-Samuel Beckett
We are all so small, yet the universe is so vast. Our existence is a grain of sand on the beach when compared to the entirety of human history. We exist for a fraction of second. We spend more time dead or waiting to be born than we do living. At some point in time, this revelation slips itself into our mind. Even if we push it out and ignore it, or even try to deny it, it sticks there endlessly, screaming at you until you can only embrace it. This is what Charlie Kaufman wanted to explore in his existential, Beckettian epic: Synecdoche, New York.
Synecdoche, New York tells the story of Caden Cotard, a promising director of theatre, as he faces the absurdity of living in a world where he is insignificant. The film opens to a blank screen and the tranquil voice of a little girl singing of life and death. From the get-go the film already tackles its main topic of discussion: dying. The setting of the film is then estabilished: the season is autumn, the season of decay, when summer fades and the leaves begin to fall from the trees. Caden lives in Schenectady, a small city in New York which bears an odd similarity to synecdoche, but we'll get to that later.
Within the film's first few minutes, time is already broken. Caden's "day" plays out over the course of many. Many shots estabilish the date, showing that the days are, in fact, passing. First its the 22nd, then its the 23rd, then it's the 28th. Nothing changes for Caden Cotard. Time passes, but it feels like nothing at all. This idea of losing time becomes so prevalent throughout the film, it creates a sense of unease in the viewer. Scenes feel short and stilted, we lose track of just how long it has been since Adele left, since Hazel married Derrick, since Ariel had been born, since work began on Simulacrum, and so does Caden. If you don't pay attention, time can turn to chaos and the world will begin to lose all sense. The control you once had will slip away and you'll be left stranded in a life where everything happens for no reason, and everything seems meaningless. What we once saw as luscious fields, and beautiful canvases of nature, is now a sickening black void of despair.
Synecdoche, New York is, in a word, beautiful. Its gut-wrenching honesty is unnerving, it's dismal, it represents all the unsatisfaction we feel in our lives; the insecurity, the hopelessness, the selfishness, the narcissism, the hatred, the love, the loss, the everything. If I were told to show to someone the essence of being, then I would, without a doubt, show them this film. Contained within its visuals, its audio, its story, and its characters is the honest meaning of life. We are born, we live, we lose, we suffer, we die. What was once you is now a jumbled husk of skin. You get to a point where you just listen to a voice in your head, telling you where to go, what to do, when to do it. Caden, once he has become old and tired, loses himself, leaving Millicent to take over. He becomes Ellen, an old lady who exists only to clean, and follows the directions of Millicent being fed into his ear.
Caden is obsessed with death. When the paper arrives, it tells him that Harold Pinter died, that the first black college student died. The mail brings him a magazine about illness. He checks his stool for blood, just to make sure that he really is sick. And through this stress, through this obsession, his body begins to fall apart. He has a seizure and loses his ability to salivate. Stress turns to a manic leg twitch. He resorts to a cane to even stay standing up. We see Caden go from young man to old man over the course of two hours. We see him slowly lose his way, stumbling further into his own torture device of self-inflicted mires. As his grasp on reality crumbles, his play grows larger and larger.
Let's talk about the play for a second, or more specifically the warehouse. The warehouse, from the outside, looks ordinary. It may be quite long yes, but there is not a thing unusual about its exterior; but inside is a landscape equal to that of the entirety of New York. As New York is built within it, another warehouse is built, and inside that is another New York, with another warehouse. This is the paradox of life. It's endless. Everytime we tell ourselves that we undestand it; that we can finally comprehend the sheer magnitude of existence, we step outside and find that it gets even bigger. Inside every warehouse is another warehouse that is the same size. This reflects the idea Caden comes to realise in the third act at Sammy's funeral: every person in the world is the star of their own story. Nobody is an extra. We walk down the street, and we look at someone we barely know. To us, their life is only this single moment; this moment they spend walking past us. From the outside, they seem so pointless and insignificant. But follow them until they die and soon you learn that their life is just as vast as your own. Perhaps that is the point of Sammy's character, the stalker who follows Caden and observes every moment of his adult life. Caden is constantly learning new things about the world around him, and every time he does, the play scales up. He gets actors to play the actors, and actors to play the actors who play the actors. He looks at a building without a wall, and decides that it needs a wall. His catharsis becomes his being. Everything must be true to life, one to one. And as he does this, he becomes more and more unhappy, unlike his ex-wife, Adele Lack.
As Caden's art grew larger in size, Adele's only continued to get smaller. She filtered out the unneccessary. Reality was only ever a bother, lingering over your head as the one question you could never answer. Adele rid herself of the question and focused only on the ones she cared about. Her recurring art exhibition (the only one we see) is titled "Women I Love", each one so small that they must be viewed with magnifying glasses. Yet, she is happy with her life, and Caden isn't. Perhaps Kaufman is telling us to only focus on what is immediately in front of us. Our friends, our family. Because if we dwell on what is beyond, then the things we care about become nothing. As Caden's condition worsens, the characters become harder to follow. They move further and further away until the only person we feel like we know is Caden. That feeling of isolation is what makes your chest feel tight as you watch this film.
And yet, this film, which shows to us life itself, is in itself only a small part of life. We sit down, we watch this film, and then we turn it off and die. We might die the day after, me might die seventy years after, but our death still comes. Caden's play is meant to be life, but is also merely a part of life, and that is the origin of the film's title: Synecdoche, New York. Synecdoche is a figure of speech where a part is used to represent the whole, and vice versa. It can be compared to when we refer to a football team as the country it represents, like saying "England scored a goal", rather than saying "The England Football Team scored a goal". The part (the England Football Team) comes to represent the whole (the country England). The film, a small part of life, is used to represent life.
I could go on and on about this film, and its depth. The narrative is so dense that exploring all of it is damn near impossible to do in a life-time, even with the combined minds of thousands of people. Synecdoche, New York is more than just a film, or a work of art: it is a transcendant experience. The film will end and a grey cloud of existential angst will linger over your head and rain down on you. It will stick in your mind for days, years, decades even. I agree with Roger Ebert in saying that twenty years down the road, people will look back at Synecdoche, New York as one of the greatest works of cinema ever conceived. It will be deemed a classic and will be celebrated. It will be studied. It will be preserved. Nothing in the world reflects the human condition and the nature of existing more than Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York.
It is life on tape.
"What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now
behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not
special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping
silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The
specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel,
Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all
her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It's
yours. It is time for you to understand this.
Walk.
As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move
on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world
forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your
characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you,
and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any
place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time. Now you
are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are...
Gone."
-Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche New York, 2008
Thank you for reading!
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