Synecdoche New York – Review
*Warning: Contains mild spoilers*
Thought provoking, ambitious, confusing, disturbing. Four words that are very different and yet each one can be applied to screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut. The sheer scale and ambition of his masterpiece is both courageous and truly mind-boggling, however I was left with the distinct feeling that in the pursuit of art, Kaufman has created a film so complex and confusing that it could fail to reach a mainstream audience on any real emotional level.
Pronounced “si-neck-dockee”, Synecdoche New York was always expected to be a strange; some would say “zany” ride. Having written such trips as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman’s first excursion into the world of film direction had high hopes all-round. While the director succeeds in confounding the audience, he fails to then provide a successful narrative on which the viewer can follow the increasingly bizarre tale as it progresses slowly on screen.
The film’s protagonist (played with skill and fervour by Philip Seymour Hoffman) is theatre director Caden Cotard, a celebrated and yet under achieving genius who begins to suffer the mother of all mid-life crisis when he’s hit with a mysterious illness and his wife leaves him, taking their daughter with her.
Having sunk as low as possible, Cotard finds a temporary reprieve from his overwhelming depression and defeatism when he is presented with a “genius grant”, which provides him a seemingly unlimited budget with which to put together the performance to end all performances. In a cavernous warehouse in downtown New York, Cotard begins to put together his masterpiece, reconstructing the city around them at a very real and very detailed level.
Cotard’s aim is to present his life on stage, and thus he begins hiring actors to play him and those around him, and for the sake of accuracy he then begins to hire actors to play those actors and so on. Before long Cotard himself seems to be as confused as us, as his life becomes less and less meaningful and the audience and the characters alike are lost in this cold, monolithic reconstruction of reality.
As the film progresses, the cast of Cotard’s overwhelming production become their characters, and years are wasted on the ever expanding New York set as people build lives and relationships and the story becomes ever more complex. People age and die and so new actors are brought in to play that role, and more actors are brought in to play those actors and before long it becomes clear that Cotard and those around him have become trapped in a never ending cycle of “rehearsing” their own lives and never actually living them.
The film presents itself as a metaphor for some very real subjects, our mortality and our fear of death seemingly the central role. I must say that the film discusses the varying colours of stool samples far more than I would have liked, but it also presents us with what I’m sure are some deeply meaningful symbolic references such as the burning house (which I have to say was largely lost on my simple understanding of the film).
It would be unfair not to mention the fantastic performances given by the cast, Hoffman as always seems to fill the screen with his unassuming and yet authoritative presence. Samantha Morton is fantastic in her supporting role as Cotard’s true love, the loyal and loving assistant Hazel, even the strange and somewhat repugnant character Sammy Barnathan (Tom Noonan) was almost compelling to watch.
Ultimately the film ends where we all hope it wouldn’t, with the cast growing older and no real closure ever being delivered. It seems to me, sadly, that much like Cotard’s on screen production, Synecdoche New York is a victim of its own ambitions – and one I won’t be watching again for a very long time.
Rating: 
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