Synecdoche, New York Review

I have to confess that I saw this movie last Wednesday and I didn't post an immediate review. It wasn't because it was a particularly busy Thanksgiving (well...it was, but that had nothing to do with the review) and it wasn't like I was lazy at all (well...ok, maybe that had a little bit to do with it). The truth is that Synecdoche, New York is a truly puzzleing movie. One of the most puzzleing I've seen in sometime. So puzzleing in fact that I was confused leaving the theater and shocked at what to think.

The movie revolves around Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a successful theater director who is constantly conflicted regarding his personal life. He lives in the shadow of his exwife Adele (Catherine Keener) who's a painter. Adele and their daughter Olive leave for Germany where Olive is lead by her mothers friend Maria (played by the always wonderful Jennifer Jayson Leigh) down questionable paths that Caden constantly blames himself for. Then Caden recieves the MacArthur grant, which gives him the funding for any major projects.




This is where the movie begins to spiral into a vortex of insanity the likes of which you've never witnessed. Caden begins making a play in a large wearhouse where the actors represent real people and the stage is the city of New York. Every day Caden gives his actors, or rather civilians living in his very real world, slips of paper telling them what happened to them that day. Slips like "you were raped" or "your wife had a baby boy" or "you suspect your husband is cheating on you" ect. The actors play out everything just like senerios would go in real life.

Caden then blurrs the line between reality and stage even more as he gets actors to play himself and his new wife Claire. Sammy Barnathan steps into play Caden and is the oddest character in this character study because all his life he's been folowing around Caden studying his every movement as if knowing that this role was meant for him all along. Sammy and Cadens train of thought become so intact with one another that I believed that they were the same characters just in the confinds of different bodies.


The ending begins to confuse me and for your sake I won't say more than: It's wierd, out there, and one of the most deppressing and simotaneously refreshing ways for a movie to end in several years. The acting is of course top notch but I found that the movies first 25 minutes began were less intresting than the rest of the film. I didn't care about Caden and his relationship with Adele at all. Also some of director and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's (the man who wrote Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) odd characer quirks seem mildly off (one of the characters houses is constantly on fire...why she doesn't just put it out is beyond me). But the main flaw I found was how damn confusing the movie was. All the symbolism is fine, it worked in his other written films, but here Kaufman goes too far. Could I explain some of what happend in it to you? Sure I could. But there are no right answers and too many loose ends. Is that a good thing? You decide. Grade - B+