Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoche, New York_360P

source: Synecdoche, New York

The best thing I can say is that Philip Seymour Hoffman did a great job at acting in this hopeless and depressing mess. More than once I wished it was over, but I kept hoping it would get better. It was very convoluted and confusing. Is he dreaming? Is it really happening? How can that be true? Lots of jumping around on the time-line. Depressing and strange mixtures of subject matter - illness, breakups, fire, sex, death. The only part that made me feel comforted was seeing Dianne Wiest, an actress that I recognized from other, happier movies. The speech by the priest near the end was fairly moving (though morose), however, ultimately I felt this was an utter waste of 2 1/2 hours of my life. I wish I had a toothbrush that could scrub it out of my mind.

Charlie Kaufman can't tell jokes. Well, so what, you might say; according to some, nor could Shakespeare, and what of that? But then, Shakespeare never wrote a play consisting of nothing but jokes. Of course, Kaufman the writer has been badly let down by Kaufman the director (although no more or less badly than he was let down by Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry, than whom he is at least no less talented) – so it's hard to say where exactly the fault lies; but while watching this film one comes to the slow and dazed realisation that what it's attempting is humour. For example: Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is raging about his daughter's getting a tattoo at an early age. Claire (Michelle Williams) takes off her shirt to reveal that her back is entirely covered by a bright red tattoo of Satan, which she says she got at the same age. Caden, who has been sleeping with Claire for several years: "Well, I've never seen THAT before." It's a joke right out of "The Simpsons"; one can imagine Homer Simpson delivering the same line. The difference is that in "The Simpsons" the line would have been funny, and we wouldn't have blinked, sat in puzzlement through whatever happened next (one ceases to care after a while) and perhaps even made it through the closing credits and out into the street before realising that this line was supposed to be funny. Kaufman presents jokes to us the way a cat might present a dead bird, then stalks off to bask in his own cleverness while we're struggling to work out what our reaction is meant to be. Not one of Kaufman's jokes, conceits, or visual touches, not the one-liner about the tattoo, not the unexplained Zeppelin that weaves its way through the scale-model New York tenements, not the miniature portraits you need magnifying glasses to see, not the laboured basic premise of the film, has any impact or life. Anyone can come up with these ideas: philosophy postgrad students are already able to generate thought experiments of this kind by the dozen, and often tell them better. And, alas, the film is like conceptual art. Once I tell you what it's about you might as well not bother to watch it. You've already got the gag. And it's not funny.

Rating: A, 98/100, 10/10 Charlie Kaufman explores the depression of Caden Cotard, a playwright/ hypochondriac (Philip Seymour Hoffman). It all stems from his wife (Catherine Keener), but he knows and the audience knows that she is not the cause of all his problems, although she is quite unsettling. We are introduced to Hazel (Samantha Morton), a sweet distraction from his decaying family life. However, his sense of loyalty stands in the way of anything meaningful happening with her. As he grows older, Caden becomes acutely aware of the things that are missing from his life. His focus is on himself, but in his myopic state he cannot identify the problem. So he comes up with the best solution he can. He'll make a play of his life. And in so doing, maybe he'll find out what went wrong. Maybe he'll find out who he is. Maybe he'll only continue to destroy his life. Sammy, the actor who plays Caden in the play, seems to overtake Caden's life and becomes more like Caden than Caden himself could ever be. Lines of fantasy and reality blur as Sammy makes creative choices about the character of Caden that Caden disagrees with. Then, as if that weren't enough, the role mutates to the point where actress Millicent Weems (Dianne Wiest) takes over the role. She becomes Caden's doppelgänger, taking control of Caden's life, when he is unable to cope. The film starts in October, 2005 and continues over forty years into the future. Nothing much changes in the world around the characters. The only thing that is constant is time, spinning out of control. When his grown up daughter, Olive, falsely accuses him of ruining her life, her perception totally skewed, Caden begs to be forgiven in what is a very moving scene. Not to be overlooked is Hope Davis' psychotherapist character. She plays the straight guy, nodding, asking how Caden feels. Oh it feels bad? Good! Her collection of self-help books (all written by her) don't help Caden solve his problems. They are only false remedies that Caden tries, in effort to satisfy him in his life. Caden either projects his health problems onto her, or she has problems of her own (a grotesque blister on her toe that mirrors the boils on Caden's legs). Emily Watson plays an actress that is portraying Hazel's character. To me, she and Samantha Morton are like the same person, the same actress. I only saw their similarities. However, apparently, Charlie Kaufman cast them because of their differences. Also, the characters are supposed to be extremely different. But at first, the overwhelming similarities are often confounding. Emily Watson takes over Hazel's character and acts in ways Hazel would never act, just as Sammy and Millicent overstepped their bounds with the Caden character. What is moving about this movie? Certainly Caden's connection with his daughter, Olive. Certainly his affection for Hazel, the closest thing he has to a soulmate. Yet he always manages to screw things up with her, no matter what. Also, death is explored in this movie, the idea that we're all going to die one day. That everyone is the main character of their own story. That we all have choices. Synecdoche, New York is a gross and weird movie too, different from anything that you'll see this year. That's ultimately why I love it. It attempts to show the truth through all the seemingly unimportant details, yet they are tied together in a nice bow without the movie seeming too perfect. It's offensive to many, the way life is shown, yet I laughed at the things I should have been shocked by. After this film, it almost doesn't make any sense to see any movie by anyone except for Charlie Kaufman. No one has more sense of oneself (and everyone else) and yet no one is more lost and wandering (and boy, I thought I was bad!). Kudos to Kaufman for succeeding yet again, when he could have taken the easy way out and written something more simplistic or less gut-wrenching.

