Watching a movie is nothing. Living the life of an archetype that reflects your own life regardless of the details of your identity is just…
If I were to finish that hanging chad of an intro, I think it would kill the emotional context of the subject. In the end, like the title suggests, the film Synecdoche, New York is the only thing that can accurately describe itself and the impact it will have on you. Its existence is the adjective, just as you are the adjective and I am the adjective. The film is life, and it is love, and it is death. But most importantly, the film is you.
My favorite movie up until seven o’clock in the evening was Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. It, like Synecdoche, was written by the brilliant Charlie Kaufman. Sunshine, unlike its Kaufman-successor, was directed by a brilliant artist named Michel Gondry. It was a story about love and memory, and the incalculable value of every moment of life and human interaction, regardless of the emotion involved. It was the first film to make me cry the first time I watched it. This movie is something similar, but at the same time, possesses hundreds more flavors of ambition.
Kaufman directed the movie himself this time, indicating its importance in his career and the significance of a faithful adaptation of the writing. Movies are revived in Synecdoche as an artform, once again. Kaufman shows us through the beauty of every element of this epic that great films are just as significant as classic literature in terms of depth and substance and message.
The message is clear: it is, on the surface, a moving memento mori - a reminder of death and its great tragedy, and the inevitability of the event as applicable to all human beings. Under the surface, it shows you something more tragic: the path to death. Kaufman gives us several characters, each one representing a different aspect of the broad spectrum of life, and each character slowly ages and loses their innocence and their beauty, and, one-by-one, ultimately dies.
You watch as Caden Cotard ages and loses each characteristic of his life physically, as a reflection upon that same idea of progressive death, and eventually you realize that Cotard isn’t just a character. He is a very specific archetype: you. Somehow Kaufman has constructed such a diverse form of character that is easily reflective upon your own struggles and thoughts. The life of Cotard evolves into your own, and when he weeps and mourns the loss of innocence, love, friendship, and identity, you weep just as strongly.
Also, Cotard constructs a manufactured image of his own life, which begins to expand as a never-ending series of his perceptions of others’ lives, in the end serving as a commentary on how we see the world, and what the world actually is. We realize in a brand new way by watching Synecdoche that the world is so much more beautiful and at the same time ugly than how we can ever possibly perceive it. A monologue in the end of the film sums up this idea the best, and I will give you the liberty to understand it fully when you watch the film.
I am not saying that Synecdoche, New York has become my new favorite film. It is too early to say. However, I can say that it is the second film to have made me cry, and that is something valuable and beautiful. Buy this work of art, and cherish it, and with it, cherish the life you have left before you.