Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Grade:B+
Credit Charlie Kaufman with at least one thing: the guy’s flippin’ creative. From Adaptation.’s meta-narrative to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s unique storytelling style and back to Being John Malkovich’s startling originality, the guy can come up with something innovative. (Heck, he’s responsible for someone fictitious getting a nomination for an Oscar.) What all his previous projects have in common is that they weren’t directed by him. Auteurs like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry have taken Kaufman’s dense narratives and put their own spins on them. With Kaufman’s latest, Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman takes the reins as director for the first time. His same audacity is on display once again, but the final product is messy, overly ambitious, and ultimately worth the effort to try and figure it out. It’s all over the map, but not in a necessarily bad way.
Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a hypochondriac, constantly worrying that something is wrong with him, and most of the time he’s right. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener), an artist, whisks their daughter Olive away on a business trip to Berlin from which they never return. As Caden begins to mount a massive theater project with the help of a MacArthur “Genius” grant, he hires his old box office attendant Hazel (Samantha Morton) to act as assistant while he falls in love with his lead actress Claire (Michelle Williams), from whom he eventually separates. His theater project concerns constructing a life-size replica of New York City in a vast warehouse where actors inhabit the space and play real people, improvising their scenes daily as Caden walks around critiquing how “real” they’re acting. Caden eventually casts himself as a character (Tom Noonan), enlists Claire to play herself, and hires another actress (Emily Watson) to play Hazel in this world-within-a-world. Except it seems that there’s never an audience for this play, due to Caden’s constant strive for perfection.
It’s a tricky tricky movie. There’s no simpler way to say this – it’s like David Lynch, but nicer. On the whole, its narrative can be followed, though there are avant-garde touches here and there (Hazel buys a house that’s constantly on fire, with no real explanation given), and the final half hour devolves into what can most gently be described as a meditation, but what many viewers might call WTF?!!-inducing. For lack of a better term, of course.
Ultimately, there’s simply too much going on in Kaufman’s head for one film here. But honestly, I’d rather have that be a problem in a film than have a screenplay on autopilot with no originality. So while the film perhaps has too many members of its ensemble cast than totally necessary, too many meta-narratives going on, or too dense a conclusion, it’s still a finished product that is wholly interesting, regardless of whether you’re liking it or not. For me, that’s only a good thing and should be commended, but for many viewers (including one of my viewing companions), it’s off-putting.
Though the film seems to flat-line for the first two-thirds, simply coasting on the interactions between Caden and the women in his life (the fantastic cast also includes Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Weist, and Hope Davis – the film’s an embarrassment of acting riches), it’s never boring. Caden is far from the most cheerful protagonist (think Joel from Eternal Sunshine, if he had married Clementine and fifteen years had passed without any of the cuteness or love between them surviving), yet the film is surprisingly funny – laugh-out-loud funny at many points, especially concerning Hope Davis as Caden’s ever-present psychiatrist, even in the midst of a depressing film. Kaufman’s thesis is apparently “life sucks and then you die and it all doesn’t matter anyway so fuck it,” but he situates one of the most depressing messages I’ve seen on film all year within what is also one of the funniest films I’ve seen all year. Dichotomies – gotta love ‘em.
Then there’s the final act of the film. As Dianne Weist’s lovely narration flits through as Caden finally sees some completion to his theater project, the film takes a more disjointed and artful approach. Though you may be wondering what the hell you’re supposed to make of it all, the writing is so on-point and delivered so well that you’re at least positive that something profound is going on. It’s a film that I can tell will reward multiple viewings, and though I’m not gunning to see it in the theater again, I’ll certainly rent it in the future to try and glean something more. The film is ultimately the equivalent of finally getting inside Kaufman’s head, for better or for worse, and it’s a fascinating journey.
Bottom Line:
It’s weird even for Kaufman, bursting with creativity and ideas, and ultimately kind of maddening. It’s depressing and hilarious, everything at once, and ultimately fascinating, regardless of its more unsuccessful elements.
© 2004-2009 Ben Waldorf. Posted November 06, 2008. IMDB