he has least access to at any given moment. He sends gifts to Olive in Berlin but never receives any reply. He struggles to produce the theatrical monument to realism for years, with each new artistic epiphany fading into confusion until the next one arrives, causing him to repeat throughout the film: “I know how I want to do the play now.” Hoffman makes Caden carry all that weight so effectively that I had a hard time making myself sit and finish the film – the melancholy and despondency are so heavy that reaching the end credits is labor, not fun.
Hoffman is surrounded by Kaufman favorites and seasoned veterans like Catherine Keener as Adele, who has relatively little screen time but uses it well. Though Adele’s words may blame Caden for the dysfunctional marriage, Keener’s tone and delivery render Adele as self-absorbed as Caden. Samantha Morton plays Hazel and successfully takes her character from the smitten young box office manager to Caden’s dedicated life-long assistant director with apparent ease. Every performance, right on down to Dianne Wiest’s appearance which is practically a cameo, is delivered with strength and believability. Or at least the sort of believability a Kaufman landscape can provide.
The script is a production designer’s nightmare, which is why its successful execution is so astounding. Script supervisor Mary Cybulski made elaborate master charts to keep track of which warehouse set each scene takes place within, and her work paid off. The film moves seamlessly from the real Schenectady to Caden’s set of Schenectady, to the set within the set, and on through the layers endlessly. The special effects to further enhance all of this blend in so well I could not tell I was looking at special effects, which should naturally be the goal of every special effects artist.
All in all, Kaufman and his entire company pulled it off with a very understated panache. What is unfortunate is that so much talent was wasted presenting an empty and useless viewpoint. Kaufman’s nihilism states itself overtly in two monologues in the film’s second half. One character talks about life’s being nothing more than waiting, and waiting in vain for something that will offer hope. Another character tells Caden, “You have struggled into existence and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience.” Jon Brion’s music underscores all of this with compositions that at best contain a wistful grasping at hope, but more often drag us down too effectively into Caden’s barren wasteland of existence.
To say I do not subscribe to Kaufman’s message is putting it nicely. Kaufman’s thinking is apparently void of any knowledge of real joy, real happiness, real love. He knows nothing of God, eternity, hope. Through one of his characters, Kaufman sums up life as a brief and pointless existence in which nobody cares about anybody else, in which any sense of satisfaction whatsoever is only attained when we are able to say with conviction: “F*** everybody.”
I’ve never understood why nihilists bother disseminating their message at all, let alone spending millions to preach it in cinematic form. If nihilism is true, then there’s no escape from it and thus no point in “helping” everyone realize this. It’s like having a cell mate who wakes up every morning and reminds you that you’re serving a life sentence in an inescapable prison. What is a person supposed to do with that knowledge? Likewise, what am I supposed to take home from the movie? If the film had suggested for a moment that because life is short I should let loose and live it up, I could at least follow the logical flow of thought even while still disagreeing. But Kaufman suggests that because life is short and painful, there’s nothing to do but sit around and mope about it until no one wants to be around you anymore. And maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get in some sex along the way.
Synecdoche, New York demonstrates once again that Charlie Kaufman is a clever and savvy writer. It also demonstrates that he is a talented director. And it also reveals that he is a blind, misguided, and ignorant philosopher.
My Score: 6
