Synecdoche, New York (2008)

When the writer of "Being John Malkovich", "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" steps into the director's chair, you can expect everything except the ordinary. Spike Jonze droped out of directing this picture in favor of "Where the Wild Things Are" (2009), so Kaufman had his chance to shine, and apparently he did, as critic Roger Ebert named this the best movie of the 2000s. Yet, despite having seen all the films writen by Kaufman, and being fascinated by the way he weaves together dreams and the mind in the ultimate metaphors of human existence, I was disappointed with this picture. Maybe because I am not a middle aged man. Maybe because it was too intellectual for my capacities. Maybe because I failed to connect. Anyway, the metaphor, the structure, all were understandable, and the idea, the metaphor for life of a middle aged man to his death at old age, seen through the eyes of a larger than life theater play, is original and compelling. Yet, I found it very difficult to accompany the lengthy scenes, I found it even more difficult to keep track of the quick shifts the movie has. In the end, all is justifyable as part of the metaphor, and the life of the main character (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is constructed piece by piece, as a projection on his own play, but was the path chosen the easy one? Could not there be a simple way to tell the story, or Kaufman complicated it on purpose because, well, he is Kaufman? It seems so, and the lyric and moving tale seems to hard to swallow amidst all that is thrown to the audience. "Synecdoche, New York" tells the story of a neurotic and disease-obsessive playwright who, having won an award, spends his earned money to create a true to life play in a massive warehouse, where he creates live size replicas of New York blocks and has actors playing the people he knows, those around him, and even himself. This is crossed with his personal life, his first marriage and break-up, with his wife (Catherine Keener) and daughter moving to Germany, his affair with the secretary (Samantha Morton) and various actrices along the way, and his ultimate thoughts of loneliness and growing old. As he gets old, life and fiction cross, and the boundaries become indistinct between the scenario and the real city, between the real people and the actors playing them, and between Hoffman's life and that of the never finished play, as more than 20, 30 years go by in rehearsals. Time and space lose sense, and in the end, Hoffman loses his own identity as he searches the meaning for his play, that is, the meaning of life. Described so it seems a marvelous picture. I am reading what I am writing and I can barely believe I didn't like it. But it is so. Maybe it was the inexperience of the director. Maybe it was too over my head. Maybe it was just the fact that I am young still and the thoughts of the meaning of life and old age have not struck me yet. There was something there that made it too much, shall I say, artificial. Yet it has a superb cast and keeps in line with the type of innovative screen writing that Kaufman has used us. To view again in say, 20 years. Maybe then it will blow me away...