Synecdoche, New York is a 2008 American film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. This epic tragicomedy is Kaufman's directorial debut.
It premiered in competition at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2008 and went into limited theatrical release in the U.S. on October 24, 2008.
The film takes its name from a juxtaposition of the real-life city of Schenectady, New York, where much of the film is set, and the concept of synecdoche, wherein a whole is referred to by means of its parts or the parts by means of the whole.
Plot
Caden Cotard,[2] a theatre director producing a version of Death of a Salesman in which he casts young actors in the roles of Willy and Linda Loman, finds his life unraveling. Suffering from numerous physical ailments, he is depressed and alienated from his wife Adele and is having an unconsummated flirtation with Hazel, the woman who works in the box office. His nadir is reached when Adele leaves him for a new life in Berlin, taking their daughter Olive with her.
At this point, Caden unexpectedly receives a MacArthur genius grant that gives him great wealth to pursue his artistic interests. He is determined to use the money to create an artistic piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can pour his whole self. Gathering an ensemble cast into an enormous warehouse in Manhattan's theater district, he directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives.
As the mockup inside the warehouse grows increasingly mimetic of the city outside, Caden continues to look for solutions to his personal crises. He is traumatized as Adele becomes a celebrated painter in Berlin, and Olive grows up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend, Maria. Caden marries Claire, an actress in his cast, but their relationship fails to work and he continues an emotionally awkward relationship with Hazel. Meanwhile, a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down Caden's autonomic functions one by one.
As the years rapidly pass, the continually expanding warehouse is isolated from the deterioration of the city outside. Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece, blurring the line between the world of the play and that of his own reality by populating the cast and crew with doppelgängers. For instance, Sammy Barnathan is cast in the role of Caden in the play after Sammy reveals that he has been obsessively following Caden for twenty years while Sammy's look-alike is cast for his part. Sammy's own interest in Hazel sparks a revival of Caden's relationship with her.
As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, Caden finds change by letting an actress take over his role as director while he plays her previous job as Adele's cleaning lady. He lives out his days under the replacement director's instruction, finally preparing for death as he rests his head on the shoulder of an actress in the play, seemingly the only person left alive in the warehouse. As the scene fades to grey, Caden says that he has an idea for how to do the play when the director's voice in his ear gives him his final cue: "Die."
Motifs
Early in the film, Hazel purchases a house that is eternally on fire. At first showing reluctance to buy it, Hazel remarks to the real estate agent, "I like it, I do. But I'm really concerned about dying in the fire," which prompts the response "It's a big decision, how one prefers to die." In an interview with Michael Guillén, Kaufman stated, "Well, she made the choice to live there. In fact, she says in the scene just before she dies that the end is built into the beginning. That's exactly what happens there. She chooses to live in this house. She's afraid it's going to kill her but she stays there and it does. That is the truth about any choice that we make. We make choices that resonate throughout our lives."[3]
- Miniature paintings and the warehouses
Both Caden and Adele are artists, and the scale in which both of them work becomes increasingly relevant to the story as the film progresses. Adele works on an impossibly small scale, while Caden works on an impossibly large scale, constructing a full-size replica of New York City in a warehouse, and eventually a warehouse within that warehouse, and so on, continuing in this impossible cycle. Adele's name is almost a mondegreen for "a delicate art" (Adele Lack Cotard). Commenting on the scale of the paintings, Kaufman said, "In [Adele's] studio at the beginning of the movie you can see some small but regular-sized paintings that you could see without a magnifying glass ... By the time [Caden] goes to the gallery to look at her work, which is many years later, you can't see them at all." He continued, "As a dream image it appeals to me. Her work is in a way much more effective than Caden's work. Caden's goal in his attempt to do his sprawling theater piece is to impress Adele because he feels so lacking next to her in terms of his work," and added, "Caden's work is so literal. The only way he can reflect reality in his mind is by imitating it full-size .... It's a dream image but he's not interacting with it successfully."[3]
There are various instances of clocks throughout the film. The opening shot is that of an alarm clock, changing to "7:45". There are about 6 more close-ups of clocks throughout, inserted as Caden notices them off screen, perhaps signifying his constant preoccupation with death and his desire to achieve something great before his end. Interestingly enough, the clock in the final scene, a drawing on a wall, reads "7:45" - the same time as the clock in the opening scene. Perhaps this frozen clock marks Caden's time of death, hinted at the beginning of the same scene with the narrator's voice: "its seven forty three, now you are here. It's seven forty four, now you are here. Now you are...gone."
Many reviewers have compared the plot to Jungian psychology.[3][4][5][6] Carl Jung wrote that the waking and dream states are both necessary in the quest for meaning. In the case of the film, Caden seems to exist in a blending of the two. Kaufman describes the dream motif, "I think the difference is that a movie that tries to be a dream has a punchline and the punchline is: it was a dream."[3] Another concept of Jungian psychology is the four stages to the individuation process. Jung wrote about the need for self-realization, in which humans go through four steps: becoming conscious of the shadow (recognizing the constructive and destructive sides), becoming conscious of the anima and animus (where a man becomes conscious of his female component and a woman becomes conscious of her male component), becoming conscious of the archetypal spirit (where humans take on their mana personalities), and finally self-realization (where a person is fully aware of the ego and the self). In the film, Caden seems to go through all four of these stages. When he hires Sammy, he learns of his true personality and becomes more aware of himself. He becomes aware of his anima when he replaces himself with Ellen. In becoming conscious of the archetypal spirit, he takes on the role of Ellen and he finally realizes truths about his life and about love.
