I just saw a free preview of Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's latest surrealistic film. If you've liked his previous work (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation or Being John Malkovich) this is essential. A few hours after seeing it, a plot description seemed superfluous; the next day I barely remember it.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard a regional theater director in a troubled marriage with a 4 year-old daughter. He has some unknown medical and psychological issues, all of which are a bit bizarre. We see these unfold in a series of scenes that are disconnected in a dreamlike way (e.g., he appears in the cartoons his daughter watches) That Kaufmanesque quality just escalates throughout the film as Cotard wins a MacArthur award, moves to NY, obtains an impossibly enormous former theater and begins working on a play based on his life. Needing someone to play himself, an actor auditions who's been following him for 20 years and knows everything about his life (he was even in one of the previously mentioned cartoons). The film continues to grow even more impossibly self-referential throughout its two hour length.
By the end, I think the plot is so complicated it just fell away and left a pure emotional resonance. Yes we're all dying and the world around us is falling apart (I think this is the point of the burning house), but each of us live our lives one day at a time with other people through good and bad.
I'm glad I saw it. The story is a whirlwind and the performances are very strong. Samantha Morton was unrecognizable and Emily Watson was great. I loved the idea of tattooed flowers dying when the person dies. I think I was the only one in the theater that laughed at (or noticed) that when he Caden was on a gurney being examined by a doctor, above him was a sign that had a no symbol with a hand drawn in it.
After the film, Charlie Kaufman answered questions. There were a lot of worshiping fanboys wanting to get into the film business. It seemed like he tried to answer each earnestly and I could see where all the meta-screenplays come from, he's very reflective. I disagreed with him in one answer. Someone didn't understand the burning building in the film and asked for an explanation. Kaufman refused, since the film is what it meant to each person. In spite of the self-reflection in the answer, he seemed to have missed the idea that perhaps the intended meaning, wasn't expressed clearly enough in the art for others to discern it. It's not necessarily a failing of the viewer but of the art and the artist.
Update: Roger Ebert has a very worthwhile pseudo-review called, O, Synecdoche, my Synecdoche!
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