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Admittedly this was not an easy film to enjoy. Much of it is tedious, and the occasional surreal touches serve to make it claustrophobic. Many critics contest whether it even succeeds as entertainment; the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle goes so far as to say that although SNY “makes us confront both the cruelties of existence and the harsh and uncompromising laws of narrative art,” it fails because it aimed too high. Ultimately I disagree. The low hanging fruit of Hollywood’s garden variety blockbuster doesn’t often appeal to me. As excruciating as I found large swathes of this film, it made me explore and confront. Unlike others who found the last half more painful than the first, I didn’t get SNY until the last half and particularly after the speech of Dianne Wiest’s Caden to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Caden: “As the people who adore you stop adoring you, as they die, as they move on, as you shed them, as you shed your beauty, your youth, as the world forgets you, as you recognize your transience, as you begin to lose your characteristics, one by one, as you learn there is no one watching and there never was, [you’re]… not coming from any place, not arriving any place, just counting on time. [You die, then] you are gone.” He reflects back that “everyone’s dreams… all those apartments… all those thoughts – we’ll never know what’s the truth of it.” I can’t recall any other film that attempted to capture this in this way. Kaufman did fail on some level, but this particular failure replicates life itself and thus succeeds, but it’s not for the faint of heart.

I love Philip Seymour Hoffman. Even though something about him makes me feel physically sick (maybe it’s the way he looks, I can’t quite put my finger on it) I think he’s one of the best actors around so I was excited to see this. After reading a review that said it was another of director Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-type forays I was positively wetting myself in anticipation.

Synecdoche, New York is about an ill theatre director called Caden (Hoffman) whose wife has left him and who’s experiencing the mother of all existential life crises. For Caden life is purely struggle, disappointment and anxiety. To try and make sense of his situation and leave his mark in the world, he creates a vast post-modern theatre piece that aims to detail every significant encounter and person in his life, past and present. The play has a cast of hundreds, with the philosophy that every actor is playing a ‘lead character’ (just like in real life where we are all ‘leads in our own play’), and continues over a period of years. As Caden’s life spirals out of control and he grows older, his medical condition worsening, the play merges with reality and eventually he follows stage cues through an ear piece telling him which choices to make in his daily life.

I loved the idea behind this film and generally I’m a fan of anything that plays with ideas of memory, time and reality and mixes them up in a huge surreal blender. It was fascinating and horrifying to watch Caden become more and more consumed by his own play and his disease, eventually, as he phrases it, “hurtling towards death”. Synecdoche, New York is, quite possibly, the most depressing and bleak film I’ve seen since Requiem for a Dream so in that sense it achieves what it sets out to do with flying colours. Having said that I felt it did lose its way a little in the middle, and clocking in at just over 2 hours I think it could’ve been cut down. The plot too is a bit thin; although 2 love interests make up a large part of Caden’s life and the story, the film is too precoccupied with the lead character’s existentialism to allow you to really care about them or anything else in his life. Aside from the idea of a lonely man being taken over by his own theatrical creation, the film has very little else to offer and doesn’t really go anywhere. Although Hoffman, Michelle Williams and Samantha Morton are fantastic, Synecdoche, New York just felt like a bit of a drag to watch and left me, like Caden, disappointed.

It’s very difficult to come up with something interesting to say about this after you’ve seen at. At least it is for me. I’ve tried to approach reviewing this multiple times and nothing comes out.

So, now, you think, it’s because this film is boring. I cannot begin to tell you how wrong you are. See this. Immediately. If you can relate to being human, you can probably relate to this movie.

It begins rather conventionally, as a family drama. You begin to think it will remain this way throughout, but you also begin to take interest in the characters. Caden suffers from multiple chronic physical conditions. Adele is going through some sort of crisis and decides to break the family apart and take their daughter away to live in Europe. The focus is on Caden’s dealing with the ordeal, and the struggle as a local theater director with much bigger ambitions.

Then, Hazel buys a slowly burning house.

What follows is an existentialist, surreal dream. You’re never quite sure at what point in time what you’re seeing is, as the narrative flows freely. You witness only the profound moments, only the things burned into memory until death.

Kaufman has tried to take on life itself with this one (again?), and the execution is so sincere that it works. Top notch performances all around. The dreamlike quality makes the very heavy subject matter much easier to enjoy, and there is some good comedy in it as well.

Highly recommended.

8/10

Akhirnya, saya punya keberanian untuk menulis review tentang film terbaik yang pernah saya tonton seumur hidup saya di kategori film Classic. Inilah film yang paling mempengaruhi saya dengan cara yang sangat personal. Cara bekerja film ini yang begitu unik terhadap penontonnya, tidak memungkinkan bagi saya untuk bisa menulis review ini dengan singkat. Kesuksesan film “Synecdoche, New York” berasal dari banyaknya detail-detail yang ada dalam film ini sampai saya tidak tahu bagaimana caranya memulai untuk membahas film ini pada awalnya. Namun, saya memutuskan untuk memulai review ini dengan judulnya itu sendiri.

Mari kita mulai pelajaran bahasa Indonesia.

Synecdoche (dibaca Sih-NECK-doh-kee), dalam bahasa Indonesia ditulis sinekdoke, merupakan suatu bentuk majas. Majas sinekdoke dibagi menjadi sinekdoke pars pro toto dan sinekdoke totem pro parte. Arti dari sinekdoke pars pro toto adalah sebagian yang menggambarkan keselurahan. Contohnya, aku belum juga melihat batang hidung Herman dari tadi. Kata batang hidung menggambarkan keseluruhan fisik dari Herman. Sedangkan, arti dari sinekdoke totem pro parte adalah keseluruhan yang menggambarkan sebagian. Contohnya, Indonesia memenangkan pertandingan sepak bola melawan Filipina. Kata Indonesia di dalam kalimat itu ditujukan untuk tim sepak bola Indonesia.

Oke, pelajaran bahasa Indonesia selesai.

Kesimpulannya? Inti dari film “Synecdoche, New York” sudah ada di judulnya itu sendiri. Kehidupan manusia pada umumnya digambarkan oleh kehidupan karakter utama dan juga sebaliknya. Kehidupan si karakter utama tersebut juga menggambarkan kehidupan karakter-karakter lainnya. Maka, bisa dikatakan tesis dari film “Synecdoche, New York” adalah kehidupan setiap manusia menggambarkan kehidupan manusia lainnya dan kehidupan seluruh manusia pada umumnya digambarkan oleh kehidupan satu manusia dan juga sebaliknya. Terkesan ambisius? Memang.

“Synecdoche, New York” bercerita tentang seorang sutradara teater, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), yang memiliki seorang istri bernama Adele (Catherine Keener) dan seorang putri berusia 4 tahun bernama Olive (Sadie Goldstein). Rumah tangga mereka mulai mengalami kehancuran. Seorang psikolog, Madeleine (Hope Davis), juga tidak banyak membantu dan lebih tertarik untuk mempromosikan buku best-seller karangannya. Adele yang berprofesi sebagai pelukis pun meninggalkan Caden dan membawa Olive bersama dengan sahabatnya, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh), pergi ke Jerman dimana Adele meraih kesuksean besar. Di Jerman, Ia membiarkan Olive untuk ditato seluruh tubuh oleh Maria dan menjadi kekasihnya.

