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?