This film is about a play director who creates an alternate New York in a huge theatre. I probably will never understand why "Synecdoche, New York" have such raving reviews and positive comments. To me, "Synecdoche, New York" is pointless, confusing and boring. It is overlong and slow, and I had to get up from my seat and exercise in order to stop myself falling asleep. So was Cotard living a dream, or directing a play, or is he delusional? I just do not understand this mess. Maybe the film is full of metaphors or messages, but I did not get a single thing. It surely goes down as one of the most time wasting film I have ever watched.

When I saw the trailer for Synecdoche New York I was interested, intrigued and excited. A few hours later, after seeing the film itself, I left the cinema not just disappointed after what seemed like several hours of slow-moving, uninspiring, uninteresting, boring viewing; I was actually annoyed. Annoyed at the money and time I had parted with to sit through such an ultimately pointless experience. The concept behind this film is a grand and exciting one. Theatre director, Caden Cotard, attempts to recreate the world he lives in with a vast cast of actors in a hopeless struggle to make sense of the misfortunes in his life and analyse his own inadequacies. With such a great inspiration and a stellar cast you would think Kaufman would have to try very hard to go wrong, but somewhere along the way he does. In Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich Kaufman showed a great skill for combining strange plots with creative casting and a quirky comic edge to create profound and moving films riddled with symbolism. It is because of these films that his brand of surrealism has become popular and very successful. Synecdoche New York should and could have featured alongside these works as triumphs of the avant-garde. It does not. Kaufman seemed to spend so much energy applying surrealist quirks to the plot that he neglected the fundamental aspects of his film. I never connected with the protagonist or cared enough about his tragically unhappy life to find his story interesting or moving. Had this film lived up to its promising roots I would have spent my time longing for Caden to find some sort of happy conclusion to his struggle. I would have felt sympathy and sorrow when he finally dies. As it was I spent my time longing for any conclusion so I could leave. I felt pity and in the end I was relieved when he died. This may have been forgivable had the message behind the film said something innovative and original. Instead the message behind this waste of time of a motion picture was not to waste your precious life analysing your misfortunes. I wasted two hours of my life watching a highly analytical film effectively telling me not to waste my time because analysis is fruitless! Frankly that message is pointless, hypocritical and uninspired. I may as well have painted "carpe diem" on a wall and watched it dry. Moreover, having decided to pass on this unhelpful message, Kaufman's incessant tangents of unrelated surrealism were more distracting and confusing than quirky or interesting. Where there was symbolism to be found I was usually so uninterested that it only served to detract from the core meaning of the film. Maybe I have missed the point or lacked the patience to fully appreciate this film. I have asked myself this several times since seeing it, especially since so many other reviewers seemed to enjoy and admire Kaufman's creation. But no matter how much I reconsider the film I always come to the same conclusion: I wish it had been better. I wish I still had my money. I wish I could get those two hours back. My advice: do not watch Synecdoche New York. Certainly do not pay to watch it. And at all costs avoid trying to pronounce the word Synecdoche!

