Film: Synecdoche, New York
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Country: USA
Released: May 2008
Runtime: 123 minutes
Genre: Surrealism
Studio: Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Likely Story
Influenced: Ari Aster, Yorgos Lanthimos, Charlie Brooker, Damon Lindelof, Nathan Fielder
Among Kaufman's many iconic screenplays – from Being John Malkovich (1999) and Adaptation (2002), to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Anomalisa (2015) – I do think Synecdoche, New York (2008) stands out as the great summation of the many threads and themes that characterise his work. The film's title, Synecdoche, refers to a figure of speech or thing that stands in for the whole and, in this context, it's the miniature city in the warehouse that's the synecdoche for the real New York City. The film unfolds as an intricate exploration of the life of Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a theatre director grappling with the complexities of existence. Plagued by various ailments, including hypochondria and "sychosis" (not to be confused with psychosis), Caden receives a MacArthur Fellowship, providing him with unlimited financial means to pursue an ambitious theatrical endeavour. Instead of producing a conventional play, Caden decides to create an intricate replica of New York within a warehouse, meticulously depicting the minutiae of everyday life, especially his own.
As an audience, we can't help wondering what Caden is looking for in all these recreations? Sometimes he breaks the fourth wall as the director and enters the scene himself, as if he's looking for something or some person, i.e. Adele in apartment 31Y, which he couldn't find for real the first time. As Caden immerses himself in the project, the boundaries between reality and fiction blur. The narrative unfolds in a surreal manner, with characters playing characters within the theatrical replica, and time becoming a fluid and elusive concept. The film delves into Caden's relationships, including those with his wife Adele (Catherine Keener), daughter Olive (Sadie Goldstein) and lovers, Claire (Michelle Williams) and Hazel (Samantha Morton). In fact, the film gets so meta that Emily Watson's character Tammy ends up playing the role of Hazel, a deft comic allusion to the fact that the two actresses actually get confused for each other in real life. It's probably no coincidence either that Kaufman sounds a little like Hoffman.
Events unfold in a way that blurs the boundaries between past, present and future, reflecting the protagonist's psychological state and the film's overarching theme of mortality. The cinematography, led by Frederick Elmes, uses visual symbolism (the burning house, miniature works of art, etc) to enhance the film's emotional and thematic depth. Shots are carefully composed to enhance the film's exploration of identity, the passage of time and the human condition. The film's sound design, supervised by Jean-Pierre Arquié, is layered and complex, complementing the visual storytelling by adding another dimension to the narrative. The script is rich with Jungian psychology and existential dialogue, engaging characters in profound conversations about life, death, love and the nature of art. There's also a playfulness to the film, and real moments of humour, especially to start, but the general tone of the movie becomes increasingly morbid. It's also a difficult film to watch as a parent, in particular the process of estrangement between Caden and Olive, leading to Olive's deathbed scene, which is bizarre but emotionally powerful. Olive speaking in another language (German) and asking him to apologise for things he hasn't done only serves to emphasise the distancing between father and daughter.
Synecdoche, New York received widespread critical acclaim for its originality and depth, and the film's reputation has grown significantly over the years since its release. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2008, and Hoffman deservedly won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 2008 Venice Film Festival. It's arguably the best performance of his glittering career. Initially, the film can be a devastating watch, especially if you're a sensitive soul or anxious about death, but successive viewings of the movie really do pay off, and help to give us a better sense of the compression of time in the film and the symbolic and thematic richness of each scene. Some critics and viewers have found the film too pretentious, or too relentlessly clever, and it's undoubtedly a challenge for audiences to unpick what's real from what's fantasy, but this is essentially Kaufman's artistic aim. He knows that, in our own lives, reality is rarely any match for our fears or our fantasies, and that the unified person we like to think we are is, in fact, a whole cast of characters in search of an author.
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