Synecdoche New York Reviews

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1. RMurray847 "afilmcritic.com"

   July 24, 2011 at 6:56 pm

   39 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

   
   A beautiful, funny, sad and OH SO FRUSTRATING masterpiece, December 8, 2008

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   RMurray847 “afilmcritic.com” (Albuquerque, NM United States) –
     

     

   I don’t even know how to start reviewing SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, the new film from writer (ETERNAL SUNSHINE, ADAPTATION) and first-time director Charles Kaufman. I’ve been looking for a way in to this review since seeing the film two evenings ago.

   Here’s the best I can come up with: what WAITING FOR GODOT is to Theatre-Of-The-Absurd, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is to Film-of-the-Absurd. Both projects are brilliant, yet also maddeningly difficult to fathom at times. GODOT, set on a stage decorated with just one bare tree, dared to explore the very condition of living in a world without meaning. SYNECDOCHE uses all the tricks available to filmmakers to explore many of the same questions. Or perhaps it’s just one big question.

   GODOT is an all-time classic. It is both the epitome and the definition of absurdist theatre. Books have been written about it, and it is still stage with great regularity all over the world, by theatre companies eager to plumb new meaning (or any meaning) from it. SYNECDOCHE will probably not generate such devotion or ruminations. But to view this film is be immersed in the same feelings as a good production of GODOT will get you: to laugh, to feel great sadness, to be confused as hell and to also feel that true understanding of it is tantalizing close, and yet always out of reach.

   (I’ll admit right here that others will see this film and merely be extremely irritated by it, or think of it as a clever but somewhat boring mindgame. These are also quite valid reactions.)

   The film begins on a seemingly typical day in the life of Caden (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) a theatre director in a smallish town in upstate New York (Synecdoche…and don’t ask me why Kaufman didn’t spell it Schenectady). He’s near the opening of his production of DEATH OF A SALESMAN, and he seems as miserable doing what he does as Willy Loman is with his life. His clock radio comes on, and we hear that it is September 1. When Caden arrives in the kitchen for breakfast, the TV tells us it is Halloween, and moments later, a story indicating the date as November 2 is on the radio. So we get the idea, if we’re paying attention, that Caden’s days are all strikingly similar to each other and that if you see one morning, you’re seeing them all. Time is zooming by him. To him, he might experience a week, but in fact a year goes by.

   Anyway, Caden is married to Catherine Keener, a visual artist who paints very detailed and VERY tiny miniatures. Some of the funniest moments in film this year revolve around these miniatures…but it’s a dry wit. (For example, here pictures are about 1″ square. She’s sending some to a gallery in Berlin, and for each painting, she has constructed a tiny little shipping crate, complete with excelsior.) Keener is also practically seething with loathing for Caden, because she feels he has long since given up searching for truth in his art. They have a young daughter, Olive.

   Eventually, Caden’s wife and child go to Berlin for a gallery opening, leaving Caden behind. And they never return. It is in these events that we begin to see how disconnected from life Caden is. He still believes his daughter is a young girl…but she ages into a young adult. Caden himself is visibly aging before our eyes…yet he doesn’t seem aware of it. He’s afflicted by mysterious ailments, which to him seem to come virtually all at once…yet in reality, they are illnesses that might come one at a time over a many decade span. The illnesses of aging.

   During his life, Caden is surrounded by many women. Michelle Williams plays an actress who is enamored of Caden, or at least his ability to get her cast. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Keener’s best friend, who may also be leading his daughter Olive astray. Hope Davis is his psychiatrist, who doesn’t seem to be on his side at all. But most important is Hazel (Samantha Morton), his box office manager and the one woman who actually seems to cherish Caden…not that he can see it.

   As if this weren’t confusing enough, early in the movie, Caden is awarded a grant to produce a giant, meaningful, truthful and important piece…anything he wants to do. He rents perhaps the largest warehouse in the world and plans to stage “the truth.” He begins to construct a set that basically is to consist of every setting in his own life, and begins to cast actors who will play everyone he’s ever known. Yet he can never bring this piece to completion because while he attempts to stage his life, he continues to have a life, which results in needing to add more and more and more to the play. Years and years and years go by.

   In two hours, we get to see all of Caden’s adult life from the age of roughly 35. He appears to experience it in just months. Is Kaufman saying that Caden (and therefore US) are so busy trying to control, plan or understand our lives…

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