“The visible world is no longer a reality and the unseen world no longer a dream.” – W.B. Yeats
Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and directed by Charlie Kaufman opened to mixed reviews this past weekend. I thought it was a good film.
Kaufman’s directorial debut delves into death, divorce, and decay. The protagonist, Caden Cotard, a struggling director in Schenectady, New York reads the obituaries of different friends in the newspaper as September turns into November in a single morning. Eventually, Caden’s wife leaves him and he becomes paranoid about his health. He receives an apparently unlimited grant which permits him to move to New York City and stage a play of his life, which becomes a play of a play, and more.
Surrealism reigns and space and time become compressed; eventually seventeen years pass. Cast members leave, others arrive, and eventually his ex-wife, daughter, and lover are dead (she died of smoke inhalation after moving into a burning house, put on the market by a “motivated seller”). Caden can no longer take the strain of directing and swaps roles with one of his actors.
During one of the many funerals, a priest announces that everyone is insignificant in an absolute sense. Compared to the life of the universe, a person is alive for less than a mere fraction of a second, spending eons waiting to be born and the rest of time being dead. Yet, a person can discover moments of significance in a relative sense, as Caden discovers when he finally accepts the overtures of Hazel, who was front of house for his productions in Schenectady and assistant director after the company moved to New York.
People are largely interchangeable, as shown by the actors who star in Caden’s play – and the play within it – and the performances of Hoffman and the rest of the cast. The character is as real as any person in the theatre. It doesn’t matter if you are Caden, the first Brock in a series, the twentieth one, or the only one. Eventually, one of the Prisoners leaves the Cave and doesn’t know what to make of it, like Dave in 2001: A Space Odessey.
Caden’s life does not work out as he had planned and he spends a great deal of time cleaning. He’s worried that he is dying, progressing from a fear of death in a few days, to a death in several months, to death in many years.
Years later, Caden makes peace with the mother of the actress with whom he traded places. Since people are peers of one another, this moment provides sufficient satisfaction to the director. He lets most of his worries go moments and finally enjoys life for a moment. Then he dies. ***½