Review of Synecdoche, New York (2008) by William W — 13 Jan 2010

I saw this film about a week or so ago, and I was planning on writing a review immediately after. But then I saw it, and I had nothing to write. Literally nothing. Now that I've seen it a second time, I'm still a little confused but sort of get the gist, and hopefully I can make sense in this review. I can't say that I fully believe it's a masterpiece, and perhaps tomorrow I'll disagree with giving it a 90%. But here it goes.

For those of you who don't know, Synecdoche, New York is about a theater director who is having a mid-life crisis. That's the bottom line. To be more specific, he creates another world inside a warehouse to be his "masterpiece" about his life and everyone in it. Throughout the film he continues to spiral down and the lines between reality and surreality are tremendously blurred.

I have searched high and low for different meanings for this film, and I have found almost polarized ideas of opinions. I never really read other people's reviews of films if I can avoid it, but this one I did. And it didn't help. I wanted to find a miracle cure for the truth and meaning behind this film, but I didn't find it. So I will say this: Synecdoche, New York means whatever it means to you, and I think that's what writer/director Charlie Kaufman was trying to do.

Take the burning house, for example. This is one of the most prominent symbolisms in the film, and it's pretty easy to explain. Hazel wants a Christian husband and a nice family in a beautiful home. The realtor says it's a perfect house for a single woman, because all of single women are looking for that house exactly. Hazel knows it's on fire, she can see it. She's worried about dying in the fire, but buys it anyway. There is an almost universal message to this that applies to the whole film: we know how we're going to die, and we all are just waiting for it to happen, and no one does anything about it.

The entire film is mirrored by the play within a play in the beginning. Death of a Salesman is basically the same story as this one deep down. Caden casts younger actors "by choice" to play Willy and his wife, and that is because in the film, dying is such a more prominent issue, earlier and earlier. While Willy Loman is stuck in the past trying to put off his inevitable death and failures, Caden does the opposite, or is it the same? What Caden does is attempt to create something memorable for himself and his life so he doesn't die the way Willy did. So, instead, he creates this alternate, surrealistic yet dangerously honest world in hopes to make a name for himself, but really, he just wasted his life trying.

Caden's failed relationships could all have been avoided if he wasn't tangled up in his own world all the time. Everyone's issues were his issues, like his young daughter Olive and her green poo. Caden acts like everyone in his life is just a character and he is the only real person. As sad as it may sound, I think everyone does the same thing. We don't really know what it's like to be someone else. Not at all. Luckily, that issue is resolved when Caden realizes (through an actor playing a character playing another character in his play) that everyone is a lead in their own life, and no one is small. In attempts to recreate reality, Caden keeps expanding and making his play bigger and bigger until it becomes his own twisted life that is never as fulfilling as he wanted it to be. No one's life ever is.

When looking back on life, we never really remember everything. All the people, everyone we meet, we just remember little moments. Little moments that somehow connect everyone together. That's what this film is. Little moments in life that could be wonderful but in turn trouble us until death. For instance, Caden cannot get over the loss of his failed first marriage, and keeps going back to clean that apartment. Why? Although it may seem like she lives there, we as an audience know that she'll never come back. We all just sit and talk about what happened back then and reality just repeats itself and repeats itself. No one really lives in the present. We live in the past, we plan for the future, but we never really live in the present. Our pasts haunt us forever, and eventually, we all grow old and waddle around trying to figure out where it all went wrong. But we knew when we were young that this would happen, and in an attempt to fix the future which seems to be prewritten, we waste time trying to change it and it is all one big paradox, like many things in the film.

I realize that none of this really makes sense, and no review you will read ever really will. This is what the film made me feel. On an actual filmmaking standpoint, it's all over the place. But it's about message and imagery, and how it connects to you is what's important, so long as you dive into its fantasy.