Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Synecdoche, New York (2008)--2/5

"Synecdoche, New York" is a miserable slog through Charlie Kaufman's pet obsessions. It's not confusing, so much as it nakedly refuses to cater to audience expectations. Like "Adaptation," another, relatively sunny, Kaufman-penned meta-commentary on the artistic process, it may also have built-in rebuttals to criticism. My words are currently being sucked into the worlds within worlds that comprise the latter half of the film.

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), with a name deemed so whimsical by Kaufman that other characters repeat it three or four times more than necessary, staggers through his life like he's never quite woken up from a nap. He's crippled by phantom and real illnesses. His wife, a painter of microscopic nudes,* moves to Germany and never comes back. After receiving a MacArthur grant, he begins staging a play based on his life. In a city-sized warehouse, he recreates his life. To do this, he of course has to recreate New York. This version comes complete with a smaller version of the warehouse inside, with a smaller version of New York. And so on.

It's a novel idea, even if it does plagiarize broadly from Kaufman's earlier works. Somehow, the concept doesn't translate to the screen. The more piled-on the loopy ideas, the less Cotard--and the audience--cares. By its very nature, the play can never have a dress rehearsal, an opening night, or even a title. "Synecdoche, New York" is one long trudge to death. Of Cotard, of his play, and of art. Maybe even of the world. Lovely.


*And what's up with Kaufman's endless supply of *quirky* artists?


3 comments:

Stephen said...

I often get Samantha Morton and Emily Watson confused. I'm not the only one; they've been cast as two versions of the same person in this film.

jamil said...

that's actually the only bit in the movie I thought was brilliant. it reminded me that they actually are two separate actresses.

I really didn't like this movie at all. My twitter review:

"watching Synechdoche NY was like having my eyes pinned open & forced to watch Chris Ware make love to himself recurrently."

Stephen said...

Reminds me of that terrible movie "Something to Talk About." Julia Roberts and Kyra Sedgwick finally cast as sisters.