“Little Boxes, Little Boxes”
Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York
*(Full disclosure: My recent viewing of Charlie Kaufman’s first directorial effort, Synecdoche, New York (1988) was a very different experience from what one would consider the normal taking-in of a filmed entertainment . . . )
The early scenes of the film depict an ongoing marital joust of overlapping dialogue underscored and punctuated by the never-ending queries of the couple’s young daughter, Olive, to seemingly every one of life’s questions. The introduction is loud, abrasive and disorienting — so much so that it required me to reach back in my memory for the template of a somewhat similar film to even begin to get my bearings.
Synecdoche’s story of one man’s struggle to leave a lasting, monumental artistic contribution to his descendants and fellow humans reminded me much of an earlier film with a similar theme, Stephen Herek’s excellent, if somewhat sentimental, Mr. Holland’s Opus, released by Touchstone Pictures in 1995.
In that particular film, a high school music teacher and former band leader (played by Richard Dreyfuss) tries to overcome his neophyte teaching challenges to somehow make a small difference in the lives of his pupils. And like Synecdoche, the film takes place over the course of several decades. The two films are similar in many additional ways, as I will relate below. However, their endings could not be more different.
Answering the question of why serves to illuminate the moral lesson of both.
Synecdoche’s protagonist, Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) faces an artistic challenge not unlike that of his musical counterpart. Except, in the case of Caden, he is not merely trying to influence a particular age spectrum — he is trying to make a lasting impression upon society at large . . .
Early in the film, just after his wife debarks for Berlin, Caden describes to his therapist what he is trying to achieve with his McArthur Fellowship grant:
“Something tough. Something true.”
He later will even cajole his cast from the stage with the shout of:
“I won’t settle for anything less than the brutal truth!”
Those same words might equally apply to what has, not facetiously, been referred to by critics as “Charlie Kaufman’s 1988 magnum opus.”
By any filmic standard, Synecdoche, NY is a massively audacious first effort by a director, one which makes the bold choice of taking its narrative cue from the plot of the very play (nameless) which the film’s lead character is in the very process of creating. (Confused yet? )
But, at a further remove, the film can also be fairly safely assumed to mirror the inner life of its real-world creator. Thus, Caden Cotard serves as Charlie Kaufman’s alter ego in the film, and the film is told from Caden’s/Kaufman’s singular viewpoint.
In light of the above, and before any true discussion of the work at hand can begin, one has to deal with the one overbearing fact which has served as the lead sentence to many a film critic’s review:
This is a difficult film.
It is difficult for many reasons . . .
For one, over the duration of its 124 minutes, its plot increasingly comes to resemble a series of ever-shrinking papier-mache nested boxes in that age-old paradigm of life imitating art/art imitating life — with art seemingly winning the battle.
Thus artifice, both internal as well as external, becomes the very driving force of the play/film.
So, for practical purposes, the first viewing of Synecdoche, NY doesn’t really count, except possibly as a prelude and initial step to actually understanding the film.
Perhaps this is what one critic indirectly referred to when he lent his voice as a marketing plug:
“See it twice!” — Roger Ebert
In terms of preproduction, the film has as its genesis a request from the boutique studio Sony Classics, a request that Kaufman and frequent co-collaborator Spike Jonze create for them a film in the seeming genre of the moment — the horror film.
Kaufman and Jonze, never ones to take things at face value (let alone from something as establishment as a studio), chose to create the ultimate realist horror film — a numbing depiction of the ‘days in the life’ of a slowly dying artist who feels he must leave some last grand statement before his passing.
That act of passing over, and the fact that death can come at any moment — usually when least expected, is first echoed early in the film when Caden cuts himself at the sink while shaving. Its over-the-top attendant great gusher of blood, while darkly comical, is the first of many reminders of mortality throughout the film — reminders which will follow with an almost impersonal regularity.
The next harbinger comes soon thereafter as Caden walks down the sidewalk to retrieve his mail. Glancing across the street, his eye catches sight of “Bill” (played aptly by Stanley Krajewski), who resembles the very ‘Grim Reaper in Waiting,’ what with his gray trench coat and unblinking stare. Vulture-like, Bill’s continuing statuary-like presence will serve as a continuous and ominous reminder of Caden’s eventual fate.