Caden, yang merasa frustasi, berusaha untuk mencari ketenangan dari seorang wanita penjual tiket di gedung teater, Hazel (Samantha Morton), yang Ia sukai dan balik menyukainya. Namun, ketidakberaniannya mengungkapkan perasaannya menyebakan Hazel pergi darinya. Lalu, Caden menumpahkan segala sesuatu yang Ia rasakan selama hidupnya ke dalam sebuah drama teater baru. Dengan menggunakan sebuah gedung tua yang sangat besar, luas, dan megah di kota Schenectady, Caden ingin membuat drama yang akan menceritakan tentang kehidupannya sendiri dan setiap manusia yang Ia tahu. Seorang pria bernama Sammy (Tom Noonan) yang sudah mengikuti Caden secara diam-diam selama 20 tahun, dikasting untuk memerankan Caden sendiri. Ia juga memiliki seorang aktris bernama Tammy (Emily Watson) untuk memerankan Hazel. Sementara itu, Claire (Michelle Williams) yang merupakan istrinya yang baru dan juga seorang aktris dari dramanya yang terdahulu, dipilih untuk memerankan dirinya sendiri. Selain mereka, masih ada puluhan orang lain yang memainkan peran-peran yang berbeda-beda.

Lambat laun, kehidupan Caden menjadi semakin berantakan seiring dengan dramanya, yang memiliki konsep “drama mengimitasi kehidupan”, berkembang menjadi sebuah drama teater dalam drama teater. Entah berapa belas tahun (ataupun puluh tahun) sudah Ia habiskan untuk dramanya itu. Sosok seorang wanita tua, Millicent (Dianne West), pun akhirnya menunjukkan Caden secercah pengertian dari sebuah sudut pandang yang baru akan kehidupan Caden yang begitu membingungkan.

Pertama kali saya menonton film ini, saya merasa bingung dengan plot ceritanya. Setiap shot terasa seperti berdiri sendiri dan terkadang tidak memiliki hubungan yang jelas dengan shot yang sebelumnya ataupun setelahnya. Waktu, tempat, dan kontinuitas dari film ini terasa susah untuk diikuti. Namun, ada tiga hal yang membuat saya masih ingin menontonnya lagi, yaitu, adegan saat Sammy meloncat dari atap sebuah gedung imitasi, adegan dimana seorang pastur memberikan sebuah pidato yang kemudian berkembang menjadi sebuah monolog, dan sequence saat Millicent mengarahkan Caden mengenai apa yang harus dilakukan dan dikatakan melalui earphone. Ketiganya membuat saya mendapatkan titik cerah akan makna dari film ini.

Untuk kedua dan ketiga kalinya saya menonton film ini, saya menangis di akhir filmnya. Untuk pertama kalinya, saya menangis bukan karena simpati akan karakter atau pun ceritanya, melainkan karena empati. Yang saya pikirkan saat itu adalah bagaimana film ini begitu mengenal saya. Charlie Kaufman, dalam debutnya sebagai sutradara, ternyata mampu menunjukkan berbagai metafora melalui karakter, dialog, transisi, efek, set, kostum, properti, dan make up. Sebagai contoh, rumah yang terus terbakar yang dihuni oleh Hazel banyak dianggap sebagai metafora dari ketidakbahagiaan dalam rumah. Saya tidak akan membahas lebih jauh mengenai metafora-metafora yang ada dalam film ini karena jumlahnya yang banyak, baik yang terlihat secara langsung, seperti rumah Hazel, sampai metafora yang butuh pemahaman terlebih dahulu, seperti ukuran lukisan karya Adele yang terus mengecil dari awal film hingga akhir film. Metafora-metafora ini tentu akan menimbulkan makna yang berbeda-beda bagi setiap orang dan membahasnya lebih jauh hanya akan membuat pengalaman menonton film ini seperti mengisi teka-teki silang.

Film ini didukung dengan penampilan akting yang sempurna dari deretan cast “Synecdoche, New York”. Ini adalah salah satu deretan cast terbaik dan tersolid yang pernah saya temui dalam sebuah film. Set dari film ini juga mengesankan sekali. Tim penata artistik suskes dalam membangun set yang membuat kita percaya bahwa di dalam sebuah gedung, terdapat replika dari kota tempat gedung itu berada dan di dalam kota replika itu, terdapat gedung yang di dalamnya… masih ada kota replika lagi. Skenario yang ditulis oleh Charlie Kaufman juga sungguh inovatif, liar, gelap, comical, dan sangat jujur. Monolog yang diucapkan oleh karakter Pastur memberikan kesan yang mendalam buat saya.

Jason Reitman, sutradara dari “Thank You For Smoking”, “Juno”, dan “Up In The Air”, pernah mengutarakan kekhawatirannya bahwa film akan dianggap sebagai sebuah karya seni yang mati. Di era modern ini, penonton langsung menyatakan kesukaan maupun ketidaksukaannya akan sebuah film dengan cepat melaui berbagai situs jejaring sosial. Jason berpikir bahwa kemungkinan besar suatu hari nanti, penonton akan menge-Twit pendapatnya ketika film tengah berlangsung. Charlie Kaufman, yang memiliki kekhawatiran yang sama, membuat film “Synecdoche, New York” dengan tujuan ingin memberikan efek drama teater kepada penontonnya. Ia mengatakan bahwa pertunjukkan drama begitu hidup sampai satu-satunya cara untuk bisa mendapatkan perasaan yang sama ketika menonton pertunjukkan itu adalah dengan menontonnya langsung kembali. Berbeda dengan film yang selalu dianggap akan memberikan perasaan yang sama ketika ditonton di DVD. Oleh karena itu, Charlie Kaufman membuat film ini penuh dengan metafora yang berlapis-lapis. Untuk menyukai atau pun tidak menyukai film ini mungkin hanya membutuhkan satu ataupun dua kali menonton, tapi untuk benar-benar memahaminya, dibutuhkan lebih dari itu.

Film ini memang mendapat respon yang menarik dari para kritikus film dan penonton. Sebagian menganggapnya sebagai salah satu film terbaik di tahun 2008, bahkan tidak sedikit yang menganggap film ini adalah salah satu film terbaik sepanjang masa. Sebagian yang lain justru menganggap film ini dingin, membingungkan, tidak bergairah, tidak bermakna, dan terlalu naif dalam usahanya untuk bisa mengambarkan kehidupan setiap manusia. Menurut saya, ketidaksukaan terhadap film ini bisa disebabkan karena dua sudut pandang berikut:
Film yang dianggap sebagai produk dari aliran post-modern yang banyak menggunakan metafora ini dianggap kacau karena waktu, tempat, dan kontinuitas dari shot ke shot tidaklah jelas. Tempo cerita juga dirasakan terlalu lambat. Bagi saya, kekacauan tersebut memang disengaja untuk bisa dijadikan sebagai sebuah metafora dari kekacauan dalam hidup sendiri. Tempo cerita yang lambat juga diciptakan untuk memberikan waktu bagi penonton untuk melihat set, make up, dan properti yang banyak menyimpan metafora tentang kehidupan.
Berdasarkan apa yang saya lihat dan rasakan, film “Synecdoche, New York” memang seakan-akan melepaskan diri dari aturan plot tiga babak. Ceritanya justru terasa seperti turunan yang sangat panjang sehingga banyak yang menganggap film ini seperti sebuah depresi dan mereka tidak menyukainya. Pemikiran ini muncul saat saya menontonnya untuk kelima kalinya dimana jalinan antara waktu, tempat, dan kontinuitas dari shot ke shot sudah saya temukan. Bagi saya, untuk bisa membuat penonton mempunyai hubungan yang kuat dengan cerita dan karakter ini adalah dengan memasuki tempat-tempat dalam hati dan pikiran di mana masalah kehidupan mengendap. Mungkin itulah yang membuat film ini begitu depresi.

