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We are all just little people
Kaufman’s ambition finally exceeds his grasp
By Alex Rewey
Let’s be very clear, “Synecdoche” is as flawed as it is wonderfully ambitious.
I suppose this day was inevitable. Just as any artist burdened with the level of immense praise that has been heaped upon Oscar winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s ability to think outside the box, he has finally delivered a magnum opus of such incredible density, it’s uncertain if it’s a masterpiece or an epic failure.
“Synecdoche, New York,” Kaufman’s first stab at helming one of his own scripts is the deliriously self-reflexive story of theatre director Caden Cotard, played with fearlessly unflattering dedication by Oscar winner Phillip Seymour Hoffman. After staging a humble, yet notable production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” Cotard is awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant to stage his greatest play yet.
As his body begins to deteriorate from bizarrely asymptomatic ailments, and his marriage to celebrated miniature painter Adele Lack (played by the apathetic Catherine Keener in her second turn as the unsatisfied theatre spouse after this year’s “Hamlet 2”), Cotard begins to formulate his masterpiece.
Set in the unearthly large dimensions of a vacant New York City warehouse, Cotard begins to construct a massive set piece of his own life and of those around him, including his closest friends and romances.
As his desire for accuracy, the day to day updates, and ultimately, the expansion of the decades long project continually go unsatiated; the boundaries between reality and documentation become maddeningly intertwined.
Kaufman is well known for a mind bending catalogue including “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Being John Malkovich,” and “Adaptation.”
Where the later took cinematic autobiography in its most literal sense, “Synecdoche” is perhaps Kaufman’s most confessional work to date, Cotard representing Kaufman’s own obsession with telling stories.
Easily one of the year’s most staggeringly bombastic and pretentious films, “Synecdoche” can be taken both as a fairly direct allegory for Kaufman’s approach to art as a reflection of the world around him, as well as a cautionary tale for talented artists given relatively free reign over their work.
Let’s be very clear, “Synecdoche” is as flawed as it is wonderfully ambitious.
Thematically, the film is an unscrupulously neurotic take on a crippling midlife crisis as perhaps only Kaufman can tell. The Cotard tires to minutely control and recreate the details of his production, including hiring actors to portray himself and his assistant directing the play within a play, the more his actual life begins to unravel.
Yet, much like his cinematic alter-ego Cotard, where “Synecdoche” fails is the extent to which Kaufman’s own vision of the story is left unchecked and uninhibited.
Whereas in the past Kaufman’s bizarre visions came properly packaged and edited by Director Spike Jonze, “Synecdoche” is punishingly unabridged.
Though containing some wonderfully sweeping shots of the surreally ever-expanding warehouse set space, much of the film appears drab, with far too many superfluous breaks in the plot.
It’s many digressions throughout the two and half hour runtime invoke the polarizing surrealism of director David Lynch, including but not limited to Cotard’s personal assistant/love interest Hazel’s (Samantha Morton) home, which appears perpetually ablaze for much of the film.
The title references a part of speech which is used to replace the whole, symbolizing Cotard’s doomed attempt to tell every person’s story in set pieces that grow larger and larger, eventually enclosing each other like the repeated refracted images on mirrors that go on and on.
Yet, despite its many critical errors, the distinctly fluid time line of Cotard’s troubled life remains entirely watchable, if a bit long winded. As Hoffman appears to grow older and older onscreen as the film’s timeline advances at rapid pace, it’s hard to not empathize with the immediacy of Cotard’s concerns over his ultimate purpose in life.
“Synecdoche, New York” is a dizzying fantasy that could only come from writer Charlie Kaufman. What was surely a labor or love, it’s not hard to envision Kaufman’s own creative obsessions in Cotard, yet like his character, could have benefited immensely from the guidance and restraint of an outside force.
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