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Synecdoche, New York follows Caden, a middle aged writer, as he tries to be a successful theater director while balancing his personal life with his wife and kids. As his career becomes a critical success, his personal life starts to unravel. While he is being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship his wife is leaving to Berlin with his only daughter. As Caden flows through different women and relationships all while trying to get back his daughter, he decides to create a brutally honest play that will mimic real life. He gathers a large ensemble of actors to play out characters from real life, many from Caden's own life. As Caden's ex-wife's career starts booming, Caden's play grows in scope as he slowly becomes more obsessed and insane. Making plays within plays, Caden's life is in a downward spiral all while trying to reconcile with the women in his life.
I always enjoy a movie that has some brave ambition in it. I love seeing a movie that is daring to be something different and most of all something memorable. This is one thing I do see in Synecdoche, I see a man's attempt to bring his vision onto film and bring a smart, deep film to audiences. Being a fan of Kaufman, I am happy to see his attempt to once again amaze audiences with a intellectual film that isn't going to force feed us all the details. Unfortunately, the thing he is trying to create is what also holds this film back from being some great. I find it very ironic that as Caden's play becomes more expanded and complicated, losing the creator's original vision and message, I feel that the film itself goes through the same exact thing. The film continues to build and build, as Caden's set continues to build and build, and it loses the audience on its original point and message and loses its power that it could've had. Now I will give Kaufman one thing, if he meant for the film to be that way, thats really smart and that took some guts. Unfortunately I do not think that is true and by the end of the film I found myself not in the same mood that I left with his pervious films
Now a man should never be judged on one film by his pervious works; we shouldn't watch Hugo with Goodfellas in mind. Instead I should give Kaufman a clear slate with Synedoche and see what he has to offer. Unfortunately even then this film is still unable to have the power or intellect that the movie is attempting to reach. As the film progresses and we are slowed revealed to Caden losing grip on his own reality and the reality of the play, nothing comes as a shocking surprise or something that draws us in. I found myself just shrugging my shoulders and being close to uninterested. The story, while deep and complex, came across to me as too simple and poorly presented that it loses its power and was unable to keep me interested enough to care. There is great acting here from a phenomenal cast and some solid direction that I was glad to see from Kaufman but at the same time it isn't able to hold up the rest of the film. It feels like Kaufman is trying too hard to make this into a masterpiece instead of creating a good story to back up the deep themes and characters.
Now there are some things that I did enjoy like I said before the amazing cast gives some great performances and the direction is solid. There are also some awesome set pieces and I appreciate the scale the film portrays. There are some great similarities between this and 8 1/2 and great themes of obsession and loses. While 8 1/2 paints a accurate portrayal of a director's madness when trying to create the perfect film, Synedoche loses itself in its own madness as it feels to long and too lost that it can't hold viewers to the story. One of the biggest problems with the movie was a burning house that is throughout the house that makes no sense, adds basically nothing to the film, and feels like an attempt to be something smart when it really feels ridiculous. Moreover the films feels like it drags on and on, plot points that make no sense and feel more like an attempt to extend the story rather than add to it, and little interesting turns kept me from enjoying it.
Overall I really could not say I enjoyed the film. While there are some things that I thought weren't terrible I found the overall product to be below par and a good attempt to be something better than it actually was. I think Kaufman had a good vision and wanted to do something like his previous works but this was not like them. I found it to be disappointing and not worth the time to watch. It has some highlights but overall fell short at what it is aiming to be.
1.5/4
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