This theme of ever-advancing mortality is reiterated throughout the remainder of the film via the ever more frequent funeral services Caden attends for friends and loved ones. And each seems to always catch Cotard unawares, interrupting Caden’s life when he is most intimately in communion with the act of creating his play.
Death, dissolution, and the inevitability thereof are thus inextricably linked in the film — a fact mirrored in the very character of Caden Cotard — a negative and self-centered person, so much so, in fact, that his self-involvement causes his steadfast wife to finally leave him after a marriage of many years.
Soon after, wrought by depression, Caden adds the first signs of mental psychosis to an ever-growing stack of medical ailments. His insecurity drives him to become an obsessive/compulsive cleaning freak, going so far as to even use his freshly foaming toothbrush on any itinerant spot of dirt he sees.
This is all a lot to take in, and my first reaction to the film was, strangely, not one of catharsis, but of distance. The film felt a little bit all-too-familiar, like a retread of some classic clichéd plot which had already been recycled numerous times. I kept telling myself I’d seen this all before . . .
The film, like its autobiographical close cousin, Spike Jonze’s Adaptation (2002; also scripted by Kaufman), is what is referred to in cinema parlance as a ‘reflexive meta-narrative’ — a story which seemingly leaps the audience’s fourth wall to comment on the film itself.
Reflexive narratives are difficult to pull off successfully unless the audience is pulled into the film’s suitably immersive environment very early on, and although the film’s protagonist Caden is relatable (in both his male & female guises), he/she is not very likable. It is this factor that contributes to the distance that the film creates with its viewers.
In depicting the singular struggles of playwright/director Cotard, the film proposes an audacious task . . .
“We are the main star in the play of our lives”
This we hear as Caden shouts to the rafters during an early play walk-through with his cast.
It is this singularly all-encompassing narrative device which serves as the true jumping-off point for the film — a play about the creator of the play himself — the ultimate form of self-indulgence.
*(But then, aren’t most artists a bit egotistical and self-indulgent?)
It is in this aspect that Synecdoche distinguishes itself the most from my experiential template of Mr. Holland’s Opus.
For unlike music teacher Glenn Holland, who goes out of his way to help his students after school, Cotard’s obsessive devotion to his ever-evolving staged autobiography blinds him to not only the destruction he does within his own sphere, but even to the world seemingly falling apart just outside the stage door.
The scenes of army trucks distributing food, with the sound of gunshots and shouts of rebellion in the distance, are Kaufman’s obvious nod to the question asked by all creatives in the immediate wake of 9/11: Is film/art even relevant in the post-9/11 world?
Kaufman’s view is that it is, but probably not of the self-indulgent ‘Caden Cotard variety.’ (Ironically, this was the very criticism leveled at the film by critics at the time of its theatrical release.)
Caden is most tellingly self-involved on the romantic front, stumbling through a series of botched affairs in the course of the narrative. Paradoxically, he even has trouble letting go of a former love once his social life has moved on to someone new. Emotionally volatile, he is doomed to be single — or at best in a constant state of romantic flux.
After some time, when it seems he is finally ready to settle down again with Ariel (Daisy Tahan) and her daughter, he is shocked back to retro-reality by a nude photo-spread of his daughter, the now-tattooed Olive — the living canvas and sex-toy for the nefarious Maria (Jennifer Jason-Leigh).
But Caden’s true nemesis in the film is the ever-clicking clock, conveyed via a masterful editing sleight-of-hand that transforms a single brief breakfast scene early in the film to a piece of exposition seamlessly covering several months. (Take THAT Citizen Kane!) Also, like seemingly life itself, the pace of the edits throughout the film only seem to occur faster the older Caden grows. By the end of the film, it is nearly a fast-forward blur.
So, the basic premise of the film established — I, the filmgoer knew exactly where it was going.
But only upon deeper reflection would I realize the ‘why’ of the chilling effect the film had on me — that Synecdoche is a remake of the story that, especially in the case of creatives, is carried within us all, played over and over again in a never-ending duel between the conscious and subconscious — between long-planned intentions and little-fulfilled actions.
The fact that Synecdoche, New York was so readily and intimately identifiable by those of the artistic persuasion is what makes the film so very difficult to watch. In this work what Kaufman has dared to do is to examine in detail the darkest crevices of the human soul — our common need to find a place we belong, someone to love, and self-realization in our art.
