Philip Seymour Hoffman Stars in Synecdoche, New York
Director Charlie Kaufman's Latest Film Explores Familiar Themes
May 6, 2009
Charlie Kaufman's latest movie, Synecdoche, New York, continues to explore many of the themes and issues that have populated Kaufman's scripts since he began writing films. Synecdoche, New York—released on DVD in March of 2009—is the first script that Kaufman himself directed; in this way it can be seen, if not the most "fully realized" piece he's created, than certainly a film in which his own ideas and obsessions—surrogate characters, dream versus reality, self-doubt and loathing—are explored in an extremely personal manner.
Surrogate Selves
As is the case in a majority of Kaufman's movies, the main character in Synecdoche, New York—Philip Seymour Hoffman's Caden Cotard—interacts with his world by proxy. In Being John Malkovich, for example, John Cusack is a master puppeteer who finds a vortex through which he can manipulate other people; in Adaptation, this is taken a step further, as Kaufman creates his own doppelganger in the form of a fictional twin brother who represents everything he is afraid of becoming as an increasingly in-demand screen writer. Even in what is inarguably the most straightforward film made from one of his scripts, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Kaufman explores the character of Chuck Barris through a juxtaposition of his two very different personas.
In Synecdoche, New York, Caden moves deeper and deeper into his own obsessive recreation of his life and those who inhabit it—hence the clever play on words that is the movie's title. In the end, the surrogates who represent Caden are layered to such a degree it becomes impossible to differentiate among them. In this way, Kaufman is exploring a universal human desire to project order on the chaos that underlies existence. Puppeteer, screenwriter, theater director... the common element among all these roles in Kaufman's work is that desire to shape and control reality, to insulate oneself against an ever fracturing universe.
All the World's a Stage
And what universes they are. For many, Kaufman's breakthrough came with Being John Malkovich, a film of startling originality and poignancy. Like all great artists, Kaufman finds his way into collectively felt emotions in a manner entirely his own. The worlds of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are surreal in the original sense of the word: places where dreams and reality overlap and splash against each other. This is precisely the world of Synecdoche, New York, as well. Like a dream, we recognize people who we've never met, or who don't look like the person we know them as when we're awake. People spend their entire lives living in burning houses, or step into a complete and all-encompassing existence without a question. Kaufman, by literally blurring that line between worlds, draws into doubt the borders between dream and reality in our own lives, as well.
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