Search - Synecdoche, New York on DVD

Dianne Wiest - Ellen Bascomb/Millicent Weems
Jennifer Jason Leigh - Maria
Hope Davis - Madeleine Gravis
Tom Noonan - Sammy Barnathan
Sadie Goldstein - Olive (Age 4)
Robin Weigert - Olive (Adult)
Daniel London - Tom
Robert Seay - David
Stephen Adly-Guirgis - Davis
Frank Girardeau - Plumber
Paul Sparks - Derek
Jerry Adler - Caden's Father
Lynn Cohen - Caden's Mother
Peter Friedman - Emergency Room Doctor
Charles Techman - Like Clockwork Patient
Josh Pais - Opthamologist
Amy Wright - Burning House Realtor
Deirdre O'Connell - Ellen's Mother
Kat Peters - Ellen (10 Years Old)
Michael Higgins

There’s this wonderful Nova documentary about String Theory called The Elegant Universe. String theory is all scary math and quantum mechanics, and the documentary attempts to explain to us wide-eyed laypeople the immensely complex ideas behind it. This is done with a mixture of graphical examples and a host of interviews with scientists who do their best to dumb it down for relatively easy consumption. Of course, I understood almost none of it. I’m analytical, but my ability to analyze is unfortunately stalled when numbers are involved. Nevertheless, what I did take from the documentary was an idea about the reverberation of life and the insanity that would surely come with trying to follow, not a single linear momentum, but an infinite number of threads: threads of possibility, outcome, repercussion, decision, etc. I thought about these ideas for days and eventually had to put them aside. There was just no end to it. The complexity was too big and, for some reason, thinking about these unseen strings almost always brought me to thoughts of death. Since I’m already a fairly morbid individual, this additional angle of perception wasn’t doing me much good. Watching Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, I was reminded of those ruminations and was again disquieted. Thanks, Chuck.

With his first directorial effort, Kaufman emerges like the bastard child of Woody Allen and David Lynch and does something that I wouldn’t have thought possible: he’s made a film about everything. And, like the vibrations of those aforementioned strings, we need only to look at one man’s life to see that idea in motion. I know, I know, it may sound like I’m rambling incoherently, but that is exactly what Kaufman’s film is. That is why I cannot hope to properly explain it here, for it is a spectacular rambling: a magnificent non-sense in which at least Kaufman’s version of the truth lies. I won’t pretend that I understood every angle of Kaufman’s narrative (the film demands multiple viewings), nor would I be foolish enough to attempt to categorize or summarize what the film is really about. I’m not even sure if Kaufman could tell you that. I can say that I found it profoundly moving, and quite painful.

To give you a basic outline, the film revolves around Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a 40-something theatre director who, through an immense project, attempts to place his life under a microscope. He builds a replica of Schenectady in a massive “theatre space” and begins to populate it with actors who “play” the real people in Caden’s life. His examination becomes labyrinthine, confused and intrusive. Roles are interchanged, reality blurs and purpose is forgotten. And the metaphysical plot or human condition, if you will, in all ways possible, is lost, found and then eventually accepted.

The film, as with most of Kaufman’s work, functions through the negotiations of the mind. Through his examination of an artist, Kaufman explores the very mechanics of life and, as such, the film is difficult. I don’t mean that in a negative way, of course. We have so little genuinely difficult cinema—cinema that asks us to put in work that is often so very rewarding. Kaufman’s film asks us to be introspective viewers. If we don’t view the film through introspection or even empathy, the connection is lost, because, ultimately, the film is about us. Some will no doubt dismiss the film or struggle against it, but we are all represented here. That’s why it’s so powerful. There’s nothing presented in the film that you don’t already know. The film represents a cynical and violent irony in that we all know the truth of our existence, we all know the futility of our struggles against the hurtling inevitabilities, yet we still struggle; we still deal in denial; we’re still afraid of the dark. Kaufman’s film knows this truth, as well, but doesn’t try to change our mind, or even reassure us that everything is going to be okay. No, Kaufman isn’t even aware of us—and I don’t think he believes anything will be okay, even if, like us, he keeps telling himself otherwise.

I fear this review has been somewhat of a failure, so I don’t feel too bad driving in the final nail by expressing my ever-increasing envy of Charlie Kaufman. The man has managed to make transcendent art out of self-indulgence and every time I dismiss an idea of mine as foolish or stupid, I think to myself: Kaufman could make it work. I feel like we might be brothers in psychosis, because like me, I think Mr. Kaufman spends too much time wandering the corridors of his own head. But, miraculously, he somehow escapes long enough to produce masterful work like Synecdoche, New York. I, on the other hand, am still stuck obsessing over the quantum strings, unable to enjoy the fruits of their reverberations.