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Image courtesy of Sony Pictures ClassicNo, Charlie Kaufman didn’t misspell the title of his latest film. It’s meant to be a play on the name of the real town in New York. But, then again, this is Charlie Kaufman we’re talking about, which means there’s always a method to his madness. Just don’t count on him to blatantly tell you what it is. Much like Kaufman did in Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he is once again testing the boundaries of logical extremes. But, instead of body hopping or erasing memories, Kaufman is exploring the existential realm of a theater director’s very existence in his new film Synecdoche, New York.
For those of you who haven’t pulled out the dictionary and looked up the meaning of “synecdoche” yet, it’s a figure of speech where a part of something represents the whole. Synecdoche, New York does just that by utilizing the design paradigm of the nested doll principle wherein similar objects lie within similar objects: the name within the name, the scene within the scene, the play within the play, the life within the life. Everything in the film either represents or becomes a part of someone or something else.
In Synecdoche, the life of theater director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is falling apart in the real Schenectady, New York. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) has taken their daughter Olive and left him to pursue her “miniscule” painting career in Berlin with her friend Maria (Jennifer Jason Lee). His therapist, Dr. Gravis (Hope Davis), is more interested in plugging her own self-help books than actually giving Caden any type of real counseling therapy. On top of all that, a mysterious medical condition is systematically shutting down each of Caden’s autonomic body functions.
So, how does Caden cope with this world that’s crumbling around him? He takes the MacArthur Grant he received for one of his previous plays, rents a warehouse the size of an airplane hangar, erects a mockup of New York City inside it, and starts working on a ridiculously massive theatre piece he calls, “a celebration of the mundane.” Why? Like the rest of us, Caden is an over-achieving underachiever who is afraid that he will die at any moment without ever accomplishing anything important with his life.
At first, Caden tries to make something profound emerge from the collective struggles of ordinary life in his new play by having each actor live out their constructed lives in his city within the city. Over time, Caden’s focus turns more inward and he starts restaging his own life, resulting in the people from his personal life reemerging as doubles within the play. Before long, identities merge, the lines separating fantasy and reality begin to blur, and Caden’s own existence takes a wild detour into the realm of symbolic existentialism. Ultimately, because Caden is so busy creating his imaginary world, he forgets to live in the real one.
Caden is never able to fully connect with any woman currently in his life because he's always lingering on a previous relationship. When Caden is with Hazel (Samantha Morton), he thinks about Adele. When he’s with Claire (Michelle Williams), he thinks about Hazel. When Caden finally realizes he can’t be with Hazel, he turns to Tammy (Emily Watson), Hazel’s understudy. By the time Millicent Weems (Dianne Wiest) makes her way into Caden’s complicated world, you’re not even sure if she (or Caden for that matter) even exist.
Yet, even though you might often find yourself laughing at the irony of Caden’s surreal world, by no means is Synecdoche a feel-good film. Overall, his never-ending cycle of missed opportunities, missed moments, and missed connections is enough to make your heart break and your head spin simultaneously. His journey is as much about death as it is about life. So much of Caden’s sad existence stems from the duplicitous characters in his life within the play that it takes him 17 years before he’s even willing to show his opus to an audience, and that’s only because the cast has to remind him to do it.
Obviously, Synecdoche, New York is a thinking man’s film. Kaufman purposely layered the film with so many inside jokes and non-linear symbolism, that it is impossible to fully absorb all of them in a single viewing. This is one of those movies where you’ll find something new every time you watch it. Because the film can be viewed on a colossal or miniscule scale, a metaphysical labyrinth or an emotional simplicity, even as an epic journey or an introspective view, Synecdoche can be as simple or as complex as each audience member wants to make it.
From a philosophical standpoint, the film covers every basic principle of existentialism. Caden’s story is the classic example of an existential attitude being grounded in “a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world.”[1] Whenever Caden attempts to focus on his own concrete existence, the concepts of dread, bad faith, free will, facticity, the Other and the Look, reason, and absurdity each play a part in the world within Caden’s world. Or, more simply put, Caden’s existence literally engulfs the essence of his being.
Yet, as smart as Kaufman’s latest film is, it’s not for everyone. Synecdoche doesn’t have your standard assortment of action sequences underscored by arias. Nor, is it littered with slang-infested dialogue or shameless product placement. So, if you’re looking for that type of mindless entertainment, this isn’t the flick for you. However, if you’re in the mood to flex your brain a little bit, you may want to check out Synecdoche, New York, where everyone is everyone, playing leads in their own stories as they struggle to come into existence before slowly fading out of it. Hopefully, you'll realize before Caden does that no one is watching. They never were.
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