Seseorang pernah memberikan komentar di blog pribadi Roger Ebert yang mengatakan bahwa dirinya tidak menyukai film ini dan Ia merasa tidak butuh untuk menontonnya lagi karena Ia tahu dan yakin dirinya tidak akan berubah pikiran. Saya merasa ada sesuatu yang unik setelah memikirkan pernyataannya. Kebenciannya akan film ini ternyata digambarkan dengan begitu jelas melalui Adele yang pergi meninggalkan Caden begitu saja dan tidak pernah ingin berhubungan dengan Caden lagi. Ini membuktikan bahwa apa pun yang penonton rasakan terhadap film ini, suka ataupun benci, tidak akan mengurangi kekuatan film ini dalam hal mengimitasi kehidupan.

Apa yang Charlie Kaufman ingin gambarkan melalui “Synecdoche, New York” adalah sesuatu yang ingin dicapai oleh banyak filmmaker, namun lalu diabaikan karena dianggap tidak mungkin. Sebelum film ini ada, saya pun juga tidak pernah sekali pun berpikir akan ada film yang mampu menggambarkan bagaimana manusia menjalani hidupnya secara menyeluruh seperti ini. Suka ataupun benci, penonton akan selalu memikirkan film ini untuk waktu yang lama. Saya yakin film “Synecdoche, New York” yang saat ini dianggap sebagai cult classic, akan dianggap menjadi salah satu film terbaik sepanjang masa.

synecdoche, new york é um filme realizado por um argumentista. toda a história evidencia estar cheia de ideias e de significados metafóricos (desde casas habitadas a arder contantemente a quadros geniais pintados em miniatura) ainda que o verdadeiro significado a transmitir seja que não há significado nenhum que nós possamos atingir.
o filme gira em torno duma personagem para o dia-a-dia da qual somos atirados, no dia em que a se inícia algo a que se poderia chamar o “processo” da sua morte. durante este tempo, iremos seguir Caden e tudo no filme será subjectivo a esta personagem: forças como o tempo cronológico são por ele dobradas, e a criaçao e caracterização dum espaço interior em que representa à sua maneira tudo o que é real e tudo o que vive (peça de teatro criada por Caden no túnel) servem para caracterizar o conflito interior desta personagem, a sua incapacidade de distinguir o real daquilo que analisa, ou seja, de distinguir o real daquilo que ele julga e analisa como real (aquilo que pensa do real). no entanto, é este mundo interior que Caden luta por mostrar a outros através da sua peça, atingindo assim um tipo qualquer de significado, um entendimento, uma empatia de um público, uma generalizaçao do nada que é a vida.
em termos de conteúdo, o filme é bastante rico, nao há falta de ideias no argumento, o desafio esteve em montá-las todas num filme coeso e que não fosse exagerado. parece-me que o objectivo foi conseguido: sem qualquer síntese (no filme nao há cortes no invulgar), e com ideias loucas o suficientes para não serem aborrecidas, o realizador consegue encurralar toda a história do protagonista na sua morte, acabando assim com o entretenimento que os seus pensamentos poderiam dar ao espectador). tudo o que move caden é o medo da morte, ele só procura a vida porque teme a morte. e a vida manifesta-se na sua cabeça e na sua peça, das formas mais mirabolantes. no entanto, nada disto dura, e nada lhe traz o significado que ele procura.
acabando num tom frio (tão frio que a reacção do espectador é distanciar-se), Caden acaba por morrer sem atingir nem concluir nada do que esperava. assim, neste filme, a vida é procura de algo inalcansavel.

I noticed the existence of this film after I saw the ‘Eternal sunshine of spotless mind’ and I impressived by it so I found who wrote this script and what would he done for next work. His next work is this film, not only written the script but also his debut flim as a director. I love his schizoid imaginarium with hyperrealistic sense. I could not help watching it.

Flim begun with a home looks quite normal. Main character ‘Caden’ who direct plays in a small theater, live with his wife ‘Adele’ the painter, and their daughter ‘Olive’. Though it doesn’t looks like happy but it doesn’t looks abnormal, neither. But the atmosphere of film reverse from moment that Caden get injured in the face by explosion of tap of sink during shaving, this film running with something uncommon atmosphere. Since Caden’s health get worse gradually, ‘Hazel’ the box-office assistant are involved in his life and Adele leave Caden to Berlin for her exhibition with Olive, the film is organized with ridiculous continuities.

For example, the burning house of Hazel and the man who living in the basement of that house, Caden’s sexual-fantasy and depression, many woman in Caden’s life, happening of bizarre incidents when Cadeon went to Berlin to find her daughter and implications about homo-sexuality…All these things constitute the Caden’s life and it throw audiences into confusion with Caden’s autobiographical play.

The word ‘Synecdoche’ meaning “simultaneous understanding”. The title of film coincidie with film. Flim express the whole life of Caden with preposterous and complicate imagination and metaphorical codes.

Acutually, this is the flim which makes us to exhausted easily, answering to endless questions. Kaufman’s intention, however, are making the people raised a questions. So the audiences think and try to solve the questions during film are running.

Whatever their are no doubt about this unusual way to plotting the sequences will remain as classic. Also director Kaufmans ability that visualization the film like this complicate things should be appreciate.

Apart from these brilliant and unusual way, the acting skill of Philip Seymour Hoffman makes this film worth to watch. His performance that acting the Caden’s timid and depressed feeling through the caden’s prime of life to the senescent delicately reach his peak.

To counclude, I love this kind of strange fantasy film that mix with reality. And should watch this film over and over again.

P.S
I really like the song ‘Little Person’, inserted between the end of the film and the end title. After audiences get dazed with Caden’s drop dead, this song playing with melancholy. It makes to remind whole sequence of the film. Definitely, the lyrics makes me think lots of little things.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is a film I’ll just gush about, so the less said, the better. It’s easily Charlie Kaufman’s best work, it is dense, but not overwhelming (as long as you keep an open mind anyway), it’s challenging, and never pretentious, though people tend to confuse the two, hence a lot of the negative reviews it was subjected to. Truly great films are ones that bloom further over subsequent viewings, providing a richer experience each time you see it. Having seen SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK twice in one week, I can say that the second viewing was even more rewarding than the first. Kaufman has also created a story that can only be conveyed through cinema. That is not to say that this is so because of some technical achievement, Kaufman’s scripts in the past have been adapted by technical wizards like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, however SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is rather simple by comparison to, say, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. Many films use the tools necessary to convey and enhance the story they want to tell, however it seems that Kaufman has created a story that requires the medium to be properly told. A lot of directors concern themselves with capturing reality, and some concern themselves with capturing perception. Kaufman deals with the latter, as the film is filled with the main character’s ideas of himself, as well as those around him. Reality has nothing to do with it, as Kaufman’s work deals almost exclusively with the mind and the projections it creates, but here is where he deals with those themes in the most beautiful and poignant way possible. If you saw SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK once and didn’t click with it, see it again, it’s a movie that demands more from the audience than most, but it’s also more rewarding that any big-budget trash you wouldn’t think twice about wasting money on (hey, I’m guilty of it too).

