Early on in the movie Synechdoche, New York a play director creates a production of Death of a Salesman, and his hook is that Willie Loman should be played by a young man who THINKS he is old, and therefore it adds a new irony to his self-destruction in the end. What then follows in the movie is two hours of writer/director Charlie Kaufman exploring what it means to live, love, age and die -- all from a perspective that would make Willie Loman blush with ineptitude.
Kaufman is a young man who clearly thinks like an old man with many regrets. He lays himself bare here, and what we see is a man who is deeply insecure, paranoid in the extreme, with severe hypochondria, and an irrepressible death wish. To say that the protagonist of this film (played eerily by Philip Seymour Kaufman whose own internal demons would destroy him in similar fashion to the character he plays here) is not a guy who knew how to extract any fun out of living would be an understatement.
The film explores a lot of heavy themes: human sexuality and how it interferes with everything we do, infidelity and betrayal, the purpose of life, our inability to escape from playing roles in order to satisfy societal norms (along with the confusion it causes). It's very heady stuff. Most of all, the film is about suffering and dying. Kaufman does not hold back one bit in terms of showing us his fears in that regard, and he lays bare his conviction that there is no meaning in the end.
If this film sounds like a depressing bummer, you would be right. My advice is not to see it if you do not like such films. Also, do not see it if you hate films that have very little in the way of narrative, linearity, or even coherence. You will find none of that here. It is a jumbled mess of a movie that communicates directly through symbols and emotion, and plays like a dream (or nightmare).
I am sure there must be many interpretations of this movie out there. Did he die from the plumbing mishap in the first third of the movie and then the rest of it is his death dream? I think you could interpret it that way. But it really doesn't matter. This is a movie that must be processed emotionally. The left brain needs to be parked in the corner when you watch it. Nothing will make sense.
I found this movie haunting, but uneven. It is worth the voyage mostly because Kaufman's work is always worth the voyage, in the same way that listening to a song by Bob Dylan is always worth the voyage. Every one of the works may not be up to the standards of the masterpieces, but they all have something that reveals the brilliant mind of a unique artist.
That is true of this movie, even if Kaufman's mind is a place only the insane might wish to inhabit.
Kaufman is a young man who clearly thinks like an old man with many regrets. He lays himself bare here, and what we see is a man who is deeply insecure, paranoid in the extreme, with severe hypochondria, and an irrepressible death wish. To say that the protagonist of this film (played eerily by Philip Seymour Kaufman whose own internal demons would destroy him in similar fashion to the character he plays here) is not a guy who knew how to extract any fun out of living would be an understatement.
The film explores a lot of heavy themes: human sexuality and how it interferes with everything we do, infidelity and betrayal, the purpose of life, our inability to escape from playing roles in order to satisfy societal norms (along with the confusion it causes). It's very heady stuff. Most of all, the film is about suffering and dying. Kaufman does not hold back one bit in terms of showing us his fears in that regard, and he lays bare his conviction that there is no meaning in the end.
If this film sounds like a depressing bummer, you would be right. My advice is not to see it if you do not like such films. Also, do not see it if you hate films that have very little in the way of narrative, linearity, or even coherence. You will find none of that here. It is a jumbled mess of a movie that communicates directly through symbols and emotion, and plays like a dream (or nightmare).
I am sure there must be many interpretations of this movie out there. Did he die from the plumbing mishap in the first third of the movie and then the rest of it is his death dream? I think you could interpret it that way. But it really doesn't matter. This is a movie that must be processed emotionally. The left brain needs to be parked in the corner when you watch it. Nothing will make sense.
I found this movie haunting, but uneven. It is worth the voyage mostly because Kaufman's work is always worth the voyage, in the same way that listening to a song by Bob Dylan is always worth the voyage. Every one of the works may not be up to the standards of the masterpieces, but they all have something that reveals the brilliant mind of a unique artist.
That is true of this movie, even if Kaufman's mind is a place only the insane might wish to inhabit.