Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Joey S — 25 Jul 2013

I am a huge fan of Charlie Kaufman's work. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich are among my favorite movies. That said, Synecdoche, New York is the weakest movie I've seen from him.

Like most of his movies, it's dark and surreal with a main character who represents Kaufman himself. However, without an experienced director like Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry to form a movie out of Kaufman's unique ideas, Synecdoche overreaches and ends up being an incoherent and depressing mess.

It follows talented playwright Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who, after receiving a MacArthur grant, decides to create his most ambitious play yet, involving a scaled recreation of Schenectady, New York in a massive warehouse.

The play is simply an accurate recreation of Cotard's life and the lives of the people around him, but as decades pass and no progress is made, the completion of the play becomes increasingly unlikely.

Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, and Emily Watson co-star as the lovers that Cotard cycles through over the dozens of years that pass by during the story. Watching the movie seems to take decades though, as it's so hopelessly pessimistic and just full of self-pity and pretension.

It's a comedy-drama and there are a few funny moments, but they're drowned in a sea of depression so it's easy to to forget that you're supposed to be laughing while the protagonist physically deteriorates and loses everything and everyone he has ever loved.

You could write a book on the underlying meaning contained within the movie and the events that transpire in it, but the messages and themes are easy to miss among the very confusing and messy plot structure that skips years at a time without making it clear that time has passed.

Seymour Hoffman gives a great performance as always, infusing a little bit of life into an otherwise very cold movie, and I thought Michelle Williams did a good job as well. The entire cast is undeniably talented and the cast is by far one of the most positive aspects of the movie.

The thing I like about Charlie Kaufman movies is that they're not only imaginative and hilarious, but they have a simplicity and human quality to them that I find makes them easy to watch again and again.

Synecdoche, New York is definitely ambitious, in fact it's his most ambitious movie yet, but it feels lacks that fundamental humanity and humor to balance the darker elements, leaving it to feel very unpleasant and cold.

Without a director like Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry, the movie is unorganized and frankly convoluted. I love just about everything Charlie Kaufman does but he's much more skilled as a screenwriter than as a director, and nothing makes that point more clearly than Synecdoche, New York.