Charlie Kaufman’s obsessive mission to examine (but never really understand) the role art plays in resolving life’s issues was well explored in Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, but reaches unrestrained fever pitch in his directorial début. The problems of Adaptation’s protagonist appear frivolous compared to the deep-rooted neurosis of theatre director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Given a genius grant to pursue his artistic ideal, Caden spends decades attempting to perfect a full-scale recreation of New York life in a giant warehouse, populated by an ever-changing, increasingly imitative cast. With all the logic of an Escher painting, Synecdoche New York is art-imitating-life-imitating-art to the power of ten. Frustrating, perplexing, wildly ambitious and unmistakably brilliant.

a lot of people think this is an arrogant movie because they thought this is a personal movie from kaufman and this is all about him, his dreams, his mind, and zero fun, but not for me, for me this film is all about human’s life, all about us, everyone, and also has the entertainment aspect with kaufman’s typical dark, absurd, and bizzare sense of humor.,

in my opinion, this is a contemplative movie but not crafted “contemplatively in a traditional way”, so maybe that’s the problem, people who watched this felt this is a regular movie like others kaufman stuff movie, so it’s normal that they expected a great fictional entertainment like his previous writing, not this contemplative movie., and maybe that’s also the reason why he direct this himself, because no one could have done like what he did and what he want it to be done.,

for me, this is the most deep, affecting, insightful, and ambitious film from charlie kaufman, and i believe this is gonna be a classic movie for the future, and charlie kaufman is one of the most important director in this generation..

I strongly believe that Charlie Kaufman is the most daring, original and creative screenwriter currently making films. If you’ve seen Being John Malkovich, Adaptation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, you already know that his high concepts are mind benders leading to unpredictable places. Knowing this will not prepare you for Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman’s directorial debut and a work of mad genius. Charlie Kaufman without a net.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a neurotic theater director, who, if you can’t guess is based on the real Charlie Kaufman at the beginning of the film, you will surely know by the end. His family is falling apart and he suffers from real and imagined illness. His personal life is a mess, but his work is so successful that he is given a massive grant to produce his masterpiece. His new project will be nothing short of a theatrical replication of his own life, along with everyone he knows and the city in which he lives.

At about the point where Hoffman’s secretary moves into a perpetually burning house, the movie stops making any rational sense and proceeds till its conclusion with dream logic that will either enthrall or alienate you. I can’t imagine one feeling neutral about this film. It’s a love it or hate it proposition. I actually did start to dislike it at certain points only to discover some of what I love most about the film days after the screening.

I’m actually not a big fan of surrealism and have a hard time with some acclaimed directors of the style like Fellini and Bunuel. The difference with Kaufman is, even as the story and images become more surreal, he keeps us grounded by never severing our empathy with the protagonist. Of course, that’s probably because he is dealing with the universal subject of the fear of death and, as in Adaptation, he has made himself his own protagonist. As in that earlier film, the image of a snake eating its own tail applies here as characters are doubled and doubled again until finally they become individuals.

Synecdoche, New York is a film to be engaged and challenged by. To be a passive viewer would be missing the purpose because this is a film as much about the audience as about its characters. It will not provide the missing puzzle pieces. That’s my job and yours. I felt rewarded with a deeper understanding of some very human themes (and an amazing filmgoing experience.) What you get out of it will depend on what you bring into it.

While I surely could not explain to anyone what all this movie means or stand for, I found myself obsessed with it for a short while. I still think of it often, and watch it frequently. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is outstanding as well as Samantha Morton, Dianne Weist, Tom Noonan and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
This film is full of fun, interesting characters and equally fun, interesting, and odd ball situations. It has a dreamlike haze throughout which really makes you wonder what’s real and what’s not. It’s all undoubtably otherwordly and difficult to comprehend completely, but I could not stop watching it. I went through one day where I played it back to back to back four times. It draws you in, it gets to your emtions and it keeps your interest no matter how outrageous things get. It’s superbly acted, oddly written, and one of the most intriguing films I’ve seen in recent years.

It is a potent cerebral brew and a potent emotional journey. ‘Synecdoche, New York’ strives to touch upon a lot of topics and deserves all of its acclaim. Even if it may turn out to be intellectually dizzying, it never strays from being emotionally resonant.

Synecdoche speaks to pertinent issues that arise being a human on this earth. A few I noticed: there’s the overwhelmingly grave notion of the physical body as a cage—-the mind and soul are subject to the body’s fickle whim and fragile impermanence. Caden Cotard suffers from a multitude of physical ailments ranging from vague self-diagnosed arthritis to a head injury resulting in the loss of normal autonomic functions such as crying and swallowing. In a hilarious performance in the restaurant given by the brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, Caden Cotard stiffens his back and jerks up and down on the booth’s seat, head tilted back, in an attempt to induce swallowing. Here, the common, because ubiquitous, fear of illness is explored in a crudely nightmarish scene. The absurd gesticulation gives anyone who has ever nervously become aware of a strange body ache or pain a jolt of laughter, under which resides a deeper collective horror.

This type of surrealist hyperbole comes into play again when Cotard feels abandoned by those he loves. Once Cotard concludes Adele has left him for good, after a year or so, her telephone message changes to a cold and cutting, “Leave a message if you want, it’s your dime.” Later on, when Cotard feels particularly hurt when Hazel goes on a date with his double Sammy, he tries to reach her on the telephone only to find her phone message has been given the same icy directness.

Moments of sexuality are paired with moments of bad news and despair, or crying, which gives the film the feeling of constant sexual frustration.

In truth, Cotard suffers much throughout the film. The only time his suffering seems to allay is when he accepts the role of the cleaning lady, giving up his role as director to another. Although there are the sounds of warfare and dying outside his (her, if in character) window, Cotard now acts strangely subdued, even benumbed. It takes someone telling him to wipe himself, when to think, and what to think to truly release him from his pain. This philosophical concept could easily be taken to represent the spiritual act of given yourself over to a higher being, to God, or whatever you chose. Religion, a plastic earpiece in the film, is the most potent opiate available to Cotard’s self-concerned suffering.

Once the film stops, there is much to mop up after. ‘Synecdoche, New York’ contains a heady mix of thoughts, and, if anything, its downfall is being overstuffed. But, if you enjoy complicated films (that are equally potent), this may be for you.

