A Mirror Floating in Water

In some sense this film was not ready enough to be exposed to mainstream audiences and critics. Too many were expecting a narrative, or at least a hint that the films surrealities could be explained through dream-logic. Many found it impenatrable and tedoius. Those who said that I'm sure didn't see it a second time or a third. Yes, Synecdoche, New York is a film that does demand something from the audience, such as patience and something of an appretiation enough of it to watch it again to penetrate its mysteries.

This film does admittingly borrow a lot from experimental and absurdist theatre. Those who are familiar with it know what I'm talking about, those who aren't can't expect me to explain it very well. Objects and things are presented in abstract ways in order to present an idea, and absurd actions by characters are meant to represent sometimes a meta-cinematic idea.

This film is so full, that it is too full, and director-screenwriter Charlie Kauffman is aware of that and builds his film in all self-consciousness. He may just be the greatest cinematic writer of the human condition since Ingmar Bergman, even though both go about their ideas quite differently. Kauffman is a pure postmodern writer with a wide knowledge of postmodern theatrical and literary techniques.

Oh why am I going on in and on in lifeless theory? If you want to know how Kauffman goes about making this movie, watch it for yourself. But this film is no exercise in style, nor is it any sort of empty (but clever) examination of the endless reiterations of context. It is a film about life and its confusions, sufferings, loves and absurdities. What a sad sad film this is.

Years seem to pass by without us or the main character realizing it. He is a neurotic playright, Caden Cotard, played movingly by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in THE performance of his career, suffering from a mid-life crisis and trying to find some way in which he can develop some meaning and satisfaction into his life.

He decides to develop a massive theater-piece emcompassing the whole of every persons life, every detail, every meta-detail, every thought, every inch of the human condition. Caden searches for his lifes meta-narrative only to find deeper and deeper confusion, and in the end, discovering the meaningless meaning of his meaninglessness.

Women come in and out of his life, people disappear and fade away. Like a dream time is distorted and when his first wife says that she's going on a trip to Berlin with their daughter without him, and as he waits for a week, he soon realizes that it's been a year.

There is a deep deep tragedy of Caden's life, which is simply the tragedy of the human condition. There are so many stunning scenes in this film of raw emotion and despair, that to penetrate beneath the surface requires multiple viewings.

I have seen this film twice, and I still don't find it adequete enough to review it. Like all great films it cannot be described. It follows no formula (though as I said, it is greatly influenced by absurdist theatre) and no narrative. When you see it, think of this film as a poem of our entire lives. And how bland would a poem be if it was just words? 10/10