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Synecdoche, New York
(2008)
Directed by
Charlie Kaufman
Review by
Terry Plucknett
There are certain movies that, after viewing, you
know you just witnessed something brilliant … if you could only
understand it.
This is the
emotion I felt after viewing
Synecdoche, New York.
This complex story was written by the brilliant
Charlie Kaufman who gave us such complex and intricate stories as
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind,
Adaptation, and
Being John Malkovich.
However, this is the first time he has also worn the directing
hat for one of his screenplays.
The story centers around Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a
paranoid theatre director who is always afraid he is a day away from
death.
A huge supporting
cast of characters come in and out of his life throughout the 30 or so
years that the film covers.
His wife (Catherine Keener) goes to Germany with their daughter to be a
famous artist, the box office girl at the theatre (Samantha Morton) who
he always has had a crush on moves into an eternal flaming house, and
his therapist (Judy Davis) is always on the verge of flirting with him
as she gives him self-help books that make no sense.
Then everything changes when Cotard receives a huge grant to put
on an original production.
He decides he wants to do something real and partially biographical to
truly delve into a real human experience.
What results is creating an entire set of New York that
encompasses every aspect and observation of his life in a warehouse.
Everyone who has been a part of his literal world has an actor
portraying them in Cotard’s fictional world.
This includes someone playing him and someone playing the guy who
plays him as he shadows him.
His world becomes this master work, so a model of the warehouse
and set is made inside of the real warehouse and set, then another made
inside that.
Confused yet?
It gets worse, but unfortunately I am unable to explain much
beyond that because I am not sure where the story went from there.
This is, by far, the most intricate and complicated
of Charlie Kaufman’s stories to date.
It felt less like a Kaufman movie and more like a David Lynch
movie due to the pure confusion the story creates.
Leaving the theatre, I felt like I did after viewing David
Lynch’s 2006 mind trip
Inland
Empire, except I was a little more frustrated.
Where David Lynch will confuse you from start to finish so you
never think you will be able to understand and just go along for the
ride,
Synecdoche starts off
simple enough for anyone to understand but blows up into something
bizarre and confusing that you feel like you should be able to
understand but you can’t.
In fact, the story can almost be coherently followed for most of the
movie until the last 15 minutes or so when everything you think you know
about everything that has happened throughout the movie is all of a
sudden put into question.
Knowing Kaufman, there is some deeper meaning.
He likes to play with his audiences, but it is never in vain.
There is something there if you can just understand it.
All this does is make me want to see it again to try and crack
the puzzle.
There is something brilliant going on in this
movie, but I just don’t know what it is yet.
When I do, I might consider this to be a masterpiece, but for now
it is just a fun movie that boggles the mind just thinking about.
Rating:
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