Regarding the film, I believe the phrase goes, “Art imitates life imitates art imitates life."

experimentar, expandir las posibilidades del cine y del pensamiento. las acrobacias intelectuales y retóricas de kaufman son un verdadero placer para quien acepta el reto de seguirle los pasos a su desmesura que por otra parte se refleja en la producción. delirante dicen muchos, como si la vida se pareciera más a la supuesta lógica de mujer bonita, rambo+rocky o cualquier spilbergeriada. por otra parte ¿a quién le importa la distancia que pueda existir entre la obra de una mente que parece tener resplandores eternos y la vida o la realidad? el cine también es la posibilidad de reflexionar y crear, me importa un bledo si parece lógico, bonito o bueno. paradójicamente, esta supuesta escenificación barroca y loca, parece ir más hacia la realidad interna de su escritor y director, que hacia una exploración abstracta, alejada del mundo y de la vida. mucho más valor hay en asumir el riesgo de semejante producción que en el claudicar a favor de una mediocre taquilla supuestamente exitosa. buena manera de llamar la atención sobre las relaciones entre un medio lastrado con el realismo y las posibilidades retóricas que están presentes incluso cuando parecen transparentarse al grado de desaparecer, como en el modelo clásico de pretensiones realistas. necesitamos un paul de man de la lectura audiovisual, kaufman nos lo recuerda

this is what happened if the man who created being john malkovich tried to remake federico fellini’s 8 1/2. an intimate and epic work from charlie kaufman. and he is just getting started. this directorial debut from charlie kaufman explores love, obsession, art, life, and death at its most kaufmanesque. this is absurdity at its wittiest. this is a place where life imitates art imitates life.

in the film, the character felt that the line between real life and a theatre play is getting thinner and thinner. and magically, kaufman could make the audience experience what the character experienced. this is an ambitious film that aims high and hits high thanks to charlie kaufman’s directing, writing, and his actors.

this film has the best ensemble cast that i have seen so far in the year 2009. oh, this film is also one of the best film that i have seen in the year 2009. thank you for inviting me at your brain, mr. kaufman. can’t wait for your next party.

To no one’s surprise, Kaufman writes a story about another passive aggressive loser (or as some of my friends might call him, a bitch.) There’s no doubt he’s an amazing character writer, but now that he’s earned prestige and has the freedom to experiment, it’s time for him to break away from the character he identifies with so well and begin exploring other types of people. I didn’t find this interesting at all, really. Maybe Kaufman is just not as good a director as he is a writer, or maybe it’s just me? I guess I would recommend watching it, if for nothing else than the compelling concept which just wasn’t carried out as well as it deserved. 3 stars.

Charlie Kaufman is crazy awesome. The man behind BEING JOHN MALKOVICH? Awesome. Also ETERNAL SUNSHINE..? Awesome as well. ADAPTATION too just because that’s great depressing fun, if there’s such a thing (ps. there is).

But now, Kaufman has a new script out? Awesome! But wait, he’s directing AS WELL? That’s crazy awesome.

Did I mention Charlie Kaufman is crazy awesome? Well, he is. Who else decides the best way to describe the cipherous behavior of possibly sociopathic self-loathing and self-pitying individuals is to have them literally become the actor John Malkovich for five minutes before being spit out onto the New Kersey Turnpike? Or in ETERNAL SUNSHINE… where people who can’t cope with painful memories of their lives can opt to ‘erase’ them completely? Or now, in this new film, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, where an aging theater director is possibly drifting off into extreme neurosis and maybe even madness by constructing a massive theater piece?

That’s right, Charlie Kaufman.

If nothing else, you can’t say he’s not inventive with storytelling techniques.

This film is characteristically uncharacteristic, telling the story of one Caden Cotard, played with proper ethos and pathos by Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Still can’t believe he didn’t win anything for his performance)

Caden’s marriage is in shambles. His wife doesn’t love him anymore. He’s become emotionally distant from her and his daugher, Olive. He doesn’t find the same joy in re-staging plays such as “Death of a Salesman” (though this time with YOUNG people!).
His therapy sessions with an oddly indifferent psychiatrist are austere at best. He totally blows it with a sensitive box office receptionist who ends up haunting him for the rest of his life.

As if it couldn’t get worse, he begins to come to the conclusion that he’s dying from a horrible disease (he’s not. Really. No really. He’s so damn neurotic that he takes the general syptoms of growing old as signs of some sort of chronic illness).

Then out of the blue, he recieves a MacArthur Genius Grant (no small feat) and he thus decides, with the money, to embark on a massive theater project: it will be about something concerning himself in which he does something in his life which will talk about…something.

Okay, so he doesn’t really know what to do with his time other than dodder around, revisiting the ghosts of the past which have long since left him. As the ‘set’ becomes impossibly bigger and bigger and bigger, he becomes more and more entrapped in what may be his own mind, literally manifested as a cipher of New York.

As his personal labryinth and hall of mirror game becomes infinitely large, his life now populated by dopplegangers of real life individuals who are actually playing actors playing actors playing this person who was actually pretending to be….

….the world outside is strangely on the brink of some sort of collapse, as we catch rather fleeting glimpses of the ‘real’ world, or as close to real as it will get. Army vehicles, people wearing gasmasks, explosions and riots….

But none of this is important. Really. Caden is obsessed with his project, which, despite its insane premise and out-of-control status, shows no sign of stopping. As people around him disappear, re-enter, re-manifest, and die, Caden is at the center of it all, never changing, growing old, and always pitying himself.

Honestly, Caden is the most sad human being ever committed to celluioid, even more so than Fellini’s Casanova played by Donald sutherland.

He is nothing. He is so self-absorbed in his issues which in themselves are not horrible, but ends up destroying so many lives in his quest for….well, who knows. The entire point of the theater piece is so absurd that it can’t be anything but a one-way ticket to mental illness and madness, where intro-spection is impossible. After all, if you start to substitute substitues of substitues which are representing your wife who has left you forty years ago, rest assured, you are NOT going to get far…(which is interesting because he never finds an actress to play his wife…)

Despite the almost too obvious statements of death, which is not the theme of the film, (it really isn’t. To think so is to fall into Kaufman’s trap and thus become the target of his ridicule. Please don’t do that.), there is much imagery that is both so entrenched in metaphor and symbolism it’s kind of hard to imagine the looks of the producer’s faces when faced with a scene where a character decides to buy a house that is perpetually on fire for fifty years.

Yeah, the film has odd touches and textures that are either magical realist or symptoms of some sort of subjective madness of Caden, though that too is up for debate.

Touches such as Caden’s wife’s paintings, which are so, impossibly small that in the art gallery everyone has to walk around with gigantic spectacles;

there is of course the aforementioned burning house, which beings as a smoking building and by the end is fully englufed in flames;

cartoon shows that are about sheep pulling Caden in a wagon while a creepy man watches from behind a tree (though this is an important plot point);

doppelgangers that are “weirdly close” to what one imagines and yet eventually take control of said one’s life (though what to control is questionable);

and, of course, a gigantic city set within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city within a city……..

Oh, what is a synedoche you ask?

Why, a city in New York, silly! Everyone knows that!

Now say “thank you!”

This was one film that actually managed to live up to the hype—it truly was one of the weirdest, most ferociously mind-boggling pictures I have ever encountered. I at first found it extremely difficult to accept and enjoy for what it was; it was only after about half an hour that I realized that this was because I was expecting the film to play out a certain way. Let me be clear, “Synecdoche, New York” has an internal logic and language all of its own, and it was not until I realized this that I was able to fully appreciate the movie. Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut straddles the line between inexplicable genius and the ravings of a drunken lunatic, and I will without a doubt have to see it many more times before I’m positive which it is, but for now I’m going to give Kaufman the benefit of the doubt.

