Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Gerald G — 18 Aug 2015

Synecdoche, New York [sih NEK duh kee] is a synecdoche of Schenectady, New York; the city where the film begins. This film is thought provoking in a way that first attracted me to independent/Foreign/art-house cinema and has stirred this veteran film enthusiast to sit down and pen his thoughts for the first time in years. For that, I am grateful.

First of all, the film is not great, but it does steep the viewer in a dark and gritty alternate reality and leaves a deep impression. The meaning of the film can be summed up in three quotes:

"I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That's what I want to explore. We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we're going to die, each of us secretly believing we won't.".

"What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It's yours. It is time for you to understand this.".

"As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are...".

Kaufman's blend of surrealism and a seemingly 25-to-30-year thread of stream-of consciousness is admirable. As for the surrealism, the film brings to bear the truism that we all see with our emotions. No two people see the same thing the same way. We are, as sentient beings, unable to see purely photographically. In it's surrealism, the film is sometimes comical, sometimes haunting, but always apt.

As for the film's attempt at stream-of-consciousness, it lacks sophistication. Considering the film's Demille-esque sized ensemble-cast and the scale of the film's cinematic and rhetorical reach, Kaufman invites comparison with landmark works. And, when compared with the 1927 film Metropolis by Fritz Lang or William Faulkner's novel The Sound and the Fury , Synecdoche, with it's faux-obscurity, simply does not measure up.

The dramatic arch of the film effectively supports the premise that "We're all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive." However, when Caden is provided the financial means to build an enormous alternate-reality city/movie-set in a huge abandoned dome in Manhattan though funding from a MacArthur Genius Grant, it is difficult to suspend one's disbelief. The grant pays a whopping $625,000. Nice, for sure, but really? Also, the death of most of the cast at the end, whether real or surreal, does not serve the plot but rather seems like a cheap exit strategy from a movie that would otherwise never end.

In all, the film steeps the viewer in a dark and gritty alternate reality and leaves a deep impression. However, the film's cloak of art and intellectualism covers a poorly constructed premise. This may be why I had not heard of it for seven years.