Synecdoche, New York

One thing can be said for Charlie Kaufman's films--they are completely unlike anyone else's, except for his own. Based on his work as a screenwriter on films such as Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, he's earned an "esque" prefix, as he creates worlds and situations that are ingenious. They do, however, has certain similarities to each other, and they are evident in Kaufman's directorial debut.

We start with the antagonist, who is usually a forlorn schmo. In Synecdoche, New York, it is Philip Seymour Hoffman, at his most lumpen, as a theater director who is obsessed with disease and death. We begin with him as he is putting the finishing touches on a production of Death of a Salesman in a regional theater in Schenectady. His wife (Catherine Keener) is an artist of postage-stamp sized paintings, and they have a four-year-old daughter. The marriage is not what one would call successful--in marriage counseling sessions Keener admits that she fantasizes about his death. Soon she is off to Berlin to become a famous artist, taking the child with her.

Hoffman then wins the McArthur "genius" grant and envisions a theater project on a massive scale. He leases a warehouse the size of a Boeing plant (in Manhattan's theater district!) and begins creating a simulacrum of his life, hiring actors to play all the people in it. As the years pass he has encounters with other women, such as Samantha Morton, as a box-office worker who takes a shine to him, and Michelle Williams, who was his leading lady in Death of a Salesman and then becomes the leading lady in his project as well his life. The theater piece and real life become less and less indistinguishable, and the film becomes like a set of Russian nesting dolls. An actor (Tom Noonan) who has been following Hoffman for twenty years is hired to play Hoffman in the piece. Eventually another actor is hired to play Noonan. The inevitability of death intercedes every so often (Hoffman tells his assembled actors at the beginning that we are all hurtling toward death is the theme of the play), and entropy sets in as well, as Hoffman's body and the play begin to come apart at the seams.

This is not easy stuff to digest. The film begins as comedy, although it is typically weird. Morton's house is always on fire (she is told by the real-estate agent that the sellers are motivated). There is a morbid fascination with bowel movements and pustules (the marriage counselor, Hope Davis, tends to have some kind of boils on her feet) and Hoffman is always at doctors, told he needs to see a never-ending cycle of specialists. The rules of time and space are not followed, as some characters age while others do not, and after his daughter goes to Berlin, Hoffman keeps tabs on her life by reading her childhood diary, which never leaves his possession.

The title is both a play on the city of Schenectady, New York and a nifty word that is a flexible figure of speech--it can mean both a whole representing a part, or a part representing a whole. Knowing that makes it simpler to understand, as Hoffman's theatrical piece comes to represent his life in a miniature (although it is still huge, it is still smaller than reality). What starts to become mind-bending are the shifts in identity, which he explored in Being John Malkovich. The characters start to forget who they are--Noonan becomes interested in Morton, but Hoffman tells him she doesn't exist for him, instead he should love the actress who plays her, Emily Watson. Eventually Hoffman trades places with another actress, Dianne Wiest. You definitely can't check your brain at the door for this one.

While this film isn't as thrilling as other Kaufman films, I think Synecdoche, New York is a beautiful work, thought-provoking and heartbreaking. In his review in Entertainment Weekly, in which he panned the film, Owen Glieberman made something of an Emperor's new clothes statement, saying that it was sure to be hailed as a masterpiece, presumably by critics who aren't as wise as he is. Roger Ebert took up the mantle, and declared that it was a masterpiece. I'm much more with Ebert. This film will stay with me for a long time, and that is a good thing.