The most brutal truth assessed in this movie is the clumsy inability of the director to be unambiguous in the portrayal of his souls and their plight. Even if chaotic, incomprehensible and indecipherable at times – the movie offers a unique look at the ephemeral term ‘personality’. It is an arousing drama that can be an interesting experience for anyone who enjoys the bending of reality for the sake of contemplation.

Depois de fornecer o conteúdo que marcou a transição para o cinema dos videoclipeiros Spike Jonze (QUERO SER JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTAÇÃO) e Michel Gondry (A NATUREZA QUASE HUMANA, BRILHO ETERNO DE UMA MENTE SEM LEMBRANÇAS), o roteirista Charlie Kaufman faz finalmente sua estréia como diretor em SINÉDOQUE, NOVA YORK. Por mais que as mãos de Jonze e Gondry se façam sentir nos trabalhos anteriores, é de Kaufman aquilo que ficou conhecido como a característica dominante de tais filmes: o humor insólito, a metalinguagem, mais humor insólito e os personagens deprimidos.

Tudo isso retorna aqui, e, juntamente com o prestígio do realizador perante certa parte da crítica e da indústria, parece ter servido para atrair um elenco respeitável para o que é basicamente uma nova incursão de Kaufman na auto-análise/biografia cinematográfica.

Philip Seymour Hoffman, bom como sempre, faz o alter-ego de Kaufman, o diretor de teatro Caden Cotard, que concilia o sucesso profissional e artístico com o fracasso matrimonial. Sua esposa, a artista plástica Adele (Catherine Keener), pretende se mudar para Berlim levando a filha do casal, Olive, a tiracolo. Cada vez mais solitário e deprimido, Caden se deixa levar pelas constantes investidas da bilheteira Hazel (Samantha Morton) e da atriz Claire (Michelle Williams). O que se segue é a trajetória de Caden enquanto este tenta construir sua obra-prima, uma peça grandiosa em função da verdade absoluta, que nada mais é do que uma reconstituição exata e em tempo real da vida do próprio Caden.

Pois se Caden é Kaufman, SINÉDOQUE, NOVA YORK é a pretensa obra-prima do segundo, é sua verdade absoluta. Se no início surpreendentemente contido, que remete mais a A LULA E A BALEIA (inclusive nos tons sépia da fotografia) que ao universo do próprio Kaufman, aos poucos o diretor/roteirista vai acumulando camadas e camadas de idéias, que se acumulam sem dar ao espectador (e ao filme) possibilidade de respirar.

É realmente admirável como Kaufman se expõe, através do humor depreciativo de sua própria pessoa. Caden é um morto em vida, que prefere ver sua vida de fora. Em suma, um covarde (como ele próprio se define) e nem um pouco divertido (que é como outros o definem). Isto meio que define também o filme. Na tentativa de se distanciar de si mesmo para revelar a verdade absoluta, Caden/Kaufman acaba por criar apenas um simulacro. E deixa também o espectador do lado de fora.

I’m not going to lie this is not a film for everyone it is a very strange film and I consider myself smart and I didn’t even understand the film completely is film has a abstract and surreal quality. It’s almost like watching a daid lynch film but not as dark and scary

This film started off as a collaboration project by Charlie Kaufman and Director Spike Jonze to make a horror film while Charlie Kaufman came up with the idea of the horror of life and the absence of family and the degenerative state of the body. Spike Jonze went off to make the movie “Where The Wild Things Are” while Charlie kept on trying to finish this project. I have to say for a first time director he is very impressive. Not over abundance on style or trying to cram too much into the film to tell a story. Charlie Kaufman had intended “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” To be his directorial debut but decided better to let Michel Gondry do it as it was a more Visual story that involved emotional truth and nakedness. This film has amazing visuals but is more invested in the emotions and situations the characters find themselves in.

As usual the film has a depressing protagonist expertly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his performances I actually like a lot who is a playwright who discovers he is slowly dieing whose wife leaves him with there daughter for Berlin with her strange friend he wins a grant and decides to make a theater production of his life it is housed in a warehouse and everyday he directs actors playing himself and the people in his life as well as his neighbors and the actors playing all the characters and each day he adds to it and adds anyone he comes into contact with over the years he decides to try and find his daughter and is kept from her at every turn until near the end where the reunion doesn’t go the way he planned. As a sidenote I have to say that Jennifer Jason leigh plays the most evil character I have ever seen on the screen even worse then action movie villains. The film is and has plenty of absurdism his wife is a miniature painter. His wife’s back tattoo that he strangely never noticed. The woman who lives in a house that is always on fire and smoking. The same woman in life playing her role in the play within the play within the play.

If that sounds confusing that is only the start of it. The film is a great meditation on life and all it’s trappings it is a depressing tale mixed with humor. The tone of the film is a Woody Allen movie that he wishes he could make with plenty of offbeat and sometimes out of place humor. Mixed with some of the most depressing scenes ever committed to film but this was strangely a film I could identify with. It doesn’t fit easily into any mold even though you could characterize it in many. It’s a heartbreaking film with a magnificent score. Great art direction and tremendous acting. This is a film that as a chameleon I think will get more appreciated over the years, it’s like a film that feels like you are reading a book learning more and more about fate and life. Like reading a classic book that you don’t fully understand but know there is something special about it and if you could figure it out you would like it more but frustrates you the more and more it goes on.

Another interesting tidbit of the film is the casting of emily watson and samantha morton two actresses who resemble each other smaantha morton who in real life is the younger one out of the two of them plays the older character that emily watson is playing but in the film she is younger then her. i just thought that was interesting and the type of absurdism the film finds itself in constantly.

The Film feels autobiographical though may not be as Charlie Kaufman is infamously reclusie or this may all be a comedy as this is just his type of humor.

I would definitely recommend this film but warn you. It’s very arty and independent I stopped trying to figure it out a half hour into it. But if you give it a chance the film starts to grow on you and after it is over the more you think about it the more you find yourself likeing and impressed with it

We all go about our lives creating a world around us. To us, we are the stars of a film; our surroundings are the set; and the people touching our lives supporting players and/or extras. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Caden Cotard watches as the plays he directs onstage succeed and garner praise while the life he lives with wife and daughter falls apart around him. As a God, crafting the activities and molding the characterizations of a cast, his own humanity is lost and hidden behind an insecure and scared shell of a man. Cotard is truly a selfish person who has thought only of himself and, in turn, looked upon those around him by how they interact in his own life. We do audition the people we hold dear; they must pass a test before we allow them in our lives. Some go on to play bigger roles while others get fired for not doing their job. We raise our children and build them into what we feel a child should be, shaping them to grow up and succeed. It is all carefully orchestrated in the movie of our life, but until you realize that the extras in your story are the leads in their own, you will never be truly happy. Each one will become more famous and sought after, bringing their show to Broadway and Hollywood, hitching a ride on a new director’s coattails, while you stay, stuck and alone, going through the motions in your abandoned back-lot, eternally in Synecdoche, New York.

