It's frustrating, because you want it to be plot-driven and moving toward a specific end-point, but that's not what life is. Charlie Kaufman has spoken on numerous occasions about, much-like his character Caden, making film truthful and brutally honest. It doesn't get much more brutal or honest than this. It's simply what you make of it. What does the burning house mean?
Um, it's an externalization of Hazel's passion for Caden. Good enough? We're so busy seeking answers that we've completely missed the point. The film, like life, isn't about the answer: it's about the questions. It's about the journey and the moments that make up that journey. That life moves by at a rapid pace within the film with no "3 months later" title card is simply Kaufman trying to present life as what it is: a series of moments.
At , this is what you're doing. It's how those little moments inform the whole or how some people get so lost in the big picture they completely miss those little moments hence, Caden's revolving door of relationships.
In that case, synecdoche moves past simply being the title of the film or referring to events within the film to the very way we interpret the film. It is drama on an epic scale. When you get to the funeral, the one with the Priest's monologue, if you aren't moved or invested by then it's time to leave the theater. A person in the theater actually muttered "Amen" when the scene was done.
While this film won't pull in Dark Knight figures, it is more close to real life than anything I've seen. I'd take that over Chris Bale in a rubber suit with a terrible voice any day. Great post Fuelbot. I totally agree, life is frustrating. And I prefer movies that don't present me the ending on a silver plater.
I like being able to leave the theater and say "well, what next" those kinda thoughts. One reason i love kaufmans writing. Kaufman and Mamet are the two people in film i would love to meet and have dinner with. Well, he certainly presents a different approach to convey his message, I'll be checking this out.
Well Fuelbot your entire argument was made null and void by the fact that you called Christian Bale, Chris Bale. Fine, the argument was good but still, at least say his name right at the very least. Great post Fuelbot It sounds like Kaufman succeeded in affecting you which is what he said the movie was about to begin with I don't think Alex missed the point of the movie with this post considering his words come directly from Kaufman , but you missed the point of the post by watching the movie and trying to mold it into something you could understand.
I just can't wait to see what I get from it I'll let you know if it's different from your take. Itri - Moron? You think I don't know who Christian Bale is? Or that anyone breathing after this summer doesn't know who Christian Bale is? Could I have possibly been speaking of another Chris Bale? Peloquin - I won't say it's the whole point of the movie but speaking with Kaufman after the film that was exactly his intention: audience members molding the film into something they understand or that relates to them.
I didnt mean to say he missed the point of the film, but the burning house question, while entirely understandable, is kind of annoying at this point. I just wish audiences went beyond the surface. To your point, about audiences going beyond the surface, isn't the idea that the viewer take away his or her own interpretation?
So then At this moment, I'm posting a response, and I don't even know why. Two minutes later, i will leave this page and probably never come back. Imagine that " The Dark Knight " was exactly similar, frame by frame, from beginning to end, but has a brief extra scene at the end where Batman slips on a wet floor in the Batcave, hits his head on the floor, and is killed.
Then the camera slowly pulls back to show the dead caped crusader in the gathering gloom and then up in an invisible wipe to the Moon over Gotham City. What's your best guess? Final gross over a billion? Yes, Owen, I think "Synecdoche, N. But here I've written all this additional wordage about it, and I still haven't reviewed it. How could I? You've seen it. How could I, in less time than it takes to see the movie, summarize the plot? I must say that in your finite EW space, you do a heroic job of describing what happens.
But what happens is not the whole point. The movie is about how and why the stuff that happens--happens. Might as well try to describe the plot of Ulysses in words or less. All you can do is try to find a key. Just in writing that, I think I have in a blinding flash solved the impenetrable mystery of Joyce's next novel, Finnegans Wake. It is the stream of conscious of a man trying to write Ulysses and always running off to chase cats.
Comparable to great fiction? Yes, with the same complexity and slow penetrability. Not complex as a strategy or a shortcoming. Complex because it interweaves and cross-refers, and every moment of apparent perplexity leads back somewhere in the movie to its solution.
