The famed film critic Roger Ebert named Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York the greatest movie of the 2000s, and even all these years later, I can’t help but agree with him. Following Kaufman’s extraordinary scripts like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman made the leap into filmmaking himself with a movie that Ebert described as “the most perceptive film I can recall about how we live in the world.” As a film that tried to enclose the complexities of the human experience into a single story, Synecdoche, New York was wild, ambitious, and thought-provoking.
Movies have the power to connect with us on a deep level, and through a career-best performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman as the melancholic theater director Caden Cotard, we were invited into his sprawling world of ruminating creativity. As a challenging and unwieldy work of art, Synecdoche, New York doesn’t reveal itself fully upon first viewing and requires the audience to completely surrender to it. Yet, Ebert saw something special in this introspective directorial debut, and even after nearly two decades, I’m still putting the pieces together and finding new meaning in Synecdoche, New York.
Synecdoche, New York Was A Wild Post-Modern Odyssey That Blurred The Lines Between Fiction And Reality
Philip Seymour Hoffman Gave A Career-Best Performance In Synecdoche, New York
As a story that begins with a man’s life, marriage, and relationships already unraveling, Synecdoche, New York tells the story of Caden unexpectedly receiving a MacArthur Fellowship, which allows him to pursue a gigantic autobiographical theater production. This highly ambitious endeavor soon spirals out of control as Caden’s elaborate plan spans years, includes casting actors to portray the actors already in the play, and creating a life-sized replica of New York City in a warehouse. As a vast symbol for the all-encompassing link between art and life, Caden’s real life and the play itself start to blend into one.
Synecdoche, New York was named the best film of 2008 in over 20 lists by major publications, including The Hollywood Reporter, and was also nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Hoffman’s performance as Caden was deeply sorrowful as we watched a man desperately trying to find meaning through navel-gazing and, while endlessly analyzing his life, constantly watching it split away. While Caden was trying to find meaning through creativity, in the process, we see him grow old, his health falter, and his ex-wife and child become fractured strangers to him. In the words of Ebert, Synecdoche, New York was about how “we build compartments in our mind” as it took an unflinching look at the strategies we use to live our lives and the downfalls of a life examined.
Charlie Kaufman Delivered One Of The Greatest Directorial Debuts Of All Time With Synecdoche, New York
As A Work Of Singular Vision, Only Kaufman Could Have Made This Film
While Charlie Kaufman had already written the screenplays for some of the most insightful and interesting Hollywood movies of modern times, Synecdoche, New York felt like the summation of his life’s work up to that point. As an attempt to condense the disorganized and incoherent intricacies of human anxiety into a grand narrative of pain and regret, Kaufman started his directing career with a movie that Ebert described as like “a novelist who wants to get it all into the first book in case he never publishes another.”
Synecdoche, New York shows how the more we try to understand ourselves, often the more lost we become.
This grand endeavor sought to capture the futility of trying to depict reality through art, as Caden’s project never ends and only becomes more alienating to those who wish to understand it as he continues to expand it. As both a satire of artistic ambition and one of the best cinematic examples of it all in one, Synecdoche, New York shows how the more we try to understand ourselves, often the more lost we become.
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As a dark warning about the power of art, but also of not forgetting to actually live life, Synecdoche, New York was a film I’ve taken great meaning from, and much in the way Caden’s struggles continually change throughout his life, I like to rewatch it at different stages of my own life. Charlie Kaufman put his entire selfhood into his dense and thought-provoking script, so it makes sense that it was this movie that made him decide to take the leap into filmmaking, as nobody could have made it but him.
Source: Roger Ebert
