I finally watched Synecdoche, New York. Lovely. The best part was Diane Wiest reading Caden his final blocking notes. I adore that woman. This is heartbreaking writing and she delivers it perfectly:

You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone...As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time.

But I have a theory about the film that I can't find on the internet. The person who watched the movie with me disagreed with my theory, too. That theory is this: That the film Synecdoche, New York, was the document of the play done by the real Caden - the Caden who is not in the movie but exists in the meta-level above the movie - or real life (or perhaps an imagined real life that doesn't exist in reality but exists in relation to the film). It's almost four-dimensional.

If Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden, and he hires Sammy to play Caden in the play, my theory is that the original Caden hired the Philip Seymour Hoffman version of Caden to play him in the movie. It's difficult to explain meta-referential theories, but I think that makes sense. So since the Synecdoche film that you watch is a version of theatre itself, it can afford those bizarre instances of the surreal - like Hazel's house being perpetually on fire or the self-help book re-writing itself or the way time passes. Maybe in Caden's "real" life (outside of the movie), Hazel died in a fire and he uses a house on fire in the film as dramatic license to enhance the emotion of the Hazel story-line. That kind of Brechtian distanciation and absurdism only calls to attention the formal qualities of film and pulls you out of the story, so to me it makes sense that the Philip Seymour Hoffman level of Caden's life in the film isn't real either - which it isn't because it's in a film that we're watching.

To give more credence to that theory, I also noticed that a lot of scenes that were supposed to be the original life of Caden (especially those with Hazel, like when they're in the car outside her burning house) seemed to be lit very much like a play - specifically like the Death of a Salesman play that Caden mounts at the beginning of the film. And finally, Samantha Morton is a fantastic actress, so the fact that she seems to be a really shitty actress at the beginning makes me think that she was supposed to appear to be an actress playing the "real" Hazel who exists outside of the film.

Yes? No?

Labels: FILM

POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 6/02/2009 -

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