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players . . ." Synecdoche, New York, like the literary term in its title, might stand for all our lives as director Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) attempts a gigantic stage construction of to depict his tumultuous life. Hamlet 2 it is not—it's a serious attempt by cerebral and creative writer Charlie Kaufman to deal with the muses and mistakes of a life worth noticing, in this case where Caden has won a MacArthur. Caden eventually creates a discursive and massive stage play peopled by ex lovers who help him try to gain meaning out of a sometimes bleak Brecht or Beckett landscape. Kaufman takes us into and out of time and place, characters and ideas, so that to survive the viewing, we must allow him to digress and symbolize to distraction. The recurring motif of a house on the brink of burning down signifies the nearness of insanity and even death. The specter of Death overshadows all else and serves as a catalyst for the artist's grand opus. It also allows him to muse on the meaning of life and the challenges of art, the former leaning toward a pantheistic notion that we are all made up of the people we have loved. Shakespeare's notion of the world as stage is more appropriate here than ever. Artistically Kaufman is more in David Lynch land than anywhere else; I'm comfortable with that although the producers should not wait for the profits to roll in anytime soon—it's a challenging mess. Caden Cotard: "I know how to do it now. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due."

One of the movies Synecdoche brought to mind for me was Bunuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" in which two different actresses play the same character with no explanation of any sort offered within the narrative. It's always refreshing to me to see events in movies occur without the writer/director/actors seeming to feel any need to "explain it" to the viewer. As with (m)any other filmmakers who are genuinely engaged with film as a unique art form, it seems quite clear to me at least that Kaufman requires the spectator to meet him on his own wavelength. This is what a significant portion of artists in any medium do: they take the constraints, conventions, and materials of their chosen form very seriously and explore their own perceptions, ideas, and emotions plying the tools of their medium on their own personal terms. At the opposite end of this artistic spectrum is the sort of pandering manipulation of a Spielberg or the painter Thomas Kincaid. Their works are only "personal" in the sense that what is most prominently on display in their work is their own desperate personal need to have their intended message "understood" (and even experienced) by all spectators in exactly the same way, so that "the artist" can in turn feel his own personal worth has been validated by public and critical responses - "Hah, I must be a great artist, because I succeeded in making you think and feel the exact thing I wanted you to!" I'll grant that this "spectrum" is a very broad one, and I won't discount the work of anyone along it, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy things I see as technically accomplished hackwork. I don't, and never will. I'll take an artist who refuses to telegraph his "statement" to me any day. I prefer works that wash over me, entrance me, and lead me down paths to new or long-buried thoughts and feelings. I feel GREAT after having seen Synecdoche this evening. I laughed, I cried, and I see the world just a little differently now. I feel like a group of people I have never met (Kaufman and the others involved in making this wonderful movie) shared something with me that was very important to them. I wish I could thank them, because I think it takes a great deal of courage to share with others things that are so personally important in such an honest, unapologetic way. I think it also takes a lot of courage for investors to throw millions of dollars at such a personal vision. It gives me hope for humanity that such a thing is possible. The Day the Earth Stood Still gave me a tiny little glimmer of this sort of hope last weekend. But that movie was like a vending machine bag of chips compared to the full-course-meal of Synecdoche New York.

I should have guessed, when the first scene was of Adele wiping Clair's butt and showing the green colored poo to the camera, what I was in for. I love Charlie Kaufman...I love Eternal Sunshine, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. But this movie was morose, self-indulgent and just plain boring. I have a theory that sometimes film makers who have experienced some success create something just terrible, and realize it is terrible, but go through with it anyway, just to see how people react. The sheep in Hollywood often tout these films as "groundbreaking", "courageous" or "cutting edge". They seem unwilling to admit to themselves that such a darling of the movie industry is capable of producing something that is, well, just bad. It's OK...and actually falls right into what Charlie Kaufman has taught us. We are all fallible, sometimes hugely and embarrassingly so. This is Synecdoche. I'm in no way done loving Charlie Kaufman. I'm sure once he ups his dosage again, he'll produce something new that has some redeeming qualities. I'll be waiting and eager to forgive and forget.