Some great fiction, like Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury or The Golden Bowl, was hypertext when hypertext wasn't a name, but only a need. Henry James seems the steadiest of hands, but underneath, his opening chapters are straining to touch the closing ones, and the middle hides concealed loyalties.
And when he writes "intercourse," you never quite know what he means. Very hypertextual. Why is the house always on fire, but nobody seems to notice it? Don't unhappy homes always seem like that? Aren't people always trying to ignore it? What does the title mean? In my review, I wrote: "It means it's the title. Get over it. As I should have positively known in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, it is a word that has a meaning. Wikipedia informs me:.
In other words, the playwright's life refers to all lives, and all lives refer to his life. So Kaufman gives the whole thing away right there in his title. Talk about your spoilers. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from until his death in In , he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Roger Ebert O, Synecdoche, my Synecdoche! Roger Ebert November 10, Eternal sun shines on the Malkovich mind This dynamic radiates out into every other life on earth and down through time, shading gradually into other religious or irreligious value systems.
O, Sarajevo, my Sarajevo! Charlie Kaufman at the film festival The film is confused, contradictory and unclear, so I am informed by those unmoved by it.
The sunshine's blight on my old unlucky mind We gaped at him in awe. Cotard's deteriorating physical condition means he has to confront his own death and accept mortality. He reminds his employees that they will all die too, eventually, and must come to terms with it. Much of life is spent in denial as this—note how Adele tells Olive that she doesn't have blood, denial of the body being a way of denying mortality. Cotard is forced to see everyone as a decaying and dying body—note how he imagines his counsellor having a progressively nasty skin disease.
Hazel accepts her fate casually—she even purchases a house which is bizarrely on fire, and lives in it for years even though she knows she will die of smoke inhalation and she does. In a sense, life is like buying a burning house—we know it will be destroyed, but accept it anyway. Hazel's relationship with Caden is similar: she knows he is deeply disturbed and the relationship cannot last for long, but pursues it anyway. A script is a particular kind of fate, in which virtually all one's actions and words are predetermined, and only tiny variations in tone and attitude are permitted.
As a director, Caden works with the writings of other people, and can only add superficial changes to their work, for example casting young actors as the elderly lead characters of Death of a Salesman in order to show that mortality is universal, an alteration the purpose of which his parents and probably most of the audience missed.
But Adele, as a painter, can create new works, which makes Caden jealous. He attempts to create his own script, but ends up just copying real life. Even his relationship with Claire follows a very similar "script" to his relationship with Adele: they have a daughter and gradually grow apart, Caden retaining an emotional attachment to Hazel. Caden ends by following a stage manager's directions in life via earpiece, even obeying her final command: "Die.
Hazel's books also have symbolic resonance—Swann's Way is the first volume of In Search of Lost Time, an epic novel by Marcel Proust in which the author explores and interprets the events of his own life. A character in it is named Dr Cottard, who is based on Dr Jules Cotard, a French neurologist who described the Cotard delusion, a patient's delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist or do not have bodily organs.
The main character of Synecdoche, New York is also named Cotard, and perhaps he believes that humans have the delusional belief that they are alive and that they exist! This could be compared to Cotard's view of the world: one is placed into life for no reason and struggles to understand a vast and incomprehensible world, and finally dies meaninglessly.
Time passes throughout the film in very peculiar ways. For example in the opening breakfast scene, several months seamlessly elapse. Here is a general timeline based on the screenplay which dates each scene: - Opening of the film Caden is 40 years old - Caden gets the MacArthur Grant - Caden buys the warehouse - Caden casts Sammy to play himself - Caden casts Millicent to play Ellen - Sammy dies - Hazel dies - Olive dies - Caden casts Millicent to play himself - Caden plays Ellen - End of the film Edit.
Of course, Caden seems to spend far more than , USD on Simulacrum, but the film does not mirror reality in any case. Sign In. Synecdoche, New York Jump to: FAQs 7 Spoilers 0. Is "Synecdoche, New York" based on a book? How is "Synecdoche" pronounced?
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