IN AN interview in today's Ticket, Charlie Kaufman, writer of Being John Malkovichand Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, describes how his directorial debut began life as a horror film. This intelligence offers one way into this bizarre, dark, profoundly moving exercise in creative bewilderment.
Any synopsis of Synecdoche, New Yorkwould highlight the hero's decision to use a government grant to construct a vast city – a theatrical simulacrum of his own life – in a warehouse the size of an aircraft hanger. It would go on to explain how, when Caden Cotard hires actors to play subsidiary characters in the story, those actors end up becoming friends and he has to hire other actors to play themin the mega-meta-play.
Described thus, the film sounds like a jolly, postmodern knees-up whose amusing turns will provide yucks for post-graduate clever- clogs everywhere.
It’s not quite that (or, rather, it’s more than that). The high concept above is really just a diversion from Caden’s main concerns: obscure bowel movements, failing libido, swelling veins, dizzying mood swings.
In short, Caden, played with customary damp humanity by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is weary of life and terrified of death. When his wife (a mournful Catherine Keener) accompanies him to the family councillor, she admits that she often imagines Caden dead and that she enjoys the experience. He nods. Synecdoche, New Yorkis a film about the true, unavoidable horrors of existence.
Some of the more absurd turns in the film seem, oddly, the most lucid in their allegorical thrust. When Cotard’s box-office manager (Samantha Morton), later one of his many lovers, buys a house that is continually on fire, we ponder the difficulties of living with the constant awareness of our own death. Other adventures are more delightfully obscure in their unpleasantness.
What ultimately emerges is a vast, surreal meditation on the fetid underbelly of the human condition. It will drive many viewers barmy, but just as many others will delight in rifling for pungent aphorisms and grimly amusing inter-textual gags.
Did you know that Cotard’s Syndrome is a condition in which the suffer imagines himself or herself dead? That might mean everything or nothing.
Directed by Charlie Kaufman. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dianne Wiest, Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Tom Noonan, Jennifer Jason Leigh15A cert, Cineworld/ Light House, Dublin, 124 min ****
