Synecdoche, New York

Synechdoche, New York, the new film by Charlie Kaufman, who brought us Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich, is a must-see film that will either lure you back three times more to marvel at its sheer inventiveness and to figure out exactly what happened in this metaphysical meandering into the mind of a hypochondriacal sloth of a stage director…or send you out muttering about having spent two hours with a guy not only contemplating his own navel, but probing it for belly button lint, inspecting it, smelling it, and God knows what else.

The conceit is that an insecure, non-exercised, middle-aged director is losing his wife and beloved daughter to her career in Germany and to her sexy girlfriend, who has decided to majorly tattoo the little girl.

His hypochondria is not the fun stuff of Woody Allen but a series of death-threatening events (for which he never checks in at Cedar Sinai): He pisses blood, shoves around his feces to check for signs of disease, his neurological functions don’t function, he has bloody pustules on his face… Is any of it true? It’s for you to decide what is real and what is metaphor. That’s the name of the game.

The director is flabby Caden Cotard, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Through him we slip into a world of dream symbolism. At one point, we see Caden’s girlfriend make a deal on a house which has one disadvantage: the kitchen is nicely tiled, there’s plenty of closet space, but there are fires burning inside the house which create constant smoke. Are we simply burning inside Caden’s brain cells? And look up the word “synecdoche.” I won’t give you a definition because the whole point of the film is that you drift in and out of reality and time, and you figure it out.

The director receives a genius grant and decides to do a huge major stage production — the building of a city inside an enormous warehouse where characters play themselves and their lives in various rooms. This piece will be his statement to the world. An actor plays Caden. But an older man arrives, claiming that he has been following Caden for all of his life and knows everything about him. (Eternal Sunshine?) Suddenly, the actors begin to complain that the play has been rehearsing for 17 years; it’s time to go on. (Clue?)

Charlie Kaufman says, in the program notes, that he finds humor in Caden’s dark view of human events. The fans who love his wild imagination and inventiveness will; others may find it more comedic to take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. One truly funny scene is a visit to the art gallery where Caden’s lost wife is exhibiting her paintings, miniatures each about a square inch, requiring all the viewers wear microscopic glasses.

Aside from acknowledging these really great strokes of imagination, I had two problems with Synecdoche, New York. First, you are inside Caden’s head, getting sicker and sicker, fatter and balder, older and more depressed, since life happens and he has no control over anything and he’s prone to bad decisions. Two hours of fascinating but unrelieved downers.

The second problem is plot and shape. There is one point of real clarity, where a priest at a funeral states that life is simply a matter of choices and every choice determines our happiness/unhappiness. It feels like an ending. It’s not. The story continues on for other bloody revelations. Kaufman’s other films have arc, direction. Synecdoche meanders, loses focus.

So is this a view of Caden’s painfully disappointing life? Or is this Charlie Kaufman inviting us in for a really fascinating voyeuristic look inside his tremendously creative and convoluted brain?

As to performance, Emily Watson, Diane Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Samantha Morton are all excellent. Philip Seymour Hoffman is extraordinary.

I left the theater making a note to visit Charlie Kaufman (Caden?) with three things: a bowl of chicken soup and a hug to let him know that someone cares: a Scientologist to explain to him that with a little effort, he can be “at cause” and actually change the sad course of his own life, and a Buddhist to convince him that if all fails, there is another life ahead where, with a little courage, he might find pleasure in a beautiful sunrise, take a look at the Grand Canyon, and be a little more interested in his kids than in his bowel movements.

Still, this film is fascinating and unique. And there may indeed be an optimistic note in the character’s final statement…

…but that’s for me to know and you to find out.