Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton. Written and directed by Charlie Kaufman. (14A) 124 min. Opens Nov 7.
Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut poses far greater challenges than how to pronounce the title (it rhymes with Schenectady). Like, for instance, keeping track of the passage of time in the story of Caden Cotard (played by an especially shambling Philip Seymour Hoffman), a frustrated playwright who uses a massive “genius grant” to literally turn his life into a theatrical production, a project he initially undertakes in an effort to understand the breakdown of his marriage to Adele (Catherine Keener).
Even harder is keeping a handle on who’s playing whom as Caden integrates elements of his life into his play (and vice versa). Or — and this is the one that has stymied many viewers since Kaufman’s movie made its debut at Cannes in May — connecting with a work that largely lacks the sweeter, more whimsical side that made Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation and Being John Malkovich so widely admired.
Synecdoche, New York is powered more by feelings of anger and regret — consequently, Caden’s hard lessons in love, loss and mortality have a bitter sting. (Alain Resnais’ similarly cruel Providence may actually be the film’s closest kin.) Confounding it may sometimes be, Synecdoche, New York is given considerable warmth by the cast. Samantha Morton is especially wondrous as Hazel, Caden’s perennial almost-love and the resident of a house that is always on fire, an apt metaphor seeing as Kaufman’s film itself exists in a perpetual state of collapse.
In a series of interviews with three of the film’s stars at Cannes, Morton explains that fire is also one of many absurd elements of the Synecdoche universe that are taken as perfectly normal by the inhabitants and the actors alike.
“I didn’t even take it as a joke,” she says. “I didn’t over-analyze the burning house, but at the same time, I felt it was a huge part of who Hazel was. I approached it practically, without looking at it like it was a surreal thing. I didn’t think ‘this is stupid’ or ‘this is weird.’ Because if I started thinking like that, then when I did Minority Report, I’d be sitting there going, ‘Why am I playing someone who can look into the future? That’s not possible.’”
Tom Noonan — who plays a mysterious figure who takes on an important role in Caden’s existence — also resisted any urge for analysis. He didn’t even want to hear any explanations from Kaufman. “I don’t want to know anything,” says the imposing actor best known for his menacing presence in Manhunter. “If anybody around asked him a question like that, I walked away. I don’t want to hear anything about what he thought. And I don’t think he wants to talk about it.”
Noonan believes that Kaufman wants the movie to be “a process of discovery” for the actors, too. “You discover who you are by saying these words,” says Noonan. “You come to some connection.”
It’s therefore remarkable that Hoffman was able to stay connected to the character of Caden despite the overwhelming nature of the character’s Gesamtkunstwerk (Wagner’s 10-cent word for “total art work”). What’s more, he must contend with the bewildering temporal instability that’s established in the first scene, when Caden goes from his bedroom to his kitchen in the course of what appears to be a single morning but turns out to be several weeks.
“You immediately know something is up,” says Hoffman. “The movie is now moving at a pace he can’t understand and it’s only going to cause him more regret — the failures are going to become bigger.”
He says that one of the only things he can say for certain about Synecdoche, New York is that it looks at a 40-year-old man — “he’s a real mid-life person,” says Hoffman of Caden. “What happens is he loses his family and his health starts to decline and he’s realizing, ‘I could be dead tomorrow, I could be dead in 30 years.’ And he can’t get that out of his head.”
Though Caden instead lingers on for many decades, he never has a firm sense of when anything is happening (or has already happened). Hoffman did have the advantage of having a timeline to which to refer, but that kind of specificity didn’t really matter. “Caden is always saying he doesn’t know where he is and I know what he means,” Hoffman admits. “Two years ago can seem like two weeks ago and sometimes two weeks ago seems like two years ago. You experience things that will always seem like yesterday. So I understood that the film was about that, too.”
Indeed, Kaufman’s unorthodox strategies allow him to convey that feeling with unusual poignancy. It is this emotional quality that Morton emphasizes after she’s asked what excites her about working with Kaufman.
“What excites me is the fact that someone like Charlie Kaufman can get the money to make this film,” she says. “I think cinema needs originality with heart, not just originality for the sake of it or style for the sake of it or things that are cool. There’s a huge amount of sincerity in what he does and he’s a fiercely, fiercely intelligent man with sincerity. I think a lot of people can be quite clever for the sake of it.”