Is there anyone doing things more ambitiously or creatively then screenwriter Charlie Kaufman? The man is pure genius. Constantly delving into the world of fractured realities, his stories deal with multiple layers and intricate parallel universes. With Human Nature he showed us the clash between people raised in the wild with the doctor who finds and attempts to civilize them, all while having cut-scene interviews with the doctor, stuck in purgatory, a gunshot wound in the head. Being John Malkovich brought us a world where every human being is a puppet to be played with and manipulated from the inside; each of us a hollow shell to be filled by an actor, taking our story in new directions. Adaptation blurred the reality of life’s boring monotony with the action-packed excitement of a B-movie storyline and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind showed how true love is deeper than the memory we have of it. The good will always outweigh the bad and when it is all over, you will only regret why you didn’t try harder to stop it, not knowing that the cycle will inevitably begin again. With Synecdoche, Kaufman makes his debut behind the camera—both Gondry and Jonze off working on their own things—and he does so with the most elaborately challenging of all his work. I’m sure it is a very personal journey about the evolution of a storyteller always creating new and exciting roles, but never taking the time to rewrite himself, to flesh out his own life into one that isn’t full of depression as everyone goes on finding love and success while he stays stagnant in his own self-pity.

I didn’t quite know what to expect when delving into this film. At first, it all seemed pretty much rooted in a reality, a slightly heightened one, but still accessible. Cotard was living a life of convenience with his regretful artist wife Adele, (Catherine Keener), and their annoyingly hyper daughter Olive. We begin to catch glimpses of the deterioration of his surroundings as words start to confuse—Ophthalmologist sounds like Neurologist which sounds like Urologist; when speaking of suicide, “How would you do it” sounds like “How did you do it”, etc—and eventually all footing is lost when Samantha Morton’s Hazel buys a house on fire. It appears to be a gag as she speaks of being afraid she might die in the flames, yet as the film continues on, the home is constantly burning, possibly showing her role as devil to Cotard, the ever-alluring vixen he so wants, but can never build the courage to be with.

The acting is brilliant across the board, from the large roles to the small. Jennifer Jason Leigh’s mysterious Maria becomes a fully fleshed creature, a destructive force in Cotard’s life while only being onscreen for maybe five total minutes. She takes away his wife and then his daughter, becoming a surrogate for himself in Berlin, the place he was not allowed to follow them to. She, in effect, becomes the first cast member in the life of Caden Cotard; the stand-in for him as he must stay back to work on his MacArthur grant producing masterpiece. The story becomes more and more surreal at this point, Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal becoming more eccentric and crazed with nervous ticks and medical problems cropping up one after another. Time begins to fold in on itself as the years pass by, but seem as only days or weeks to him. A wife and child gone for a year yet he only misses them for a week, thinking they will return once the show overseas has completed. The real world and that of his play, reinterpreting it, meld together into one. The warehouse containing his work now becomes the world he knows with warehouses soon being built inside of themselves, copies of the places in his life built like stage sets to be walled up and forgotten, cast members quitting his life being let-go on stage to save on budgetary costs. Synecdoche, New York becomes a rabbit hole ever deepening, MC Escher’s Relativity, Caden moving up and down and around, never escaping his maddening world of solitude and selfishness.

More and more layers are created as we get Emily Watson cast as Hazel, in the play being written, while the real-life Hazel (Morton) goes on continuing her journey with Hoffman’s Caden. Even Cotard himself begins to play the character of Ellen, a housekeeper for the real-life Adele, who then becomes a character cast with Dianne Wiest in the story. Probably my second favorite move by Kaufman, having a character created for a fictional person, to then eventually be played by Caden again, revisiting the role for which he originated, a person who does not exist on any plain whatsoever … genius. I say second favorite, though, because I absolutely loved the character of Tom Noonan’s Sammy Barnathan. He is ever-present throughout the entire film, seen in the background, watching intently. From the first scene, standing across the street as Hoffman gets his mail, to the shadowed blur in front of the camera as he creeps out from behind a tree when Hoffman meets his muse in actress Claire, (Michelle Williams), at a park bench. He is always there, watching and waiting, until the time comes that Caden needs an actor to play himself. How can he give notes on his own character if he cannot see what he is doing? The only way to improve is to put him into the elaborate play himself, to watch his insecurities and greed firsthand, to acknowledge the error of his ways. However, he is so vapid and egomaniacal that he becomes jealous of the characters themselves. When the real Hazel starts flirting with the fake Sammy, while the real Sammy watches playing the fake Caden, the real Caden can’t help but want it to stop. He therefore breaks his own fourth wall to punish the real Sammy, leading up to an utterly brilliant moment of Noonan confronting Hoffman with the sad reality of all that has been happening in the decades-long project.

Only when Wiest’s Millicent Weems takes the job of playing the real Caden—that’s right, the REAL Caden—does he finally get a break to put his whole self into the part of Ellen. He decides to hide inside his own play, all those he loved dead and gone, while Wiest tells him the story of her own life as an actress, eerily similar to his. It all spirals out of control, as Cotard himself can’t remember what happened in his past to bring him to where he has ended up. When he sees his daughter again, dying in a hospital bed, no longer understanding English, her German upbringing replacing her entire childhood, do you begin to wonder who left who? Is what we saw at the start, Keener’s Adele leaving, the truth, or did Cotard leave them to have a homosexual affair? By the time the ending comes, you really won’t know if anything you’ve seen actually happened. However, the final cue, the final note, if you will, given to Hoffman’s “real” Caden Cotard as Ellen Bascomb, couldn’t be more profound in its simplicity. He has needed to be told what to do at every step of his existence, so it is only appropriate that he is told when he can finally take that much-deserved rest.

Where are you, Icarus?

Synecdoche, New York is not a film, it is a screenplay. Watching the film doesn’t feel like a cinematical experience, in fact the only thing justifying the fact that we are watching moving pictures and not reading a book is Philipp Seymour Hoffman. Kaufman’s first wrong decision is that he didn’t simply sit down and write a book. Had he done so, it would have been an admired work of literature; because where Kaufman lacks directorial skills he has enormous talent as a writer. The story he wrote wasn’t made for a film, but he should be applauded for trying it.

Caden Cotard is a theatre director, member of a self-idolizing artistic society, which fails to comprehend that it too is doomed to turn forty one day. Cotard is sick of them and their narcissistic tendencies and feels more and more alienated from this life as his wife and daughter run off to Berlin, symbol for all hypocritical eccentricity of this world. Kaufman continues to confront his hero with the pressure of achieving something to justify his sorry, wasted being, with the mourning over past relationships, with his grey hair. Cotards play becomes the stage for Kaufman’s exaggerated symbolism and his attempt to further the film’s meaning more and more until his card house collapses in itself and the film reaches the peak of absurdity. Kaufman has an Icarus complex; the film shares his mythological fate.

The issues brought up in this film aren’t new to cinema or literature. But unlike Kaufman, most individuals, who handled similar topics, knew where to stop: Brett Easton Ellis brilliantly shows his hero trying to blend into a society filled with pathetic narcissistic idiots, but he doesn’t try to expand the books meaning, doesn’t start involving a whole spectrum of innately human problems and hence, succeeds. Tarkovskiy might go further and show Andrey Rublevs struggle with his faith humanity and his doubts in the importance of his art and being, but then again he is Tarkovskij. Hence, he succeeds.

