I cannot attempt to write a review of this movie and yet, I am. That is what Charlie Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Adaptation”) must have said about his latest endeavor “Synecdoche, New York.”
It was a major box office bomb and ignored by every award show, probably because there is no way to successfully market this film. Critics talk about it for hours though. The impossibility of the film’s success marks it pure genius.
I don’t want to call this movie “good.” The only phrase I can use to describe it is “mind-blowing.” I won’t pretend to understand what Charlie Kaufman was trying to do, but I will say that you must return to the film, whether in your mind or through a second or third viewing, to realize its genius. The images and subject matter seen on the screen, with the dreamlike reenactments, intense melancholy, multiple worlds within worlds, absurdly hilarious dark humor and quirky Kaufman-esque techniques undoubtedly confuse even the most keen. Trying to discern any symbolism or assign meaning will end up taking years off your life. Somehow though, the whole is revealed at the film’s completion.
Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a theater director in Schenectady, New York married to Adele Lack (Catherine Keener), who paints microscopic portraits that can only be seen under a magnifying glass. The two live with their 4-year-old daughter Olive who, when the story begins, is pooping radioactive-green feces. Neither Caden nor Adele is that alarmed, as both are so intensely wrapped up in their artistic melancholy that they forget how to live life. Their relationship is horribly somber, monotonous and miserable. In couple’s therapy, for instance, Adele casually admits that it makes her happy to think of Caden dying.
After the first relatively normal forty-five minutes of the movie, Adele takes Olive to Berlin for an art-show that launches her to stardom and permanently leaves Caden for her new life in Germany. At the same time though, while Caden is quite literally wasting away, he receives a MacArthur Award. With this “genius grant” he tries to mount a monumental theater production that he wants to be “big and true and tough. Something he can put his real self into”.
The last hour-and-a-half of the movie is a completely different animal from the previous, filled with the inception and problems of writing such an obscure production.
Caden wants to truly capture what life is, so he builds a full-scale replica of New York City in a giant warehouse and hires actors to play every single person he encounters in his real life, even the bum on the corner. He soon comes to the realization that the production itself is part of his life, so he has to create a microcosm within the microcosm to depict what’s going on. As you can imagine, he not only has to find an actor to play him, but also an actor to play the actor playing him. This keeps building with each and every aspect of life. His project lasts forty years and still continues to expand. Caden never names it, nor completes it. He tries, but he never succeeds.
Although this is Kaufman’s first time directing, he does a good job at getting spot-on performances from his all-star cast that pairs its Oscar-winner lead with actresses like Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samantha Morton and Michelle Williams.
Every character is played perfectly with impeccable comic timing to suit Kaufman’s quirky humor. I can’t imagine anybody other than Phillip Seymour Hoffman inhabiting the horribly monotonous and deadpan honesty of Caden. I wish he played Charlie and Robert Kaufman in “Adaptation” rather than Nicholas Cage.
The actors, however, just like the great performances, are not essential to this film. The only star is the mind-blowing piece of art that finishes on the screen. This film probably won’t appeal to anyone, save for perhaps an avant-garde audience. It’s too overwhelming to think about, painfully morose and extremely hard to understand. It’s neither a clean-cut film like his award winning “Adaptation”, nor a cleverly put together one like his cerebral “Eternal Sunshine”. I wish it was, but then his film would no longer be genius. For it is the failure of the film that completes his message- No matter how hard you try, you can never truly sum up life.
