Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Bartek F — 02 Jan 2010

Many people say that this movie really needed an editor to cut it down, but I'd hate to be the editor asked to do that. "Well maybe we could get rid of this... wait a minute, was that important? Or maybe... no... well... wait, what about this? Oh wait..." No, the editing isn't the issue, the issue is that this movie is a pretty miserable experience, and I don't mean that in a bad way because I'm pretty sure misery was what Kaufman was aiming for. This movie is, frankly, epic, and even more trapped inside the head than his other works. It follows the life of a man, Caden, from mid-aged crisis through death in old age, and structures it around all of the people in his life that slowly die or fade away as he gets increasingly removed from reality, trading in his hypochondria for a never-ending play set within a world within a world that endlessly seeks to recreate and re-interpret his feelings of loss and loneliness. However, it is important to note that it is also meant to be funny. You won't laugh aloud, but this movie is not Charlie Kaufman--it's more like a satire of the danger Kaufman sees in what would happen if his wish to invert the famous "All the world's a stage" quote were to be fulfilled. If what was on screen truly represented Kaufman's own reality, this movie wouldn't exist; and the only times the movie mentions "truth" is once the characters get trapped in a warehouse decidedly removed from the real world.

What really lends this movie its cadence (please excuse the pun) is the really harsh and piercing way it abuses time. Caden slowly ages throughout the entire movie, a process turned tantalizing with the knowledge that the movie will end once he finally dies (and anyone who considers this a spoiler will understand how it's not within five minutes after the movie starts). And forced to wait for him to die, the audience gets to deal with the shocks as the people Caden love die before him, revealing a general (and understandable) fear not only of dying but of dying as the last one left alive. As a result, time jumps in sudden and unexpected ways, and Caden loses complete track of it (despite all of the close-ups of images of clocks throughout the movie). His wife leaves him for a month and suddenly has been gone for a year. His daughter grows to maturity before he's fully aware that she's gone. The Play goes 17 years and counting without ever letting out or gaining an audience. And through it all, Caden finds himself still stuck in the two-hour timespan of the movie itself, until he loses his role as director of millions and becomes the actor of one.

And it drags. There's no denying that. Unfortunately, I can't really imagine the movie working any other way, so those who actually see it have to be patient with it. There's a lot of singular brilliant moments in the malaise, but it's a murky movie and not very willing to let anyone up for air. The best thing about, though, is that Phillip Seymour Hoffman takes what is the most demanding role ever asked for on film and manages to hold it together. The intensity of the acting and the hoops that man has to jump through to work through all the things the character work through pretty much demand that you watch it all the way through. Too bad very few people are going to end up seeing this one; it's very demanding of the audience as well, and even as a Kaufman film presents a whole new mode of film-making.

In the end, this movie made me reconsider my impression of who Charlie Kaufman is as a person. I went into the movie with the assumption that it was about him the way "Adaptation." was about him, but whereas it was in some regards, in other ways its impossible that this movie could really represent him. Instead, Caden is, in fact, a post-modern Willy Loman, and one that needs a car-crash to end his suffering but never really gets it.

I have not fully understand it and I strongly believe that it takes more than 2 viewing to fully appreciate this ambitious title, but I'm confused. Masterpiece or mess, decide yourself.

Two and a half stars out of four.