Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by Ajai K — 14 Jun 2013

Synecdoche, New York, a movie with a grand scale emcompassing the totality of life's experiences, apparently. The movie is surreal art at it's most thought-provoking, with characters lives being intertwined and duplicated and imitated, it goes off the scale of normal coherence, yet still manages to capture the attention because it treads upon very serious and universal existential concerns. The movie is driven by the performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who evokes in us so much pity in the suffering that his characters faces even though he is self-indulgent and obstinate.

The movie starts deceptively as a family drama but reveals signs that there are greater things at work. The story is centred on Hoffman's character who is a self-possessed writer, and is frowned upon by his wife who sees the end of the relationship as inevitable. Hoffman is managing to complete a play of his while getting infatuated with one of his co-workers, he also has to manage his daughter, and his wife's increasing ambivalence towards him not to mention his aggravating health. Soon his wife leaves him with their daughter, while he is left alone with all the freedom he needs to complete his masterpiece with the grant he has received. This much of the story is easily discernible and can be subject to simple explanation but trying to explain the rest in a chronological of coherent manner is impossible.

The movie is to be understood via though characters analysis and their motivations. The protagonist suffers from a myriad varieties of existential complexes that makes him a strong point, and the rest of the characters who are made as surreal interpretations of himself, the people who he has been close with, the rest of the world he has interacted with.

The true explanation of this film is beyond my grasp at this point, only with further viewing will I truly understand it's subtleties and complex overlapping themes, but it should not be subject to any simple analysis as it is totally against what it is. But in summary, you could say this way wants to capture life in all its miseries and uncertainties.