The film is meta-referential in that it portrays a play within a play.
This theme has been compared to the famous quote by William Shakespeare, "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players."[7]
It has also been compared to the music video for Icelandic singer Björk's song Bachelorette.[8] The music video portrays a woman who finds an autobiographical book about her which writes itself. The book is then adapted into a play, which features a play within itself. The music video was directed by Michel Gondry, who has worked with Kaufman before (directing Kaufman's films Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). In an interview Kaufman has responded to the comparison, saying "Yeah, I heard that comparison before. The reason Michel and I found each other is because we have similar sort of ideas."[9]
Production
The film was originally set to be directed by Spike Jonze, who chose to direct Where the Wild Things Are instead.[10]
The film was shot on location in New York City, Yonkers, and Schenectady, New York.
The score was composed by Jon Brion and all the lyrics were written by Kaufman.
Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was shown at the Sarajevo Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Athens Film Festival, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, the Ghent International Film Festival, and the Zagreb Film Festival before going into limited theatrical release in the US.
Cast
Critical reception
Synecdoche, New York received sharply polarized but generally favorable reviews, maintaining a 67/100 score at Metacritic[11] and a 67% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes.[12]
In his review of the movie in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert said, "I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film."[13] Manohla Dargis of the New York Times said, "To say that [it] is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now ... Despite its slippery way with time and space and narrative and Mr. Kaufman’s controlled grasp of the medium, Synecdoche, New York is as much a cry from the heart as it is an assertion of creative consciousness. It’s extravagantly conceptual but also tethered to the here and now."[14] In the Los Angeles Times, Corina Chocano called the film "wildly ambitious ... sprawling, awe-inspiring, heartbreaking, frustrating, hard-to-follow and achingly, achingly sad."[15]
Negative reviews mostly criticized the film for being incomprehensible, pretentious, and self-centered. Rex Reed, Richard Brody, Roger Friedman, and Chris Carpenter of the Orange County and Long Beach Blade, all labeled it one of the worst films of the year. Daniel Wakefield explains how "after showing early signs of profundity, it falls into a pomposity from which, sadly, it never fully recovers".[16] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a D+, writing "I gave up making heads or tails of Synecdoche, New York, but I did get one message: The compulsion to stand outside of one's life and observe it to this degree isn't the mechanism of art — it's the structure of psychosis."[17]
Top ten lists
The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008.[18] Both Kimberly Jones and Marjorie Baumgarten of the Austin Chronicle named it the best film of the year, as did Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter.
It appeared on 101 "Best of 2008" lists with 20 of them giving it the number one spot in a culmination of 691 lists.[19] Some of those who placed it in their own top tens included Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, Richard Corliss of Time, Shawn Anthony Levy of The Oregonian, Josh Rosenblatt of the Austin Chronicle, Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News, Ty Burr and Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe, Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, Philip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Scott Foundas of LA Weekly, Walter Chaw, Bill Chambers and Ian Pugh of Film Freak Central (all three of which placed it number one), and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Awards and nominations
Charlie Kaufman was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the 2008 Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Original Screenplay.
The film won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and the Robert Altman Award at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards ceremony; it also was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.
At the 2008 Gotham Independent Film Awards, the film tied with Vicky Cristina Barcelona for Best Ensemble Cast.
Mark Friedberg won the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Production Design.
References
- ^ a b Synecdoche New York
- ^ http://www.unique-screenwriting.com/synecdoche-new-york.html
- ^ a b c d TwitchFilm interview With Charlie Kaufman, October 23, 2008
- ^ filmbrain.com "The Life of the Mined: On Synecdoche, New York"
- ^ Boston Review: The Mind’s Eye
- ^ News Herald Of Font & Film: The fine art of dying
- ^ Stephanie Zacharek (2008-10-24). "Movie review: "Synecdoche, New York"". Salon.com. http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2008/10/24/synecdoche/. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
- ^ James Rocchi (2008-05-23). "Cannes Review: Synecdoche, New York". Cinematical. http://www.cinematical.com/bloggers/james-rocchi/. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
- ^ Interview: Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York)
- ^ "Reading Charlie Kaufman's Next Project," Los Angeles Times, Sept. 13, 2006
- ^ Metacritic.com
- ^ RottenTomatoes.com
- ^ Chicago Sun-Times review
- ^ New York Times review
- ^ Los Angeles Times review
- ^ "Synecdoche, New York Review". digyorkshire.com. 2009-06-02. http://www.digyorkshire.com/HighlightDetails.aspx?Article=199. Retrieved 2009-06-17.
- ^ http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20235024,00.html
- ^ Metacritic 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists
- ^ Critics Top 10's
External links
