by Neal Coxworth,
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UNITED STATES, Nov 09 — Synecdoche: New York is a movie that explodes traditional movie boundaries of plot, time, location and realism to create a visceral inside out portrait of a man’s life. The movie, while crushingly intimate at times, is sweeping in its scope as it covers 40 years in the life of Caden Cotard, a gifted theater director as he struggles to complete his masterwork theater piece in New York City.
The movie was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, Oscar Winner and the author of the screenplays for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Meanwhile, the world outside is devolving into chaos and anarchy, as Caden is apparently oblivious to all but his own ambition for creativity
Synecdoche: New York is a movie that explodes traditional movie boundaries of plot, time, location and realism to create a visceral inside out portrait of a man’s life. The movie, while crushingly intimate at times, is sweeping in its scope as it covers 40 years in the life of Caden Cotard, a gifted theater director as he struggles to complete his masterwork theater piece in New York City.
The movie was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, Oscar Winner and the author of the screenplays for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh and an excellent supporting cast too numerous to mention.
If you have seen any of the movies mentioned above, you will know that Kaufman, often coupled with director Spike Jonze, has always been fascinated by metaphysical topics surrounding the nature of identity, the blurred lines between art and artist, and many ideas that border on nihilism, often expressed in unique, funny, and sometimes disturbing ways.
Beginning with the title, nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems, as the film is deft at supplying a continuous stream of subtle hints and visual cues that point toward seemingly larger truths.
The beginning of the film has Caden in his native Schenectady, pursuing his successful, though safe, career as a regional theater director. His wife Adele is a successful paint artist in her own right. Her true confidante, Maria (played by Leigh), a Svengali of sorts, also delights in dismissively complimenting Caden, often casting a knowing look Adele’s way.
Soon Adele, Maria and Cotards’s daughter Olive are on a one way trip to Germany, ostensibly for an art exhibition of Adele’s work. Soon after his family leaves him, Caden receives word that he is the recipient of the MacArthur award. This gives him the freedom to break free of regional theater and create something that is truly his own. What this turns out to be is a fantastically enormous production that takes place in a warehouse in New York City. Caden populates this constructed reality with tens of dozens of actors and multiple layers of storytelling.
The confused plot of the piece is never quite fully disclosed, and the production continues throughout many decades with no apparent audience or following. However, it becomes quite obvious early on that the production is really a self-referential piece of art in which all the characters, ideas and scenes of Caden’s actual life are being acted out on stage. It soon evolves into a play about a man’s life, as acted by actors, who are in turn played by other actors. This milieu is confusing to the say the least, but that misses the point.
The real theme here is that Caden is trying to grab a hold of something permanent, something deserving of his ‘genius’ award that will mean something to people and that people will remember him by. Meanwhile, the world outside is devolving into chaos and anarchy, as Caden is apparently oblivious to all but his own ambition for creativity. The movie seems to say that the harder we grasp, the looser our grip as decay slowly forces us to relinquish all attempts at hubris and ambition.
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