Review: ‘Synecdoche, New York’

Travis:

I am now “officially” a fan-boy of Charlie Kaufman! I have already immensely enjoyed his work to date, but not that he’s successfully navigated the director’s chair I am thoroughly convinced he is one of the best storytellers working today. Kaufman has been the creatively brilliant writer responsible for films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich and Human Nature, which despite being my least favorite is still a decent film.

Kaufman wrote and directed his newest piece called Synecdoche, New York which is wonderfully complicated masterpiece on the very personal and private matter of accepting that one will inevitably die and the question of what to do with the life you have while you have it to live. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a moderately successful stage director whose life is turned upside down when his wife Adele (Catherine Keener) takes their daughter Olive to Berlin and leaves Caden behind, never to return to him.

Caden’s entire universe is thrown into a surrealist mess of distorted time and extreme diseased manifestations of his personal feelings of loss and regret. Caden has difficulty accepting that Adele and Olive are gone, slipping into a deep depression. When he learns he’s been awarded a very large grant, Caden decides he will use it to create a massive stage production that we be “pure and true”. Enlisting every last one of his actors and stage hands, Caden begins to create a life-size perfectly accurate replica of the world around him in a huge warehouse. This literal recreation of New York will be the stage on which he replays his life through the actors, over and over, constantly making changes as he continues to make choices that lead him further down the rabbit hole of his own philosophical goose chase for meaning in his life.

There are so many great players in this movie, including Tom Noonan who plays a man that has followed Caden for twenty years and is cast to play him in his production, Samantha Morton as Hazel, Caden’s off and on love interest and close companion, Hope Davis as Caden’s therapist, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Maria and Michelle Williams as Claire. The special effects are very effective but remain in their place instead of overshadowing the acting, which is stellar, and the writing. Hoffman is superb, but that’s only to be expected in my opinion. Caden becomes a neurological mess and the years of emotional pain and suffering take a physical toll on his body.

I’ll be honest with you and say that this film is not for everyone. There will be many people who see this movie and hate it, I would imagine most likely because they find themselves either confused or even confronted with the subject matter. This movie dives deep into areas of the psyche that we all deal with at some point in our lives and not everyone is prepared for that. Kaufman decided not to approach these ideas head on, instead choosing to create this elaborately intimate metaphor and I am so glad he did. I urge everyone to see the film, whether you like it or not… it’s a doozy and a dandy! For those who see it, I recommend seeing it a second time. It helps the story to sink in even deeper, as the first viewing can be somewhat emotionally taxing.

[Overall: 5 stars out of 5!]