Synecdoche, New York

The end is built into the beginning

Directed by Charlie Kaufman

United States, 2008

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This week’s film was selected in recognition of the actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died 10 years ago at just 46 years of age. I think I first saw him in a supporting role as the shy, awkward cameraman in the porn industry in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. It wasn’t too many years after that when he picked up the Academy Award for Best Actor in the titular role of Capote. He was great in that film, but I think even better as the charismatic cult leader, Lancaster Dodd, in The Master and of course, here in Synecdoche, New York. A unique and extraordinary actor.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman 1967 - 2014

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Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone, will stay alone;
will sit, read, write long letters to the evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

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This film opens with a protagonist, Caden Cotard, who is evidently depressed. A successful playwright who lives with his artist-wife and precocious daughter, Caden is looking at the world through a pair of very dark glasses. The colours all around him are muted, and things - including his body - are literally falling apart. Everything he hears on the news or reads in the paper signals a bleak future. If you are not convinced check out his surname:

Cotard’s syndrome:  a psychiatric disorder in which depressed individuals believe that they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their organs or body parts.

Unsurprisingly, Caden’s relationships are also failing. He consults a therapist with his wife, Adele (Catherine Keener), and this is what she says:

“I've fantasized about Caden dying and being able to start again. Guilt free. I know it's terrible.”

This combination of melancholy and dark humour, along with the dream-like, absurdist, mise-en-scène may feel familiar. It runs like a thread through a series of films: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. All of them written by Charlie Kaufman. Synecdoche, New York is his directorial debut. It is a film of many layers and many stories.

Despite his pervasive feeling of dejection, Caden’s experimental adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, proves so successful that he wins a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Award. Using the money, he sets out to deliver his magnum opus: a large-scale, theatrical production set in a cavernous warehouse in which he constructs a life-size replica of New York itself. His aim? To grapple with the biggest metaphysical questions: love, creativity, and finally, what does it mean to live…

A man of huge ambition then, perhaps not so different from Kaufman himself. The cast of the production are the real figures in Caden’s life and there within we find the narrative device that gives us the film’s title:

Synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole

A production such as this takes decades to develop. The line between the theatre and real life begins to blur. Actors are cast to play the actors who play real people. Caden hires Sammy (Tom Noonan), a new actor, to play himself, and it turns out that Sammy has been stalking him for 20 years, researching his character. Sammy then takes over directorial control.

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When are we gonna get an audience… it’s been 17 yrs

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Yes, this is a sprawling film but it is not in any sense a mess. It sprawls in the way that great fiction can do. Synecdoche is rich with coded details and hidden clues that you either pick up by chance or find on re-viewing. Early in the story Caden’s love interest, Hazel, buys a house that happens to be on fire. It continues to burn over the years, and she never moves away. Decades later she dies of smoke inhalation. His wife Adele’s paintings are the antithesis of his own grand production. Paintings so small that you need magnifying glasses to view them. Her exhibition opens to massive acclaim in a satirically exaggerated version of Berlin.

But who could play Caden Cotard other than Philip Seymour Hoffman? He is in nearly every shot of the film’s 120-minute running-time and brilliantly evokes a haunting sense of the futility of life, stirringly accompanied by Jon Brion’s meticulously crafted score. We watch him mature on screen from middle age to death, a process difficult to capture without lapsing into caricature. He is like a living memento mori. In one scene, Caden has a psychogenic seizure and attempts to call 911 – it is both pathetic and at the same time ridiculously funny. Hoffman shines here, in part due to the outstanding performances from an impressive supporting cast including Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, and Diane Wiest.

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The whole film felt like a retelling of Caden’s life from after his death, as if we were watching the play that he was building throughout the film – T

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Charlie Kaufman’s film encapsulates the absurdist dilemma: Caden Cotard is desperately trying to make sense of the world and understand his place in it, but the universe remains silent. While he painstakingly tries to find the meaning in his existence, life passes him by. It is only when he stops focusing on the minutiae, after allowing someone else to take over his role as director, that he finally is able to find inspiration. But tragically for him, by then it is too late…

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A comedy, a tragedy, a philosophical treatise on absurdism… in short, a masterpiece - S

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Reids’ Results (out of 100)

C - 85

T - 85

N - 80

S - 88

Thank you for reading Reids on Film. If you enjoyed our review please share with a friend and do leave a comment.

Coming next… Force Majeure(2014)