Kaufman doesn’t know where to stop, neither is he Tarkovskij. Hence, he can not succeed. He strives for perfection, for a film not only about aging and alienation and art, but about everything a human life can offer. About both dating and death, as Cotard ironically states. To adapt this kind of screenplay into an effective film it would have taken a genius of a director and Kaufman, a screenwriter directing his debut film simply is not. Can not be. Trying to tackle something this big as his first project is extremely courageous, but ultimately can not succeed.

Up to a certain point the film is an interesting and enjoyable attempt to turn an overly ambitious screenplay into a piece of cinema. But when the end comes closer, Kaufman can also not rid his film of some overly indie elements, I will try to avoid the word “cliché”. The scattered novels of his psychologist, one of them entitled “I’m not feeling to well today”. Or the priest at the final staged funeral, who predictably starts to swear while delivering a speech, that comes closest to being the film’s ‘message’. Or the final word spoken in the film, so unnecessary and frustrating…

Throughout the film Kaufman tries so hard to make it something unusual and unique that sadly the film becomes a product of the very overly-artsy society Kaufman tries to criticize. The equivalent of a tattooed four-year-old or a microscopic painting of a naked old woman.
That is the film’s biggest tragedy.

Kaufman is an amazingly talented screenwriter. I look forward to whatever he does next. Synecdoche New York is one of the most ambitious film projects I recall to have seen in a long time. There is no middle ground for this film. If it would have succeeded, if the director’s talent would have matched the screenwriter’s one, it would have been one of the best films ever made. The latter fact makes its failure a lot less tragic.

Charlie Kaufman is a contortionist of the mind. Again, like in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he stretches and reshapes time (and space, to a degree) until you just have to let go, and yet, a firm narrative structure is always present, never abandoned. It’s an amazing feat of screenplay-ism.

Casual movie-goers will find Synecdoche, New York difficult, dark, pretentious and hopeless, but if you like film, if you like writing, if you like artistic commitment, if you like mind-fuck hilarity, don’t miss it.

I just love a film that is polyvailant, which is subject to multiple interpretations. After I saw this film for the first time, I had cold shivers traveling down my spine, which is an unusual for a film. I was also perplexed by the number of things that I noticed after multiple viewings, not only symbols, but layers of the story also continue to unfold after every viewing. Charlie Kauffman’s writing philosphy is this: There are no rules to writing a screenplay, regardless on how film schools approach this or dismiss this, this is a truly revolutionary turn for screenwriter’s sake. Life imitating life, imitating life, an allegory of human life, day by day living our lives like we should. This film was a brave testament of Kauffman, concidering the fact that some audience, some who actually demanded higher quality films and some who just wanted to get the film after the first viewing, were hostile to the films use of symbolysim and DENSE plotline. After seeing films with a watered down, dumbed down, whatever what might one call it, was a breath of fresh air in comparison to its predecessors that were released last year.

If there were a subtitle for this film it would be “The Tragedy of Caden Cotard”, because of the way he lived his life. An ever present being of flesh and blood, yet he can never obtain, much less attain true happiness. That Cotard, like the image of Holloywood itself, is dead; totaly and completely dead.
If it were any object to compare with this film, I would have to compare it to a cattleprod, A METAPHYSICAL/ METAPHORICAL CATTLEPROD that forces the audience to move up to the level of the film, not in vice versa like other films do these days. In 2006, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro said this, in relation to the subject matter of this film: In dramatergy, in addition to having vivid eye candy that would sometimes make the viewer sick, there has to be a level of “Eye Protein” that is good and nutricious." The proper balance that best serves the story as a whole.

I think what he’s trying to say is that film has always been in contention as a lesser art form by snobby high-brow fools
As for Synecdoche…the film blew me away. I’m not usually keen on films with such complexity and prefer realist dramas. but this film really caught my imagination. Every minor detail blew me. Also Hoffman’s performance is incredibly heart rendering. Regardless of story line, themes and emotions were so fluently potrayed. Please watch this film!

La primer pelicula que dirije Kaufman (ademas de escribirla, claro) parece no tener nigún tipo de limite, nigún tipo de restricción. Eso es algo que, en teoria, siempre es interesante, porque sirve para derrumbar cualquier tipo de preconcepto y, eso, aun mas en el caso de Charlie Kaufman, uno puede llegar a pensar, es lo mejor que puede llegar a pasar. Error. “Synechdoche, New York” es una pelicula insufrible, que quiere ser lo mas original que existe y se termina chocando contra la primer pared que encuentra. Si bien el comienzo, la primera hora, es realmente interesante, las cosas se van poniendo cada vez mas y mas complejas y cada ves menos y menos interesantes. Cuando la idea principal, lo original en si de la pelicula ya se pone en pantalla, comienza a explotarse esa idea de todas las maneras posibles, generando que lo que veamos en pantalla sea una repetición constante, cansadora y finalmente extensa.

Asi y todo, “Synecdoche, New York”, si bien fallida, tiene unos altos momentos de narración insuperables, una galaeria de personajes altamente disfrutables y todo un clima de comedia oscurisima, mental, a la que Kaufman nos tiene acostumbrados.

In the pursuit of happiness, we follow a portal into the Spotless Mind of Charlie Kaufman, delivered by way of his latest egocentric experiment SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK.  Mr. Kaufman transfers his marital discord from BEING JOHN MALKOVICH to SYNECDOCHE by way of a sexually ambivalent wife and a narcissistic husband; a writer desperately sad and lonely, and forever longing to create something good, ala Charlie Kaufman from ADAPTATION; still more transference follows the pattern laid out in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND: love and lust as something washable, yet prone to staining; combined into a bloated wheezing shape-shifting parable about the futility of life and the unending search for completion; SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is far less powerful than the sum of its parts. 

A mad fever-dream of a movie. Kaufman is able to simultaneously reflect and dissect life and of its stuff in an engaging, often funny, often heartbreaking fashion. It’s a film so dense that on a third viewing connections are still being made, ones that you can soak in for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes. A film you find yourself ebbing towards with a phrase, a look, a mood, or a song. “I’m just a little person, one person in a sea of many little people who are not aware of me.” Bolstered by a cast of serious, precise performers, a melancholic but beautiful score by Jon Brion, and subtly masterful photography by Frederick Elmes, the film follows characters and their relationships to their absolute completion, all the while spinning back to comment on itself, ever reflective, and ever misunderstanding its own history. Kaufman has made an absolute portrait of life, so absolute because of its incompleteness. “I know you, you’re the one I’ve waited for. Let’s have some fun.”

Maybe it does fall short of the masterpiece Charlie Kaufman fans were expecting for his directorial debut – it’s difficult to connect with, lacks an overall cohesion, and just goes on too long – but this is a film that needs to be seen for the sheer strength of the imagination on display. Superb performances from an all-star cast, led by another brilliant performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Yes, it is overblown and self-indulgent, but it’s also very funny. A lot of people have complained that they “didn’t get it” – I don’t think this is the kind of movie you “get” in a traditional sense, it’s more like some of the surrealist films of David Lynch and Luis Bunuel – it functions on its own brilliantly-constructed, constantly shifting dream-logic. Excellent score by Jon Brion.