Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Victor T — 28 Aug 2015

Charlie Kaufman has proven that he is a writer that thinks outside the box and comes up with peculiar journeys throughout the human psyche, and I love the majority of his screenplays ("Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation", "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and I like a little "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" ). But in 2008, due to Spike Jonze preferring to make "Where the Wild Things Are" , Kaufman not only wrote a screenplay but he also direct its movie, the polarizing "Synecdoche, New York". Is this the masterpiece some people claim it is or is it the messy pretentious film others consider it?

Caden Cotard is a theater director that has demonstrated to have potential in his profession but he has a "peculiar" relationship with his wife, who is also an artist. Eventually Caden starts to suffer from some health issues, and he receives the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, so Caden decides to use the fellowship in a humongously ambitious play.

With Kaufman in the writing department, you know that this film will be a complex character study revolving around his struggles with some little doses surreal imagery, but even that can't completely describe his directorial debut. "Synecdoche, New York" is a film that you can see why it is either hail or hated. It has the most ambitious and postmodernist script Kaufman has written to date, the themes are mostly the ones you will expect from Kaufman but the execution and visualization of them are mesmerizing, the visuals are beautiful, the story is this poetic tragedy that will get a variety of emotions out of you, some surreal ideas are so bizarre that they hypnotize you (one of the main objectives of surrealism), the main character is complex, tragic and sympathetic; some character driven sequences are shocking, the dialog is mostly beautiful, and a lot of psychological concepts are used subtlety. Of course, this ambitious experiment is not perfect, it has a lot of problems: Kaufman´s directing really shows that he doesn't know a lot of filmmaking (he is a masterful writer but he needs to learn more about cinema), the story is ambitious but it feels like Kaufman tried to compete with David Lynch as it comes off as his attempt to make his version of "Mulholland Drive" and "Inland Empire", the pacing drags at certain moments, some concepts are presented but never achieve the potential they had (something shocking for Kaufman), some scenes are a little unnecessary, and the first half is only there for set up and it goes a little too long (thankfully that mesmerizingly beautiful second half arrives).

"Synecdoche New York" is a beautiful postmodern and surreal tragedy. It is ambitious, poetic, unforgettable, mesmerizing, and emotional. It is undeniably a flawed film, but still is a well executed experiment (although it shows that Kaufman needs a director to limit his ideas and adapt them in an artistic way). If you like upbeat stories that will make you cheer then avoid this film. It is not a masterpiece, but it could have been.