Synecdoche, New York - B

In theaters. Rated R, 124 minutes. Trailer.

A synecdoche is defined as "a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special." The inimitable Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) has written and directed an expectedly dense and intelligent film that cannot be fully digested in a single sitting. Starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener and Samantha Morton, the film tells the story of a man that can't live or fully experience life because of his neuroses. Click below for more on why Charlie should get Spike Jonze to direct his future screenplays.

Hoffman is Caden Cotard, a brilliant middle-aged theater director/writer living with his famous artist wife, Adelle (Keener), and his 4 year old daughter in typical Kaufman grit and unkempt fashion. He is beset by physical ailments, both real and imagined, and fails to earn his wife's love or respect. This results in her leaving him and taking his daughter to Berlin with her lover, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Caden never seeing them again. He wins a MacArthur "genius" grant to put on an original production and the final 2/3 of the film shows his struggle with life and his production.

We see reality through Caden, who has no grasp of the passage of time or his own identity. The film opens with a poem and commentator on the radio discussing Fall and why so many poets choose it as a subject, which sets the tone and direction of the film. I would bet this was added after a poor reception of the film at Cannes earlier this year. As Caden struggles for happiness and relevance as he "hurtles toward death", his paralysis by neurosis becomes apparent, and by the end of the film he is being directed in his actual life by his replacement on his vast play. Caden's relationships with Adelle and his daughter are only sources of extreme pain after they leave for Berlin, and he cannot connect with the one who loves him, Hazel. Hazel is played brilliantly by Samantha Morton in one of my favorite performances this year. It is a very naturalistic and diverse performance, with her ranging from attractive, naked, frumpy, old, confident and insecure. Caden can't make himself love her when she loves him, but only wants to get back to that place after he loses her.

To make matters even more complex, he also has a relationship with the shallow lead actress in his production played by Michelle Williams. His relationship with women is obviously a key to the film, and the final scene has him being directed by a woman and connecting with a woman that portrayed his mother on stage (a great scene, ephemeral and reminscent of the close of 2001: A Space Odyssey). He also gets tempted and talked to (very comically) by Hope Davis, a self-promoting and harsh therapist.

The play and the film are both labryinthian, to say the least. The set of his production is somehow the size of 10 Texas Stadiums, and the breadth of his grant allows him to delve into his own minutiae. Kaufman wrote the lyrics to all the songs in the film, and the music and score is all first rate (done by frequent PTA collaborator Jon Brion). Here's the main song.

Appraiser (also a psychology guy) saw several Jungian (individuation, I think) and related concepts, most notably and (it turns out) accurately from Erich Fromm's work, Escape From Freedom). There are LOTS of other angles I am leaving out and/or missing that I will have to pick-up on the second viewing. The priest's (an actor) speech near the end of the film is worth printing here for its relevance to the film and its general profundity, but I couldn't find it online just yet.

Worth seeing. The reviews tend to split, either giving an A or a D. I gave this a B because I enjoyed the film and appreciated the intelligence and challenge of it, but at the end of the day it didn't come together in a way that makes the film at all accessible and, therefore resonant. As has been noted here before, as a general rule writers should write and directors should direct, Paul Thomas Anderson notwithstanding.

I recommend the following articles before seeing the film: 1, 2, and one of the D reviews (from a guy I usually agree with). Here's Kaufman at a Q&A explaining how he got the idea for the movie.