Synecdoche, New York

Director: Charlie Kaufman
Year: 2008
Leads: Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Tom Noonan, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, One Million Others
Classification: Meloncholia
Rating: ****1/2

I’m going to keep this one short out of necessity. Charlie Kaufman recommends seeing it twice, and I have not done so. Not that I particularly want to at this juncture. I stood outside of the theater in drizzle/rain for about a half-hour after the movie with two friends, barely speaking. Almost ruined my whole night! We were almost first in line for the sold-out show, and watched the faces of those exiting the showing before ours. Countenances ranged from blank, to confused, to sad, to irritated, to mildly bemused, to embarrassed. No one looked like they were going to a party.

But as to the movie itself. I went it expecting a satisfying dose of the patented Kaufman-style amused melancholia prevalent in his previous works, usually dashed with heartfelt whimsy, which has created something of a backlash in the film appreciation community. “Eternal Sunshine was too saccharine/melodramatic and self-satisfied” they said. Poppycock. But in any case, Kaufman has stripped out the quirk and warm fantasy expressed by Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, exposing a baffling and emotionally crushing meta-skeleton of a film.

The plot remains somewhat inscrutable upon much reflection, and it wouldn’t do much good to describe it in much detail. The main thrust is watching Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s life spiral into feverish and dreamlike incoherence as the scope of his imagination bloats and convolutes itself in response to an increasingly acute and labyrinthine emotional destitution and loneliness. A set of Russian dolls on an infinite regress, the characters in the film, and the actors playing them, and the actors playing them create a profound dislocation in the audience that goes beyond mere surreality. Tarkovsky’s films are perhaps the closest comparison I have to the level of puzzling and profound emotional effect that Synecdoche produces, though in a different way.

I’ve explained the film to myself as an evocation of the saddest dream you’ve ever have, where you’ve lucidly experienced a dark night of the soul, genuine grief combined with titanic creative exuberance, only to lose all but the merest echoes upon waking in the morning. The most important thing you’ve ever lost is something you’ll never remember, and if you knew what is was you’d understand why you’re so god damned lonely and never get anything done.